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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/_Free_Culture__by__lessig___The_background_story_for_Creative_Commons___new_edition_available.html">"Free Culture" by @lessig - The background story for Creative Commons - new edition available</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         23rd October 2015
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html">Click
  32 here to buy the book</a>.</p>
  33
  34 <p>In 2004, as the <a href="https://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons
  35 movement</a> gained momentum, its creator Lawrence Lessig wrote the
  36 book <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_(book)">Free
  37 Culture</a> to explain the problems with increasing copyright
  38 regulation and suggest some solutions.  I read the book back then and
  39 was very moved by it.  Reading the book inspired me and changed the
  40 way I looked on copyright law, and I would love it if more people
  41 would read it too.</p>
  42
  43 <p>Because of this, I decided in the summer of 2012 to translate it to
  44 Norwegian Bokmål and publish it for those of my friends and family
  45 that prefer to read books in Norwegian.  I translated the book using
  46 docbook and a gettext PO file, and a byproduct of this process is a
  47 new edition of the English original.  I've been in touch with the
  48 author during by work, and he said it was fine with him if I also
  49 published an English version.  So I decided to do so.  Today, I made
  50 this edition
  51 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html">available
  52 for sale on Lulu.com</a>, for those interested in a paper book.  This
  53 is the cover:
  54
  55 <p align="center"><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html"><img align="center" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-10-23-free-culture-english-published-cover.png"/></a></p>
  56
  57 <p>The Norwegian Bokmål version will be available for purchase in a
  58 few days.  I also plan to publish a French version in a few weeks or
  59 months, depending on the amount of people with knowledge of French to
  60 join the translation project.  So far there is only one active
  61 person, but the French book is almost completely translated but
  62 need some proof reading.</p>
  63
  64 <p>The book is also available in PDF, ePub and MOBI formats from
  65 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
  66 github project page</a>.  Note the ePub and MOBI versions have some
  67 formatting problems I believe is due to bugs in the docbook tool
  68 dbtoepub (Debian BTS issues
  69 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=795842">#795842</a>
  70 and
  71 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=796871">#796871</a>),
  72 but I have not taken the time to investigate.  I recommend the PDF and
  73 ePub version for now, as they seem to show up fine in the viewers I
  74 have available.</p>
  75
  76 <p>After the translation to Norwegian Bokmål was complete, I was able
  77 to secure some sponsoring from
  78 <a href="http://www.nuugfoundation.no/">the NUUG Foundation</a> to
  79 print the book.  This is the reason their logo is located on the back
  80 cover. I am very grateful for their contribution, and will use it to
  81 give a copy of the Norwegian edition to members of the Norwegian
  82 Parliament and other decision makers here in Norway.</p>
  83
  84       </div>
  85       <div class="tags">
  86
  87
  88         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>.
  89
  90
  91       </div>
  92     </div>
  93     <div class="padding"></div>
  94
  95     <div class="entry">
  96       <div class="title">
  97         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lawrence_Lessig_interviewed_Edward_Snowden_a_year_ago.html">Lawrence Lessig interviewed Edward Snowden a year ago</a>
  98       </div>
  99       <div class="date">
 100         19th October 2015
 101       </div>
 102       <div class="body">
 103         <p>Last year, <a href="https://lessig2016.us/">US president candidate
 104 in the Democratic Party</a> Lawrence interviewed Edward Snowden.  The
 105 one hour interview was
 106 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_Sr96TFQQE">published by
 107 Harvard Law School 2014-10-23 on Youtube</a>, and the meeting took
 108 place 2014-10-20.</p>
 109
 110 <p>The questions are very good, and there is lots of useful
 111 information to be learned and very interesting issues to think about
 112 being raised.  Please check it out.</p>
 113
 114 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/o_Sr96TFQQE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 115
 116 <p>I find it especially interesting to hear again that Snowden did try
 117 to bring up his reservations through the official channels without any
 118 luck.  It is in sharp contrast to the answers made 2013-11-06 by the
 119 Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg to the Norwegian Parliament,
 120 <a href="https://tale.holderdeord.no/speeches/s131106/68">claiming
 121 Snowden is no Whistle-Blower</a> because he should have taken up his
 122 concerns internally and using official channels.  It make me sad
 123 that this is the political leadership we have here in Norway.</p>
 124
 125       </div>
 126       <div class="tags">
 127
 128
 129         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>.
 130
 131
 132       </div>
 133     </div>
 134     <div class="padding"></div>
 135
 136     <div class="entry">
 137       <div class="title">
 138         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Story_of_Aaron_Swartz___Let_us_all_weep_.html">The Story of Aaron Swartz - Let us all weep!</a>
 139       </div>
 140       <div class="date">
 141          8th October 2015
 142       </div>
 143       <div class="body">
 144         <p>The movie "<a href="http://www.takepart.com/internets-own-boy">The
 145 Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz</a>" is both inspiring
 146 and depressing at the same time.  The work of Aaron Swartz has
 147 inspired me in my work, and I am grateful of all the improvements he
 148 was able to initiate or complete.  I wish I am able to do as much good
 149 in my life as he did in his.  Every minute of this 1:45 long movie is
 150 inspiring in documenting how much impact a single person can have on
 151 improving the society and this world.  And it is depressing in
 152 documenting how the law enforcement of USA (and other countries) is
 153 corrupted to a point where they can push a bright kid to his death for
 154 downloading too many scientific articles.  Aaron is dead.  Let us all
 155 weep.</p>
 156
 157 <p>The movie is also available on
 158 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXr-2hwTk58">Youtube</a>.  I
 159 wish there were Norwegian subtitles available, so I could show it to
 160 my parents.</p>
 161
 162       </div>
 163       <div class="tags">
 164
 165
 166         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>.
 167
 168
 169       </div>
 170     </div>
 171     <div class="padding"></div>
 172
 173     <div class="entry">
 174       <div class="title">
 175         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_Docbook_PDF_EPUB_MOBI_edition_of_the_Free_Culture_book.html">French Docbook/PDF/EPUB/MOBI edition of the Free Culture book</a>
 176       </div>
 177       <div class="date">
 178          1st October 2015
 179       </div>
 180       <div class="body">
 181         <p>As I wrap up the Norwegian version of
 182 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
 183 Culture</a> book by Lawrence Lessig (still waiting for my final proof
 184 reading copy to arrive in the mail), my great
 185 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a> helper and
 186 developer of the dblatex docbook processor, Benoît Guillon, decided a
 187 to try to create a French version of the book.  He started with the
 188 French translation available from the
 189 <a href="http://www.wikilivres.ca/wiki/Culture_libre">Wikilivres wiki
 190 pages</a>, and wrote a program to convert it into a PO file, allowing
 191 the translation to be integrated into the po4a based framework I use
 192 to create the Norwegian translation from the English edition.  We meet
 193 on the <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23dblatex">#dblatex IRC
 194 channel</a> to discuss the work.  If you want to help create a French
 195 edition, check out
 196 <a href="https://github.com/marsgui/free-culture-lessig">his git
 197 repository</a> and join us on IRC.  If the French edition look good,
 198 we might publish it as a paper book on lulu.com.  A French version of
 199 the drawings and the cover need to be provided for this to happen.</p>
 200
 201       </div>
 202       <div class="tags">
 203
 204
 205         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>.
 206
 207
 208       </div>
 209     </div>
 210     <div class="padding"></div>
 211
 212     <div class="entry">
 213       <div class="title">
 214         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
 215       </div>
 216       <div class="date">
 217         24th September 2015
 218       </div>
 219       <div class="body">
 220         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
 221 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
 222 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
 223 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
 224 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
 225 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
 226 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
 227
 228 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
 229
 230 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
 231 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
 232 by someone else.  I found
 233 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
 234 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
 235 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
 236 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
 237 from him.  Via
 238 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
 239 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
 240 discovered
 241 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
 242 available in Debian.</p>
 243
 244 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
 245 battery stats ever since. Now my
 246 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
 247 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
 248 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
 249 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
 250
 251 <pre>
 252 #!/bin/sh
 253 # Inspired by
 254 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
 255 # See also
 256 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
 257 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
 258
 259 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
 260     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
 261
 262 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
 263     (
 264         printf "timestamp,"
 265         for f in $files; do
 266             printf "%s," $f
 267         done
 268         echo
 269     ) > "$logfile"
 270 fi
 271
 272 log_battery() {
 273     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
 274     # when several log processes run in parallel.
 275     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
 276         for f in $files; do \
 277             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
 278         done)
 279     echo "$msg"
 280 }
 281
 282 cd /sys/class/power_supply
 283
 284 for bat in BAT*; do
 285     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
 286 done
 287 </pre>
 288
 289 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
 290 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
 291 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
 292 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
 293 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
 294 The code for the Debian package
 295 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
 296 available on github</a>.</p>
 297
 298 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
 299
 300 <pre>
 301 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
 302 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
 303 [...]
 304 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 305 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 306 </pre>
 307
 308 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
 309 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
 310 battery.</p>
 311
 312 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
 313 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
 314 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
 315 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
 316 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
 317 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
 318 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
 319 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
 320 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
 321 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
 322 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
 323 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
 324 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
 325 Linux too.</p>
 326
 327 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
 328 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
 329 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
 330 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
 331 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
 332 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
 333 load).</p>
 334
 335 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
 336 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
 337 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
 338 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
 339 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
 340 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
 341 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
 342 those.</p>
 343
 344 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
 345 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
 346 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
 347 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
 348 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
 349 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
 350 specific.</p>
 351
 352       </div>
 353       <div class="tags">
 354
 355
 356         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>.
 357
 358
 359       </div>
 360     </div>
 361     <div class="padding"></div>
 362
 363     <div class="entry">
 364       <div class="title">
 365         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Book_cover_for_the_Free_Culture_book_finally_done.html">Book cover for the Free Culture book finally done</a>
 366       </div>
 367       <div class="date">
 368          3rd September 2015
 369       </div>
 370       <div class="body">
 371         <p>Creating a good looking book cover proved harder than I expected.
 372 I wanted to create a cover looking similar to the original cover of
 373 the
 374 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
 375 Culture</a> book we are translating to Norwegian, and I wanted it in
 376 vector format for high resolution printing.  But my inkscape knowledge
 377 were not nearly good enough to pull that off.
 378
 379 <p>But thanks to the great inkscape community, I was able to wrap up
 380 the cover yesterday evening.  I asked on the
 381 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23inkscape">#inkscape IRC channel</a>
 382 on Freenode for help and clues, and Marc Jeanmougin (Mc-) volunteered
 383 to try to recreate it based on the PDF of the cover from the HTML
 384 version.  Not only did he create a
 385 <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/copy1.svg ">SVG document with
 386 the original and his vector version side by side</a>, he even provided
 387 an <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/out-1.ogv">instruction
 388 video</a> explaining how he did it</a>.  But the instruction video is
 389 not easy to follow for an untrained inkscape user. The video is a
 390 recording on how he did it, and he is obviously very experienced as
 391 the menu selections are very quick and he mentioned on IRC that he did
 392 use some keyboard shortcuts that can't be seen on the video, but it
 393 give a good idea about the inkscape operations to use to create the
 394 stripes with the embossed copyright sign in the center.</p>
 395
 396 <p>I took his SVG file, copied the vector image and re-sized it to fit
 397 on the cover I was drawing.  I am happy with the end result, and the
 398 current english version look like this:</p>
 399
 400 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-03-free-culture-cover.png" width="70%" align="center"/>
 401
 402 <p>I am not quite sure about the text on the back, but guess it will
 403 do.  I picked three quotes from the official site for the book, and
 404 hope it will work to trigger the interest of potential readers.  The
 405 Norwegian cover will look the same, but with the texts and bar code
 406 replaced with the Norwegian version.</p>
 407
 408 <p>The book is very close to being ready for publication, and I expect
 409 to upload the final draft to Lulu in the next few days and order a
 410 final proof reading copy to verify that everything look like it should
 411 before allowing everyone to order their own copy of Free Culture, in
 412 English or Norwegian Bokmål.  I'm waiting to give the the productive
 413 proof readers a chance to complete their work.</p>
 414
 415       </div>
 416       <div class="tags">
 417
 418
 419         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>.
 420
 421
 422       </div>
 423     </div>
 424     <div class="padding"></div>
 425
 426     <div class="entry">
 427       <div class="title">
 428         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/In_my_hand__a_pocket_book_edition_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_.html">In my hand, a pocket book edition of the Norwegian Free Culture book!</a>
 429       </div>
 430       <div class="date">
 431         19th August 2015
 432       </div>
 433       <div class="body">
 434         <p>Today, finally, my first printed draft edition of the Norwegian
 435 translation of Free Culture I have been working on for the last few
 436 years arrived in the mail.  I had to fake a cover to get the interior
 437 printed, and the exterior of the book look awful, but that is
 438 irrelevant at this point.  I asked for a printed pocket book version
 439 to get an idea about the font sizes and paper format as well as how
 440 good the figures and images look in print, but also to test what the
 441 pocket book version would look like.  After receiving the 500 page
 442 pocket book, it became obvious to me that that pocket book size is too
 443 small for this book.  I believe the book is too thick, and several
 444 tables and figures do not look good in the size they get with that
 445 small page sizes.  I believe I will go with the 5.5x8.5 inch size
 446 instead.  A surprise discovery from the paper version was how bad the
 447 URLs look in print.  They are very hard to read in the colophon page.
 448 The URLs are red in the PDF, but light gray on paper.  I need to
 449 change the color of links somehow to look better.  But there is a
 450 printed book in my hand, and it feels great. :)</p>
 451
 452 <p>Now I only need to fix the cover, wrap up the postscript with the
 453 store behind the book, and collect the last corrections from the proof
 454 readers before the book is ready for proper printing.  Cover artists
 455 willing to work for free and create a Creative Commons licensed vector
 456 file looking similar to the original is most welcome, as my skills as
 457 a graphics designer are mostly missing.</p>
 458
 459       </div>
 460       <div class="tags">
 461
 462
 463         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>.
 464
 465
 466       </div>
 467     </div>
 468     <div class="padding"></div>
 469
 470     <div class="entry">
 471       <div class="title">
 472         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_paper_version_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_heading_my_way.html">First paper version of the Norwegian Free Culture book heading my way</a>
 473       </div>
 474       <div class="date">
 475          9th August 2015
 476       </div>
 477       <div class="body">
 478         <p>Typesetting a book is harder than I hoped.  As the translation is
 479 mostly done, and a volunteer proof reader was going to check the text
 480 on paper, it was time this summer to focus on formatting my translated
 481 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> based version of the
 482 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> book by Lawrence
 483 Lessig.  I've been trying to get both docboox-xsl+fop and dblatex to
 484 give me a good looking PDF, but in the end I went with dblatex, because
 485 its Debian maintainer and upstream developer were responsive and very
 486 helpful in solving my formatting challenges.</p>
 487
 488 <p>Last night, I finally managed to create a PDF that no longer made
 489 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/">Lulu.com</a> complain after uploading,
 490 and I ordered a text version of the book on paper.  It is lacking a
 491 proper book cover and is not tagged with the correct ISBN number, but
 492 should give me an idea what the finished book will look like.</p>
 493
 494 <p>Instead of using Lulu, I did consider printing the book using
 495 <a href="http://www.createspace.com/">CreateSpace</a>, but ended up
 496 using Lulu because it had smaller book size options (CreateSpace seem
 497 to lack pocket book with extended distribution).  I looked for a
 498 similar service in Norway, but have not seen anything so far.  Please
 499 let me know if I am missing out on something here.</p>
 500
 501 <p>But I still struggle to decide the book size.  Should I go for
 502 pocket book (4.25x6.875 inches / 10.8x17.5 cm) with 556 pages, Digest
 503 (5.5x8.5 inches / 14x21.6 cm) with 323 pages or US Trade (6x8 inches /
 504 15.3x22.9 cm) with 280 pages?  Fewer pager give a cheaper book, and a
 505 smaller book is easier to carry around.  The test book I ordered was
 506 pocket book sized, to give me an idea how well that fit in my hand,
 507 but I suspect I will end up using a digest sized book in the end to
 508 bring the prize down further.</p>
 509
 510 <p>My biggest challenge at the moment is making nice cover art.  My
 511 inkscape skills are not yet up to the task of replicating the original
 512 cover in SVG format.  I also need to figure out what to write about
 513 the book on the back (will most likely use the same text as the
 514 description on web based book stores).  I would love help with this,
 515 if you are willing to license the art source and final version using
 516 the same CC license as the book.  My artistic skills are not really up
 517 to the task.</p>
 518
 519 <p>I plan to publish the book in both English and Norwegian and on
 520 paper, in PDF form as well as EPUB and MOBI format.  The current
 521 status can as usual be found on
 522 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
 523 in the archive/ directory.  So far I have spent all time on making the
 524 PDF version look good.  Someone should probably do the same with the
 525 dbtoepub generated e-book.  Help is definitely needed here, as I
 526 expect to run out of steem before I find time to improve the epub
 527 formatting.</p>
 528
 529 <p>Please let me know via github if you find typos in the book or
 530 discover translations that should be improved.  The final proof
 531 reading is being done right now, and I expect to publish the finished
 532 result in a few months.</p>
 533
 534       </div>
 535       <div class="tags">
 536
 537
 538         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>.
 539
 540
 541       </div>
 542     </div>
 543     <div class="padding"></div>
 544
 545     <div class="entry">
 546       <div class="title">
 547         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_DocBook_footnotes_as_endnotes_with_dblatex.html">Typesetting DocBook footnotes as endnotes with dblatex</a>
 548       </div>
 549       <div class="date">
 550         16th July 2015
 551       </div>
 552       <div class="body">
 553         <p>I'm still working on the Norwegian version of the
 554 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture book by Lawrence
 555 Lessig</a>, and is now working on the final typesetting and layout.
 556 One of the features I want to get the structure similar to the
 557 original book is to typeset the footnotes as endnotes in the notes
 558 chapter.  Based on the
 559 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/685063">feedback from the Debian
 560 maintainer and the dblatex developer</a>, I came up with this recipe I
 561 would like to share with you.  The proposal was to create a new LaTeX
 562 class file and add the LaTeX code there, but this is not always
 563 practical, when I want to be able to replace the class using a make
 564 file variable.  So my proposal misuses the latex.begindocument XSL
 565 parameter value, to get a small fragment into the correct location in
 566 the generated LaTeX File.</p>
 567
 568 <p>First, decide where in the DocBook document to place the endnotes,
 569 and add this text there:</p>
 570
 571 <pre>
 572 &lt;?latex \theendnotes ?&gt;
 573 </pre>
 574
 575 <p>Next, create a xsl stylesheet file dblatex-endnotes.xsl to add the
 576 code needed to add the endnote instructions in the preamble of the
 577 generated LaTeX document, with content like this:</p>
 578
 579 <pre>
 580 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
 581 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
 582   &lt;xsl:param name="latex.begindocument"&gt;
 583     &lt;xsl:text&gt;
 584 \usepackage{endnotes}
 585 \let\footnote=\endnote
 586 \def\enoteheading{\mbox{}\par\vskip-\baselineskip }
 587 \begin{document}
 588     &lt;/xsl:text&gt;
 589   &lt;/xsl:param&gt;
 590 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
 591 </pre>
 592
 593 <p>Finally, load this xsl file when running dblatex, for example like
 594 this:</p>
 595
 596 <pre>
 597 dblatex --xsl-user=dblatex-endnotes.xsl freeculture.nb.xml
 598 </pre>
 599
 600 <p>The end result can be seen on github, where
 601 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
 602 book project</a> is located.</p>
 603
 604       </div>
 605       <div class="tags">
 606
 607
 608         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>.
 609
 610
 611       </div>
 612     </div>
 613     <div class="padding"></div>
 614
 615     <div class="entry">
 616       <div class="title">
 617         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MPEG_LA_on__Internet_Broadcast_AVC_Video__licensing_and_non_private_use.html">MPEG LA on "Internet Broadcast AVC Video" licensing and non-private use</a>
 618       </div>
 619       <div class="date">
 620          7th July 2015
 621       </div>
 622       <div class="body">
 623         <p>After asking the Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK)
 624 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_gj_r_at_NRK_kan_distribuere_H_264_video_uten_patentavtale_med_MPEG_LA_.html">why
 625 they can broadcast and stream H.264 video without an agreement with
 626 the MPEG LA</a>, I was wiser, but still confused.  So I asked MPEG LA
 627 if their understanding matched that of NRK.  As far as I can tell, it
 628 does not.</p>
 629
 630 <p>I started by asking for more information about the various
 631 licensing classes and what exactly is covered by the "Internet
 632 Broadcast AVC Video" class that NRK pointed me at to explain why NRK
 633 did not need a license for streaming H.264 video:
 634
 635 <p><blockquote>
 636
 637 <p>According to
 638 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf">a
 639 MPEG LA press release dated 2010-02-02</a>, there is no charge when
 640 using MPEG AVC/H.264 according to the terms of "Internet Broadcast AVC
 641 Video".  I am trying to understand exactly what the terms of "Internet
 642 Broadcast AVC Video" is, and wondered if you could help me.  What
 643 exactly is covered by these terms, and what is not?</p>
 644
 645 <p>The only source of more information I have been able to find is a
 646 PDF named
 647 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avcweb.pdf">AVC
 648 Patent Portfolio License Briefing</a>, which states this about the
 649 fees:</p>
 650
 651 <ul>
 652  <li>Where End User pays for AVC Video
 653   <ul>
 654    <li>Subscription (not limited by title) – 100,000 or fewer
 655      subscribers/yr = no royalty; &gt; 100,000 to 250,000 subscribers/yr =
 656      $25,000; &gt;250,000 to 500,000 subscribers/yr = $50,000; &gt;500,000 to
 657      1M subscribers/yr = $75,000; &gt;1M subscribers/yr = $100,000</li>
 658
 659    <li>Title-by-Title - 12 minutes or less = no royalty; &gt;12 minutes in
 660      length = lower of (a) 2% or (b) $0.02 per title</li>
 661   </ul></li>
 662
 663  <li>Where remuneration is from other sources
 664   <ul>
 665    <li>Free Television - (a) one-time $2,500 per transmission encoder or
 666      (b) annual fee starting at $2,500 for &gt; 100,000 HH rising to
 667      maximum $10,000 for &gt;1,000,000 HH</li>
 668
 669    <li>Internet Broadcast AVC Video (not title-by-title, not subscription)
 670      – no royalty for life of the AVC Patent Portfolio License</li>
 671   </ul></li>
 672 </ul>
 673
 674 <p>Am I correct in assuming that the four categories listed is the
 675 categories used when selecting licensing terms, and that "Internet
 676 Broadcast AVC Video" is the category for things that do not fall into
 677 one of the other three categories?  Can you point me to a good source
 678 explaining what is ment by "title-by-title" and "Free Television" in
 679 the license terms for AVC/H.264?</p>
 680
 681 <p>Will a web service providing H.264 encoded video content in a
 682 "video on demand" fashing similar to Youtube and Vimeo, where no
 683 subscription is required and no payment is required from end users to
 684 get access to the videos, fall under the terms of the "Internet
 685 Broadcast AVC Video", ie no royalty for life of the AVC Patent
 686 Portfolio license?  Does it matter if some users are subscribed to get
 687 access to personalized services?</p>
 688
 689 <p>Note, this request and all answers will be published on the
 690 Internet.</p>
 691 </blockquote></p>
 692
 693 <p>The answer came quickly from Benjamin J. Myers, Licensing Associate
 694 with the MPEG LA:</p>
 695
 696 <p><blockquote>
 697 <p>Thank you for your message and for your interest in MPEG LA.  We
 698 appreciate hearing from you and I will be happy to assist you.</p>
 699
 700 <p>As you are aware, MPEG LA offers our AVC Patent Portfolio License
 701 which provides coverage under patents that are essential for use of
 702 the AVC/H.264 Standard (MPEG-4 Part 10).  Specifically, coverage is
 703 provided for end products and video content that make use of AVC/H.264
 704 technology.  Accordingly, the party offering such end products and
 705 video to End Users concludes the AVC License and is responsible for
 706 paying the applicable royalties.</p>
 707
 708 <p>Regarding Internet Broadcast AVC Video, the AVC License generally
 709 defines such content to be video that is distributed to End Users over
 710 the Internet free-of-charge.  Therefore, if a party offers a service
 711 which allows users to upload AVC/H.264 video to its website, and such
 712 AVC Video is delivered to End Users for free, then such video would
 713 receive coverage under the sublicense for Internet Broadcast AVC
 714 Video, which is not subject to any royalties for the life of the AVC
 715 License.  This would also apply in the scenario where a user creates a
 716 free online account in order to receive a customized offering of free
 717 AVC Video content.  In other words, as long as the End User is given
 718 access to or views AVC Video content at no cost to the End User, then
 719 no royalties would be payable under our AVC License.</p>
 720
 721 <p>On the other hand, if End Users pay for access to AVC Video for a
 722 specific period of time (e.g., one month, one year, etc.), then such
 723 video would constitute Subscription AVC Video.  In cases where AVC
 724 Video is delivered to End Users on a pay-per-view basis, then such
 725 content would constitute Title-by-Title AVC Video.  If a party offers
 726 Subscription or Title-by-Title AVC Video to End Users, then they would
 727 be responsible for paying the applicable royalties you noted below.</p>
 728
 729 <p>Finally, in the case where AVC Video is distributed for free
 730 through an "over-the-air, satellite and/or cable transmission", then
 731 such content would constitute Free Television AVC Video and would be
 732 subject to the applicable royalties.</p>
 733
 734 <p>For your reference, I have attached
 735 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-07-07-mpegla.pdf">a
 736 .pdf copy of the AVC License</a>. You will find the relevant
 737 sublicense information regarding AVC Video in Sections 2.2 through
 738 2.5, and the corresponding royalties in Section 3.1.2 through 3.1.4.
 739 You will also find the definitions of Title-by-Title AVC Video,
 740 Subscription AVC Video, Free Television AVC Video, and Internet
 741 Broadcast AVC Video in Section 1 of the License.  Please note that the
 742 electronic copy is provided for informational purposes only and cannot
 743 be used for execution.</p>
 744
 745 <p>I hope the above information is helpful.  If you have additional
 746 questions or need further assistance with the AVC License, please feel
 747 free to contact me directly.</p>
 748 </blockquote></p>
 749
 750 <p>Having a fresh copy of the license text was useful, and knowing
 751 that the definition of Title-by-Title required payment per title made
 752 me aware that my earlier understanding of that phrase had been wrong.
 753 But I still had a few questions:</p>
 754
 755 <p><blockquote>
 756 <p>I have a small followup question.  Would it be possible for me to get
 757 a license with MPEG LA even if there are no royalties to be paid?  The
 758 reason I ask, is that some video related products have a copyright
 759 clause limiting their use without a license with MPEG LA.  The clauses
 760 typically look similar to this:
 761
 762 <p><blockquote>
 763   This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
 764   the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer to (a) encode
 765   video in compliance with the AVC standard ("AVC video") and/or (b)
 766   decode AVC video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a
 767   personal and non-commercial activity and/or AVC video that was
 768   obtained from a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No
 769   license is granted or shall be implied for any other use. additional
 770   information may be obtained from MPEG LA L.L.C.
 771 </blockquote></p>
 772
 773 <p>It is unclear to me if this clause mean that I need to enter into
 774 an agreement with MPEG LA to use the product in question, even if
 775 there are no royalties to be paid to MPEG LA.  I suspect it will
 776 differ depending on the jurisdiction, and mine is Norway.  What is
 777 MPEG LAs view on this?</p>
 778 </blockquote></p>
 779
 780 <p>According to the answer, MPEG LA believe those using such tools for
 781 non-personal or commercial use need a license with them:</p>
 782
 783 <p><blockquote>
 784
 785 <p>With regard to the Notice to Customers, I would like to begin by
 786 clarifying that the Notice from Section 7.1 of the AVC License
 787 reads:</p>
 788
 789 <p>THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR
 790 THE PERSONAL USE OF A CONSUMER OR OTHER USES IN WHICH IT DOES NOT
 791 RECEIVE REMUNERATION TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC
 792 STANDARD ("AVC VIDEO") AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED
 793 BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL ACTIVITY AND/OR WAS OBTAINED FROM
 794 A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED
 795 OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE
 796 OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM</p>
 797
 798 <p>The Notice to Customers is intended to inform End Users of the
 799 personal usage rights (for example, to watch video content) included
 800 with the product they purchased, and to encourage any party using the
 801 product for commercial purposes to contact MPEG LA in order to become
 802 licensed for such use (for example, when they use an AVC Product to
 803 deliver Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free Television or Internet
 804 Broadcast AVC Video to End Users, or to re-Sell a third party's AVC
 805 Product as their own branded AVC Product).</p>
 806
 807 <p>Therefore, if a party is to be licensed for its use of an AVC
 808 Product to Sell AVC Video on a Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free
 809 Television or Internet Broadcast basis, that party would need to
 810 conclude the AVC License, even in the case where no royalties were
 811 payable under the License.  On the other hand, if that party (either a
 812 Consumer or business customer) simply uses an AVC Product for their
 813 own internal purposes and not for the commercial purposes referenced
 814 above, then such use would be included in the royalty paid for the AVC
 815 Products by the licensed supplier.</p>
 816
 817 <p>Finally, I note that our AVC License provides worldwide coverage in
 818 countries that have AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, including
 819 Norway.</p>
 820
 821 <p>I hope this clarification is helpful.  If I may be of any further
 822 assistance, just let me know.</p>
 823 </blockquote></p>
 824
 825 <p>The mentioning of Norwegian patents made me a bit confused, so I
 826 asked for more information:</p>
 827
 828 <p><blockquote>
 829
 830 <p>But one minor question at the end.  If I understand you correctly,
 831 you state in the quote above that there are patents in the AVC Patent
 832 Portfolio that are valid in Norway.  This make me believe I read the
 833 list available from &lt;URL:
 834 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx">http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx</a>
 835 &gt; incorrectly, as I believed the "NO" prefix in front of patents
 836 were Norwegian patents, and the only one I could find under Mitsubishi
 837 Electric Corporation expired in 2012.  Which patents are you referring
 838 to that are relevant for Norway?</p>
 839
 840 </blockquote></p>
 841
 842 <p>Again, the quick answer explained how to read the list of patents
 843 in that list:</p>
 844
 845 <p><blockquote>
 846
 847 <p>Your understanding is correct that the last AVC Patent Portfolio
 848 Patent in Norway expired on 21 October 2012.  Therefore, where AVC
 849 Video is both made and Sold in Norway after that date, then no
 850 royalties would be payable for such AVC Video under the AVC License.
 851 With that said, our AVC License provides historic coverage for AVC
 852 Products and AVC Video that may have been manufactured or Sold before
 853 the last Norwegian AVC patent expired.  I would also like to clarify
 854 that coverage is provided for the country of manufacture and the
 855 country of Sale that has active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents.</p>
 856
 857 <p>Therefore, if a party offers AVC Products or AVC Video for Sale in
 858 a country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents (for example,
 859 Sweden, Denmark, Finland, etc.), then that party would still need
 860 coverage under the AVC License even if such products or video are
 861 initially made in a country without active AVC Patent Portfolio
 862 Patents (for example, Norway).  Similarly, a party would need to
 863 conclude the AVC License if they make AVC Products or AVC Video in a
 864 country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, but eventually Sell
 865 such AVC Products or AVC Video in a country without active AVC Patent
 866 Portfolio Patents.</p>
 867 </blockquote></p>
 868
 869 <p>As far as I understand it, MPEG LA believe anyone using Adobe
 870 Premiere and other video related software with a H.264 distribution
 871 license need a license agreement with MPEG LA to use such tools for
 872 anything non-private or commercial, while it is OK to set up a
 873 Youtube-like service as long as no-one pays to get access to the
 874 content.  I still have no clear idea how this applies to Norway, where
 875 none of the patents MPEG LA is licensing are valid.  Will the
 876 copyright terms take precedence or can those terms be ignored because
 877 the patents are not valid in Norway?</p>
 878
 879       </div>
 880       <div class="tags">
 881
 882
 883         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</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>.
 884
 885
 886       </div>
 887     </div>
 888     <div class="padding"></div>
 889
 890     <div class="entry">
 891       <div class="title">
 892         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
 893       </div>
 894       <div class="date">
 895          5th July 2015
 896       </div>
 897       <div class="body">
 898         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
 899 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
 900 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
 901 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
 902 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
 903 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
 904 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
 905 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
 906 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
 907 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
 908 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
 909
 910 <p>One tip I got was to use the
 911 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
 912 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
 913 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
 914 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
 915 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
 916 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
 917
 918 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
 919 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
 920 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
 921 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
 922 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
 923 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
 924 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
 925 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
 926 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
 927 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
 928 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
 929 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
 930 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
 931 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
 932 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
 933
 934 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
 935 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
 936 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
 937 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
 938
 939 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
 940 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
 941
 942 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
 943 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
 944 different
 945 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
 946 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
 947
 948       </div>
 949       <div class="tags">
 950
 951
 952         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>.
 953
 954
 955       </div>
 956     </div>
 957     <div class="padding"></div>
 958
 959     <div class="entry">
 960       <div class="title">
 961         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
 962       </div>
 963       <div class="date">
 964          3rd July 2015
 965       </div>
 966       <div class="body">
 967         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
 968 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
 969 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
 970 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
 971 flickering.</p>
 972
 973 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
 974 still as
 975 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
 976 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
 977 good help from
 978 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
 979 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
 980 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
 981 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
 982 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
 983 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
 984 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
 985 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
 986 deteriorated since X41.</p>
 987
 988 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
 989 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
 990 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
 991 have suggestions.</p>
 992
 993 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
 994 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
 995 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
 996
 997       </div>
 998       <div class="tags">
 999
1000
1001         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>.
1002
1003
1004       </div>
1005     </div>
1006     <div class="padding"></div>
1007
1008     <div class="entry">
1009       <div class="title">
1010         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MakerCon_Nordic_videos_now_available_on_Frikanalen.html">MakerCon Nordic videos now available on Frikanalen</a>
1011       </div>
1012       <div class="date">
1013          2nd July 2015
1014       </div>
1015       <div class="body">
1016         <p>Last oktober I was involved on behalf of
1017 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> with recording the talks at
1018 <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">MakerCon Nordic</a>, a conference for
1019 the Maker movement.  Since then it has been the plan to publish the
1020 recordings on <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, which
1021 finally happened the last few days.  A few talks are missing because
1022 the speakers asked the organizers to not publish them, but most of the
1023 talks are available.  The talks are being broadcasted on RiksTV
1024 channel 50 and using multicast on Uninett, as well as being available
1025 from the Frikanalen web site.  The unedited recordings are
1026 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">available on
1027 Youtube too</a>.</p>
1028
1029 <p>This is the list of talks available at the moment.  Visit the
1030 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/?q=makercon">Frikanalen video
1031 pages</a> to view them.</p>
1032
1033 <ul>
1034
1035   <li>Evolutionary algorithms as a design tool - from art
1036       to robotics (Kyrre Glette)</li>
1037
1038   <li>Make and break (Hans Gerhard Meier)</li>
1039
1040   <li>Making a one year school course for young makers
1041       (Olav Helland)</li>
1042
1043   <li>Innovation Inspiration - IPR Databases as a Source of
1044       Inspiration (Hege Langlo)</li>
1045
1046   <li>Making a toy for makers (Erik Torstensson)</li>
1047
1048   <li>How to make 3D printer electronics (Elias Bakken)</li>
1049
1050   <li>Hovering Clouds: Looking at online tool offerings for Product
1051       Design and 3D Printing (William Kempton)</li>
1052
1053   <li>Travelling maker stories (Øyvind Nydal Dahl)</li>
1054
1055   <li>Making the first Maker Faire in Sweden (Nils Olander)</li>
1056
1057   <li>Breaking the mold: Printing 1000’s of parts (Espen Sivertsen)</li>
1058
1059   <li>Ultimaker — and open source 3D printing (Erik de Bruijn)</li>
1060
1061   <li>Autodesk’s 3D Printing Platform: Sparking innovation (Hilde
1062       Sevens)</li>
1063
1064   <li>How Making is Changing the World – and How You Can Too!
1065       (Jennifer Turliuk)</li>
1066
1067   <li>Open-Source Adventuring: OpenROV, OpenExplorer and the Future of
1068       Connected Exploration (David Lang)</li>
1069
1070   <li>Making in Norway (Haakon Karlsen Jr., Graham Hayward and Jens
1071       Dyvik)</li>
1072
1073   <li>The Impact of the Maker Movement (Mike Senese)</li>
1074
1075 </ul>
1076
1077 <p>Part of the reason this took so long was that the scripts NUUG had
1078 to prepare a recording for publication were five years old and no
1079 longer worked with the current video processing tools (command line
1080 argument changes).  In addition, we needed better audio normalization,
1081 which sent me on a detour to
1082 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">package
1083 bs1770gain for Debian</a>.  Now this is in place and it became a lot
1084 easier to publish NUUG videos on Frikanalen.</p>
1085
1086       </div>
1087       <div class="tags">
1088
1089
1090         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>.
1091
1092
1093       </div>
1094     </div>
1095     <div class="padding"></div>
1096
1097     <div class="entry">
1098       <div class="title">
1099         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Graphing_the_Norwegian_company_ownership_structure.html">Graphing the Norwegian company ownership structure</a>
1100       </div>
1101       <div class="date">
1102         15th June 2015
1103       </div>
1104       <div class="body">
1105         <p>It is a bit work to figure out the ownership structure of companies
1106 in Norway.  The information is publicly available, but one need to
1107 recursively look up ownership for all owners to figure out the complete
1108 ownership graph of a given set of companies.  To save me the work in
1109 the future, I wrote a script to do this automatically, outputting the
1110 ownership structure using the Graphviz/dotty format.  The data source
1111 is web scraping from <a href="http://www.proff.no/">Proff</a>, because
1112 I failed to find a useful source directly from the official keepers of
1113 the ownership data, <a href="http://www.brreg.no/">Brønnøysundsregistrene</a>.</p>
1114
1115 <p>To get an ownership graph for a set of companies, fetch
1116 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/brreg-norway-ownership-graph">the code from git</a> and run it using the organisation number.  I'm
1117 using the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet as an example here, as its
1118 ownership structure is very simple:</p>
1119
1120 <pre>
1121 % time ./bin/eierskap-dotty 958033540 > dagbladet.dot
1122
1123 real    0m2.841s
1124 user    0m0.184s
1125 sys     0m0.036s
1126 %
1127 </pre>
1128
1129 <p>The script accept several organisation numbers on the command line,
1130 allowing a cluster of companies to be graphed in the same image.  The
1131 resulting dot file for the example above look like this.  The edges
1132 are labeled with the ownership percentage, and the nodes uses the
1133 organisation number as their name and the name as the label:</p>
1134
1135 <pre>
1136 digraph ownership {
1137 rankdir = LR;
1138 "Aller Holding A/s" -> "910119877" [label="100%"]
1139 "910119877" -> "998689015" [label="100%"]
1140 "998689015" -> "958033540" [label="99%"]
1141 "974530600" -> "958033540" [label="1%"]
1142 "958033540" [label="AS DAGBLADET"]
1143 "998689015" [label="Berner Media Holding AS"]
1144 "974530600" [label="Dagbladets Stiftelse"]
1145 "910119877" [label="Aller Media AS"]
1146 }
1147 </pre>
1148
1149 <p>To view the ownership graph, run "<tt>dotty dagbladet.dot</tt>" or
1150 convert it to a PNG using "<tt>dot -T png dagbladet.dot >
1151 dagbladet.png</tt>".  The result can be seen below:</p>
1152
1153 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-06-15-ownership-graphs-norway-dagbladet.png" width="80%">
1154
1155 <p>Note that I suspect the "Aller Holding A/S" entry to be incorrect
1156 data in the official ownership register, as that name is not
1157 registered in the official company register for Norway.  The ownership
1158 register is sensitive to typos and there seem to be no strict checking
1159 of the ownership links.</p>
1160
1161 <p>Let me know if you improve the script or find better data sources.
1162 The code is licensed according to GPL 2 or newer.</p>
1163
1164 <p>Update 2015-06-15: Since the initial post I've been told that
1165 "<a href="http://www.proff.dk/firma/carl-allers-etablissement-aktieselskab/københavn-v/hovedkontorer/13624518-3/">Aller
1166 Holding A/S</a>" is a Danish company, which explain why it did not
1167 have a Norwegian organisation number.  I've also been told that there
1168 is a <a href="http://www.brreg.no/automatiske/webservices/">web
1169 services API available</a> from Brønnøysundsregistrene, for those
1170 willing to accept the terms or pay the price.</p>
1171
1172       </div>
1173       <div class="tags">
1174
1175
1176         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
1177
1178
1179       </div>
1180     </div>
1181     <div class="padding"></div>
1182
1183     <div class="entry">
1184       <div class="title">
1185         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">Measuring and adjusting the loudness of a TV channel using bs1770gain</a>
1186       </div>
1187       <div class="date">
1188         11th June 2015
1189       </div>
1190       <div class="body">
1191         <p>Television loudness is the source of frustration for viewers
1192 everywhere.  Some channels are very load, others are less loud, and
1193 ads tend to shout very high to get the attention of the viewers, and
1194 the viewers do not like this.  This fact is well known to the TV
1195 channels.  See for example the BBC white paper
1196 "<a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP202.pdf">Terminology
1197 for loudness and level dBTP, LU, and all that</a>" from 2011 for a
1198 summary of the problem domain.  To better address the need for even
1199 loadness, the TV channels got together several years ago to agree on a
1200 new way to measure loudness in digital files as one step in
1201 standardizing loudness.  From this came the ITU-R standard BS.1770,
1202 "<a href="http://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BS.1770/en">Algorithms to
1203 measure audio programme loudness and true-peak audio level</a>".</p>
1204
1205 <p>The ITU-R BS.1770 specification describe an algorithm to measure
1206 loadness in LUFS (Loudness Units, referenced to Full Scale). But
1207 having a way to measure is not enough.  To get the same loudness
1208 across TV channels, one also need to decide which value to standardize
1209 on.  For European TV channels, this was done in the EBU Recommondaton
1210 R128, "<a href="https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/r/r128.pdf">Loudness
1211 normalisation and permitted maximum level of audio signals</a>", which
1212 specifies a recommended level of -23 LUFS.  In Norway, I have been
1213 told that NRK, TV2, MTG and SBS have decided among themselves to
1214 follow the R128 recommondation for playout from 2016-03-01.</p>
1215
1216 <p>There are free software available to measure and adjust the loudness
1217 level using the LUFS.  In Debian, I am aware of a library named
1218 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libebur128">libebur128</a>
1219 able to measure the loudness and since yesterday morning a new binary
1220 named <a href="http://bs1770gain.sourceforge.net">bs1770gain</a>
1221 capable of both measuring and adjusting was uploaded and is waiting
1222 for NEW processing.  I plan to maintain the latter in Debian under the
1223 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=pkg-multimedia-maintainers%40lists.alioth.debian.org">Debian
1224 multimedia</a> umbrella.</p>
1225
1226 <p>The free software based TV channel I am involved in,
1227 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, plan to follow the
1228 R128 recommondation ourself as soon as we can adjust the software to
1229 do so, and the bs1770gain tool seem like a good fit for that part of
1230 the puzzle to measure loudness on new video uploaded to Frikanalen.
1231 Personally, I plan to use bs1770gain to adjust the loudness of videos
1232 I upload to Frikanalen on behalf of <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
1233 NUUG member organisation</a>.  The program seem to be able to measure
1234 the LUFS value of any media file handled by ffmpeg, but I've only
1235 successfully adjusted the LUFS value of WAV files.  I suspect it
1236 should be able to adjust it for all the formats handled by ffmpeg.</p>
1237
1238       </div>
1239       <div class="tags">
1240
1241
1242         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>.
1243
1244
1245       </div>
1246     </div>
1247     <div class="padding"></div>
1248
1249     <div class="entry">
1250       <div class="title">
1251         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_citizens_now_required_by_law_to_give_their_fingerprint_to_the_police.html">Norwegian citizens now required by law to give their fingerprint to the police</a>
1252       </div>
1253       <div class="date">
1254         10th May 2015
1255       </div>
1256       <div class="body">
1257         <p>5 days ago, the Norwegian Parliament decided, unanimously, that all
1258 citizens of Norway, no matter if they are suspected of something
1259 criminal or not, are
1260 <a href="https://www.holderdeord.no/votes/1430838871e">required to
1261 give fingerprints to the police</a> (vote details from Holder de
1262 ord).  The law make it sound like it will be optional, but in a few
1263 years there will be no option any more.  The ID will be required to
1264 vote, to get a bank account, a bank card, to change address on the
1265 post office, to receive an electronic ID or to get a drivers license
1266 and many other tasks required to function in Norway.  The banks plan
1267 to stop providing their own ID on the bank cards when this new
1268 national ID is introduced, and the national road authorities plan to
1269 change the drivers license to no longer be usable as identity cards.
1270 In effect, to function as a citizen in Norway a national ID card will
1271 be required, and to get it one need to provide the fingerprints to
1272 the police.</p>
1273
1274 <p>In addition to handing the fingerprint to the police (which
1275 promised to not make a copy of the fingerprint image at that point in
1276 time, but say nothing about doing it later), a picture of the
1277 fingerprint will be stored on the RFID chip, along with a picture of
1278 the face and other information about the person.  Some of the
1279 information will be encrypted, but the encryption will be the same
1280 system as currently used in the passports.  The codes to decrypt will
1281 be available to a lot of government offices and their suppliers around
1282 the globe, but for those that do not know anyone in those circles it
1283 is good to know that
1284 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs">the
1285 encryption is already broken</a>.  And they
1286 <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2215057/wireless/bad-guys-could-read-rfid-passports-at-217-feet--maybe-a-lot-more.html">can
1287 be read from 70 meters away</a>.  This can be mitigated a bit by
1288 keeping it in a Faraday cage (metal box or metal wire container), but
1289 one will be required to take it out of there often enough to expose
1290 ones private and personal information to a lot of people that have no
1291 business getting access to that information.</p>
1292
1293 <p>The new Norwegian national IDs are a vehicle for identity theft,
1294 and I feel sorry for us all having politicians accepting such invasion
1295 of privacy without any objections.  So are the Norwegian passports,
1296 but it has been possible to function in Norway without those so far.
1297 That option is going away with the passing of the new law.  In this, I
1298 envy the Germans, because for them it is optional how much biometric
1299 information is stored in their national ID.</p>
1300
1301 <p>And if forced collection of fingerprints was not bad enough, the
1302 information collected in the national ID card register can be handed
1303 over to foreign intelligence services and police authorities, "when
1304 extradition is not considered disproportionate".</p>
1305
1306 <p>Update 2015-05-12: For those unable to believe that the Parliament
1307 really could make such decision, I wrote
1308 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Blir_det_virkelig_krav_om_fingeravtrykk_i_nasjonale_ID_kort_.html">a
1309 summary of the sources I have</a> for concluding the way I do
1310 (Norwegian Only, as the sources are all in Norwegian).</p>
1311
1312       </div>
1313       <div class="tags">
1314
1315
1316         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/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1317
1318
1319       </div>
1320     </div>
1321     <div class="padding"></div>
1322
1323     <div class="entry">
1324       <div class="title">
1325         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html">What would it cost to store all phone calls in Norway?</a>
1326       </div>
1327       <div class="date">
1328          1st May 2015
1329       </div>
1330       <div class="body">
1331         <p>Many years ago, a friend of mine calculated how much it would cost
1332 to store the sound of all phone calls in Norway, and came up with the
1333 cost of around 20 million NOK (2.4 mill EUR) for all the calls in a
1334 year.  I got curious and wondered what the same calculation would look
1335 like today.  To do so one need an idea of how much data storage is
1336 needed for each minute of sound, how many minutes all the calls in
1337 Norway sums up to, and the cost of data storage.</p>
1338
1339 <p>The 2005 numbers are from
1340 <a href="http://www.digi.no/analyser/2005/10/04/vi-prater-stadig-mindre-i-roret">digi.no</a>,
1341 the 2012 numbers are from
1342 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/aktuelt/nyheter/fortsatt-vekst-i-det-norske-ekommarkedet">a
1343 NKOM report</a>, and I got the 2013 numbers after asking NKOM via
1344 email.  I was told the numbers for 2014 will be presented May 20th,
1345 and decided not to wait for those, as I doubt they will be very
1346 different from the numbers from 2013.</p>
1347
1348 <p>The amount of data storage per minute sound depend on the wanted
1349 quality, and for phone calls it is generally believed that 8 Kbit/s is
1350 enough.  See for example a
1351 <a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html#topic1">summary
1352 on voice quality from Cisco</a> for some alternatives.  8 Kbit/s is 60
1353 Kbytes/min, and this can be multiplied with the number of call minutes
1354 to get the storage requirements.</p>
1355
1356 <p>Storage prices varies a lot, depending on speed, backup strategies,
1357 availability requirements etc.  But a simple way to calculate can be
1358 to use the price of a TiB-disk (around 1000 NOK / 120 EUR) and double
1359 it to take space, power and redundancy into account.  It could be much
1360 higher with high speed and good redundancy requirements.</p>
1361
1362 <p>But back to the question, What would it cost to store all phone
1363 calls in Norway?  Not much.  Here is a small table showing the
1364 estimated cost, which is within the budget constraint of most medium
1365 and large organisations:</p>
1366
1367 <table border="1">
1368 <tr><th>Year</th><th>Call minutes</th><th>Size</th><th>Price in NOK / EUR</th></tr>
1369 <tr><td>2005</td><td align="right">24 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.3 PiB</td><td align="right">3 mill / 358 000</td></tr>
1370 <tr><td>2012</td><td align="right">18 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.0 PiB</td><td align="right">2.2 mill / 262 000</td></tr>
1371 <tr><td>2013</td><td align="right">17 000 000 000</td><td align="right">950 TiB</td><td align="right">2.1 mill / 250 000</td></tr>
1372 </table>
1373
1374 <p>This is the cost of buying the storage.  Maintenance need to be
1375 taken into account too, but calculating that is left as an exercise
1376 for the reader.  But it is obvious to me from those numbers that
1377 recording the sound of all phone calls in Norway is not going to be
1378 stopped because it is too expensive.  I wonder if someone already is
1379 collecting the data?</p>
1380
1381       </div>
1382       <div class="tags">
1383
1384
1385         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/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1386
1387
1388       </div>
1389     </div>
1390     <div class="padding"></div>
1391
1392     <div class="entry">
1393       <div class="title">
1394         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_beta_release.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu beta release</a>
1395       </div>
1396       <div class="date">
1397         26th April 2015
1398       </div>
1399       <div class="body">
1400         <p>I am happy to report that the Debian Edu team sent out
1401 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2015/04/msg00000.html">this
1402 announcement today</a>:</p>
1403
1404 <pre>
1405 the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is pleased to announce the first
1406 *beta* release of Debian Edu "Jessie" 8.0+edu0~b1, which for the first
1407 time is composed entirely of packages from the current Debian stable
1408 release, Debian 8 "Jessie".
1409
1410 (As most reading this will know, Debian "Jessie" hasn't actually been
1411 released by now. The release is still in progress but should finish
1412 later today ;)
1413
1414 We expect to make a final release of Debian Edu "Jessie" in the coming
1415 weeks, timed with the first point release of Debian Jessie. Upgrades
1416 from this beta release of Debian Edu Jessie to the final release will
1417 be possible and encouraged!
1418
1419 Please report feedback to debian-edu@lists.debian.org and/or submit
1420 bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
1421
1422 Debian Edu - sometimes also known as "Skolelinux" - is a complete
1423 operating system for schools, universities and other
1424 organisations. Through its pre- prepared installation profiles
1425 administrators can install servers, workstations and laptops which
1426 will work in harmony on the school network.  With Debian Edu, the
1427 teachers themselves or their technical support staff can roll out a
1428 complete multi-user, multi-machine study environment within hours or
1429 days.
1430
1431 Debian Edu is already in use at several hundred schools all over the
1432 world, particularly in Germany, Spain and Norway. Installations come
1433 with hundreds of applications pre-installed, plus the whole Debian
1434 archive of thousands of compatible packages within easy reach.
1435
1436 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
1437 installation instructions are available, including detailed
1438 instructions in the manual explaining the first steps, such as setting
1439 up a network or adding users.  Please note that the password for the
1440 user your prompted for during installation must have a length of at
1441 least 5 characters!
1442
1443 == Where to download ==
1444
1445 A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (649 MiB) for network booting
1446 can be downloaded at the following locations:
1447
1448     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso
1449     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
1450
1451 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 54a524d16246cddd8d2cfd6ea52f2dd78c47ee0a
1452
1453 Alternatively an extended DVD / usbstick image (4.9 GiB) is also
1454 available, with more software included (saving additional download
1455 time):
1456
1457     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
1458     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
1459
1460 The SHA1SUM of this image is: fb1f1504a490c077a48653898f9d6a461cb3c636
1461
1462 Sources are available from the Debian archive, see
1463 http://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/8.0.0/source/ for some download
1464 options.
1465
1466 == Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages ==
1467
1468 Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for
1469 the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
1470
1471 This manual has been fully translated to German, French, Italian,
1472 Danish, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. A partly translated version exists
1473 for Spanish.  See http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/ for
1474 online version of the translated manual.
1475
1476 More information about Debian 8 "Jessie" itself is provided in the
1477 release notes and the installation manual:
1478 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
1479 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
1480
1481
1482 == Errata / known problems ==
1483
1484     It takes up to 15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via
1485     DHCP (#780461).
1486
1487     The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (#783087).
1488
1489 Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the client to update the
1490 hostname immediately.
1491
1492 Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly
1493 more current and complete list.
1494
1495 == Some more details about Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~b1 Codename Jessie released 2015-04-25 ==
1496
1497 === Software updates ===
1498
1499 Everything which is new in Debian 8 Jessie, e.g.:
1500
1501  * Linux kernel 3.16.7-ctk9; for the i386 architecture, support for
1502    i486 processors has been dropped; oldest supported ones: i586 (like
1503    Intel Pentium and AMD K5).
1504
1505  * Desktop environments KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.11.13, GNOME 3.14,
1506    Xfce 4.12, LXDE 0.5.6
1507    * new optional desktop environment: MATE 1.8
1508    * KDE Plasma Workspaces is installed by default; to choose one of
1509      the others see the manual.
1510  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 41
1511  * LibreOffice 4.3.3
1512  * GOsa 2.7.4
1513  * LTSP 5.5.4
1514  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
1515  * new boot framework: systemd
1516  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.12
1517  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
1518  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
1519  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.1
1520  * golearn 0.9
1521  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
1522  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
1523  * Debian Jessie includes about 43000 packages available for installation.
1524  * More information about Debian 8 Jessie is provided in its release
1525    notes and the installation manual, see the link above.
1526
1527 === Installation changes ===
1528
1529     Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically
1530     for the hardware present.
1531
1532 === Fixed bugs ===
1533
1534 A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable
1535 from a user perspective:
1536
1537  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
1538    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
1539    information is corrected (710362)
1540
1541  * shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (775608).
1542
1543 === Sugar desktop removed ===
1544
1545 As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not
1546 available in Debian Edu jessie.
1547
1548
1549 == About Debian Edu / Skolelinux ==
1550
1551 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on
1552 Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
1553 configured school network. Directly after installation a school server
1554 running all services needed for a school network is set up just
1555 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
1556 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
1557 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
1558 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
1559 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
1560 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
1561 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
1562 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
1563 can choose between KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
1564 environment.
1565
1566 == About Debian ==
1567
1568 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
1569 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
1570 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
1571 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
1572 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
1573 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
1574 operating system.
1575
1576 == Thanks ==
1577
1578 Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen!
1579 You rock.
1580 </pre>
1581
1582       </div>
1583       <div class="tags">
1584
1585
1586         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>.
1587
1588
1589       </div>
1590     </div>
1591     <div class="padding"></div>
1592
1593     <div class="entry">
1594       <div class="title">
1595         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Shirish_Agarwal.html">Debian Edu interview: Shirish Agarwal</a>
1596       </div>
1597       <div class="date">
1598         15th April 2015
1599       </div>
1600       <div class="body">
1601         <p>It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
1602 computer system for schools I've involved in,
1603 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, was
1604 being used in India.  But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
1605 interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
1606 Agarwal.</p>
1607
1608 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1609
1610 <p>My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
1611 historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
1612 My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
1613 installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
1614 fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
1615 few software start-ups as well.</p>
1616
1617 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1618 project?</strong></p>
1619
1620 <p>It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
1621 years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
1622 anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
1623 educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
1624 nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
1625 it was known then.  Since then I have started using the various
1626 education meta-packages provided by the project.</p>
1627
1628 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1629 Edu?</strong></p>
1630
1631 <p>It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
1632 software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
1633 figuratively).  Even if I take the simplest software which is
1634 gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
1635 the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
1636 pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
1637 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781841">#781841</a> and
1638 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781842">#781842</a>.</p>
1639
1640 <p>I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
1641 as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
1642 possibility of a larger life span.  Of course with both it's more a
1643 question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
1644 for the developer per-se.</p>
1645
1646 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1647 Edu?</strong></p>
1648
1649 <p>I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
1650 think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
1651 help from people and the larger community wherever possible.</p>
1652
1653 <p>I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
1654 that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
1655 However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
1656 pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
1657 but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
1658 Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
1659 still) I have had for a long time :</p>
1660
1661 <p>1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
1662 each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
1663 far would each travel and similar questions like these.
1664
1665 <p>The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
1666 be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
1667 interactive manner. While sites such as the
1668 <a href="http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.two.trains.html">Ask
1669 Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem</a> (as an example or point of
1670 inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done.  I dunno
1671 if there is a free software which does something like this.  The idea
1672 being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
1673 this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
1674 colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
1675 or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
1676 This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
1677 the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
1678 psychics and everything in-between.</p>
1679
1680 <p>One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
1681 one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
1682 meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
1683 also be used.</p>
1684
1685 <p>2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
1686 enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary.  I don't think it
1687 should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
1688 sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
1689 from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
1690 the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
1691 the user's input.</p>
1692
1693 <p>3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
1694 palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
1695 needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
1696 copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
1697 nature, history etc.  and let it loose. This could turn to be really
1698 huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
1699 commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
1700 stock photos. Potential is immense.</p>
1701
1702 <p>Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
1703 both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
1704 lot.  This is more so in educational software as these applications
1705 need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
1706 immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
1707 maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
1708 of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
1709 maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.</p>
1710
1711 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1712
1713 <p>That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
1714 aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
1715 quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
1716 between kpat and Aiselriot.  In desktops it's a tie between
1717 gnome-flashback and mate.</p>
1718
1719 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1720 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1721
1722 <p>I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
1723 whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
1724 Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
1725 school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
1726 people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
1727 various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.</p>
1728
1729 <p>What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
1730 passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
1731 then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
1732 well.</p>
1733
1734 <p>I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
1735 instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
1736 there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
1737 Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.</p>
1738
1739 <p>One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
1740 and upgrades.  People have this myth that each update and upgrade
1741 means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
1742 innumerable times.  That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
1743 like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
1744 it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
1745 changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
1746 the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
1747 releases.</p>
1748
1749 <p>The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
1750 is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
1751 is aimed at.
1752
1753 <p>Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
1754 around 2 years, and
1755 <a href="https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/sharings/">gathered
1756 some experience</a> there.  Some of the things we learnt/discovered
1757 there was :</p>
1758
1759 <ol>
1760
1761   <li>Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects
1762    and they do not want you to teach anything out of the
1763    portion/syllabus given.</li>
1764
1765   <li>They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever
1766    is in the syllabus.</li>
1767
1768   <li>There are huge barriers both with the English language and at
1769    times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris
1770    you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's
1771    say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be
1772    as recognizable as say a
1773    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puneri_Pagadi">Puneri
1774    Pagdi</a> so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever
1775    possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words
1776    which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in
1777    parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or
1778    something but that is something for upstream to do.</li>
1779
1780 </ol>
1781
1782       </div>
1783       <div class="tags">
1784
1785
1786         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>.
1787
1788
1789       </div>
1790     </div>
1791     <div class="padding"></div>
1792
1793     <div class="entry">
1794       <div class="title">
1795         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_m_going_to_the_Open_Source_Developers__Conference_Nordic_2015_.html">I'm going to the Open Source Developers' Conference Nordic 2015!</a>
1796       </div>
1797       <div class="date">
1798          7th April 2015
1799       </div>
1800       <div class="body">
1801         <p>I am happy to let you all know that I'm going to the <a
1802 href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/">Open Source Developers'
1803 Conference Nordic 2015</a>!</p>
1804
1805 <p>It take place Friday 8th to Sunday 10th of May in Oslo next to
1806 where I work, and I finally got around to submitting
1807 <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talk/6192">a talk proposal for
1808 it</a> (dead link for most people until the talk is accepted).  As
1809 part of my involvement with the
1810 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group member
1811 association</a> I have been slightly involved in the planning of this
1812 conference for a while now, with a focus on organising a Civic Hacking
1813 Hackathon with our friends
1814 over at <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> and
1815 <a href="http://www.holderdeord.no/">Holder de ord</a>.  This part is
1816 named the 'My Society' track in the program.  There is still space for
1817 more talks and participants.  I hope to see you there.</p>
1818
1819 <p>Check out <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talks">the talks
1820 submitted and accepted so far</a>.</p>
1821
1822       </div>
1823       <div class="tags">
1824
1825
1826         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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
1827
1828
1829       </div>
1830     </div>
1831     <div class="padding"></div>
1832
1833     <div class="entry">
1834       <div class="title">
1835         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Proof_reading_the_Norwegian_translation_of_Free_Culture_by_Lessig.html">Proof reading the Norwegian translation of Free Culture by Lessig</a>
1836       </div>
1837       <div class="date">
1838          4th April 2015
1839       </div>
1840       <div class="body">
1841         <p>During eastern I had some time to continue working on the Norwegian
1842 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
1843 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
1844 At the moment I am proof reading the finished text, looking for typos,
1845 inconsistent wordings and sentences that do not flow as they should.
1846 I'm more than two thirds done with the text, and welcome others to
1847 check the text up to chapter 13.  The current status is available on the
1848 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
1849 project pages.  You can also check out the
1850 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
1851 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
1852 and HTML version available in the
1853 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
1854 directory</a>.</p>
1855
1856 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
1857 you find any.</p>
1858
1859       </div>
1860       <div class="tags">
1861
1862
1863         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>.
1864
1865
1866       </div>
1867     </div>
1868     <div class="padding"></div>
1869
1870     <div class="entry">
1871       <div class="title">
1872         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen__Norwegian_TV_channel_for_technical_topics.html">Frikanalen, Norwegian TV channel for technical topics</a>
1873       </div>
1874       <div class="date">
1875          9th March 2015
1876       </div>
1877       <div class="body">
1878         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a>,
1879 where I am a member, and where people interested in free software,
1880 open standards and UNIX like operating systems like Linux and the BSDs
1881 come together, record our monthly technical presentations on video.
1882 The purpose is to document the talks and spread them to a wider
1883 audience.  For this, the the Norwegian nationwide open channel
1884 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is a useful venue.
1885 Since a few days ago, when I figured out the
1886 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/api/">REST API</a> to program the
1887 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/guide/">channel time schedule</a>,
1888 the channel has been filled with NUUG talks, related recordings and
1889 some Creative Commons licensed TED talks (from archive.org).  I fill
1890 all "leftover bits" on the channel with content from NUUG, which at
1891 the moment is almost 17 of 24 hours every day.</p>
1892
1893 <p>The list of NUUG videos
1894 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/organization/82">uploaded so far</a>
1895 include things like a
1896 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/625090">one hour talk by John
1897 Perry Barlow when he visited Oslo</a>, a presentation of
1898 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624275">Haiku, the BeOS
1899 re-implementation</a>, the
1900 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624493">history of FiksGataMi,
1901 the Norwegian version of FixMyStreet</a>, the good old
1902 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/623566">Warriors of the net
1903 video</A> and many others.</p>
1904
1905 <p>We have a large backlog of NUUG talks not yet uploaded to
1906 Frikanalen, and plan to upload every useful bit to the channel to
1907 spread the word there.  I also hope to find useful recordings from the
1908 Chaos Computer Club and Debian conferences and spread them on the
1909 channel as well.  But this require locating the videos and their meta
1910 information (title, description, license, etc), and preparing the
1911 recordings for broadcast, and I have not yet had the spare time to
1912 focus on this.  Perhaps you want to help.  Please join us on IRC,
1913 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
1914 if you want to help make this happen.</p>
1915
1916 <p>But as I said, already the channel is already almost exclusively
1917 filled with technical topics, and if you want to learn something new
1918 today, check out the <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">Ogg Theora
1919 web stream</a> or use one of the other ways to get access to the
1920 channel.  Unfortunately the Ogg Theora recoding for distribution still
1921 do not properly sync the video and sound.  It is generated by recoding
1922 a internal MPEG transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to
1923 Ogg Theora / Vorbis, and we have not been able to find a way that
1924 produces acceptable quality.  Help needed, please get in touch if you
1925 know how to fix it using free software.</p>
1926
1927       </div>
1928       <div class="tags">
1929
1930
1931         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/h264">h264</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>.
1932
1933
1934       </div>
1935     </div>
1936     <div class="padding"></div>
1937
1938     <div class="entry">
1939       <div class="title">
1940         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Citizenfour_documentary_on_the_Snowden_confirmations_to_Norway.html">The Citizenfour documentary on the Snowden confirmations to Norway</a>
1941       </div>
1942       <div class="date">
1943         28th February 2015
1944       </div>
1945       <div class="body">
1946         <p>Today I was happy to learn that the documentary
1947 <a href="https://citizenfourfilm.com/">Citizenfour</a> by
1948 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Poitras">Laura Poitras</a>
1949 finally will show up in Norway.  According to the magazine
1950 <a href="http://montages.no/">Montages</a>, a deal has finally been
1951 made for
1952 <a href="http://montages.no/nyheter/snowden-dokumentaren-citizenfour-far-norsk-kinodistribusjon/">Cinema
1953 distribution in Norway</a> and the movie will have its premiere soon.
1954 This is great news.  As part of my involvement with
1955 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User Group</a>, me and
1956 a friend have
1957 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_til_Norge_.shtml">tried
1958 to get the movie to Norway</a> ourselves, but obviously
1959 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_endelig_til_Norge_.shtml">we
1960 were too late</a> and Tor Fosse beat us to it.  I am happy he did, as
1961 the movie will make its way to the public and we do not have to make
1962 it happen ourselves.
1963 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM">The trailer</a>
1964 can be seen on youtube, if you are curious what kind of film this
1965 is.</p>
1966
1967 <p>The whistle blower Edward Snowden really deserve political asylum
1968 here in Norway, but I am afraid he would not be safe.</p>
1969
1970       </div>
1971       <div class="tags">
1972
1973
1974         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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1975
1976
1977       </div>
1978     </div>
1979     <div class="padding"></div>
1980
1981     <div class="entry">
1982       <div class="title">
1983         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Norwegian_open_channel_Frikanalen___24x7_on_the_Internet.html">The Norwegian open channel Frikanalen - 24x7 on the Internet</a>
1984       </div>
1985       <div class="date">
1986         25th February 2015
1987       </div>
1988       <div class="body">
1989         <p>The Norwegian nationwide open channel
1990 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is still going
1991 strong.  It allow everyone to send the video they want on national
1992 television.  It is a TV station administrated completely using a web
1993 browser, running only <ahref="https://github.com/Frikanalen">Free
1994 Software</a>, providing <ahref="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api">a REST
1995 api</a> for administrators and members, and with distribution on the
1996 national DVB-T distribution network RiksTV.  But only between 12:00
1997 and 17:30 Norwegian time.  This has finally changed, after many years
1998 with limited distribution.  A few weeks ago, we set up a Ogg Theora
1999 stream via icecast to allow everyone with Internet access to check out
2000 the channel the rest of the day.  This is presented on
2001 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">the Frikanalen web site now</a>.  And
2002 since a few days ago, the channel is also available
2003 via <a href="https://www.uninett.no/iptv-tilgang">multicast on
2004 UNINETT</a>, available for those using IPTV TVs and set-top boxes in
2005 the Norwegian National Research and Education network.</p>
2006
2007 <p>If you want to see what is on the channel, point your media player
2008 to one of these sources.  The first should work with most players and
2009 browsers, while as far as I know, the multicast UDP stream only work
2010 with VLC.</p>
2011
2012 <ul>
2013   <li><a href="http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv">http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv</a></li>
2014   <li>udp://@224.17.43.129:1234</li>
2015 </ul>
2016
2017 <p>The Ogg Theora / icecast stream is not working well, as the video
2018 and audio is slightly out of sync.  We have not been able to figure
2019 out how to fix it.  It is generated by recoding a internal MPEG
2020 transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to Ogg Theora /
2021 Vorbis, and the result is less then stellar.  If you have ideas how to
2022 fix it, please let us know on frikanalen (at) nuug.no.  We currently
2023 use this with ffmpeg2theora 0.29:</p>
2024
2025 <blockquote><pre>
2026 ./ffmpeg2theora.linux &lt;OBE_gemini_URL.ts&gt; -F 25 -x 720 -y 405 \
2027  --deinterlace --inputfps 25 -c 1 -H 48000 --keyint 8 --buf-delay 100 \
2028  --nosync -V 700 -o - | oggfwd video.nuug.no 8000 &lt;pw&gt; /frikanalen.ogv
2029 </pre></blockquote>
2030
2031 <p>If you get the multicast UDP stream working, please let me know, as
2032 I am curious how far the multicast stream reach.  It do not make it to
2033 my home network, nor any other commercially available network in
2034 Norway that I am aware of.</p>
2035
2036       </div>
2037       <div class="tags">
2038
2039
2040         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/h264">h264</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>.
2041
2042
2043       </div>
2044     </div>
2045     <div class="padding"></div>
2046
2047     <div class="entry">
2048       <div class="title">
2049         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nude_body_scanner_now_present_on_Norwegian_airport.html">Nude body scanner now present on Norwegian airport</a>
2050       </div>
2051       <div class="date">
2052         10th February 2015
2053       </div>
2054       <div class="body">
2055         <p>Aftenposten, one of the largest newspapers in Norway, today report
2056 that
2057 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/reise/Slik-skannes-kroppen-din-i-fremtidens-sikkerhetskontroll-490666_1.snd">three
2058 of the nude body scanners now is put to use at Gardermoen</a>, the
2059 main airport in Norway.  This way the travelers can have their body
2060 photographed without cloths when visiting Norway.  Of course this
2061 horrible news is presented with a positive spin, stating that "now
2062 travelers can move past the security check point faster and more
2063 efficiently", but fail to mention that the machines in question take
2064 pictures of their nude bodies and store them internally in the
2065 computer, while only presenting sketch figure of the body to the
2066 public.  The article is written in a way that leave the impression
2067 that the new machines do not take these nude pictures and only create
2068 the sketch figures.  In reality the same nude pictures are still
2069 taken, but not presented to everyone.  They are still available for
2070 the owners of the system and the people doing maintenance of the
2071 scanners, as long as they are taken and stored.</p>
2072
2073 <p>Wikipedia have a more on
2074 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_body_scanner">Full body
2075 scanners</a>, including example images and a summary of the
2076 controversy about these scanners.</p>
2077
2078 <p>Personally I will decline to use these machines, as I believe strip
2079 searches of my body is a very intrusive attack on my privacy, and not
2080 something everyone should have to accept to travel.</p>
2081
2082       </div>
2083       <div class="tags">
2084
2085
2086         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>.
2087
2088
2089       </div>
2090     </div>
2091     <div class="padding"></div>
2092
2093     <div class="entry">
2094       <div class="title">
2095         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nagios_module_to_check_if_the_Frikanalen_video_stream_is_working.html">Nagios module to check if the Frikanalen video stream is working</a>
2096       </div>
2097       <div class="date">
2098          8th February 2015
2099       </div>
2100       <div class="body">
2101         <p>When running a TV station with both broadcast and web stream
2102 distribution, it is useful to know that the stream is working.  As I
2103 am involved in the Norwegian open channel
2104 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> as part of my
2105 activity in the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member
2106 organisation</a>, I wrote a script to use mplayer to connect to a
2107 video stream, pick two images 35 seconds apart and compare them.  If
2108 the images are missing or identical, something is probably wrong with
2109 the stream and an alarm should be triggered.  The script is written as
2110 a Nagios plugin, allowing us to use Nagios to run the check regularly
2111 and sound the alarm when something is wrong.  It is able to detect
2112 both a hanging and a broken video stream.</p>
2113
2114 <p>I just uploaded the code for the script into the
2115 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen/frikanalen/blob/master/nagios-plugin/check_video_stream_images">Frikanalen
2116 git repository</a> on github.  If you run a TV station with web
2117 streaming, perhaps you can find it useful too.</p>
2118
2119 <p>Last year, the Frikanalen public TV station transformed into using
2120 only Linux based free software to administrate, schedule and
2121 distribute the TV content.  The
2122 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen">source code for the entire TV
2123 station</a> is available from the Github project page.  Everyone can
2124 use it to send their content on national TV, and we provide both a web
2125 GUI and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api/">a web API</a> to
2126 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/login/?next=/members/video/">add</a>
2127 and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/members/plan/">schedule
2128 content</a>.  And thanks to last weeks developer gathering and
2129 following activity, we now have the schedule
2130 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/xmltv/2015/01/01">available as
2131 XMLTV</a> too.  Still a lot of work left to do, especially with the
2132 process to add videos and with the scheduling, so your contribution is
2133 most welcome.  Perhaps you want to set up your own TV station?</p>
2134
2135 <p>Update 2015-02-25: Got a tip from Uninett about their
2136 <a href="https://scm.uninett.no/maalepaaler/qstream/">qstream
2137 monitoring system</a>, which gather connection time, jitter, packet
2138 loss and burst bandwidth usage.  It look useful to check if UDP
2139 streams are working as they should.</p>
2140
2141       </div>
2142       <div class="tags">
2143
2144
2145         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>.
2146
2147
2148       </div>
2149     </div>
2150     <div class="padding"></div>
2151
2152     <div class="entry">
2153       <div class="title">
2154         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_subtitles_for_the_FSF_video_User_Liberation.html">Norwegian Bokmål subtitles for the FSF video User Liberation</a>
2155       </div>
2156       <div class="date">
2157         12th January 2015
2158       </div>
2159       <div class="body">
2160         <p>A few days ago, the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software
2161 Foundation</a> announced a new video
2162 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">explaining
2163 Free software</a> in simple terms.  The video named User Liberation is
2164 3 minutes long, and I recommend showing it to everyone you know as a
2165 way to explain what Free Software is all about.  Unfortunately several
2166 of the people I know do not understand English and Spanish, so it did
2167 not make sense to show it to them.</p>
2168
2169 <p>But today I was told that
2170 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">English
2171 subtitles were available</a> and set out to provide Norwegian Bokmål
2172 subtitles based on these.  The result has been sent to FSF and made
2173 available in
2174 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/fsf-video-user-liberation-subtitles">a
2175 git repository</a> provided by Github.  Please let me know if you find
2176 errors or have improvements to the subtitles.</p>
2177
2178 <p>Update 2015-02-03: Since I publised this post, FSF created a
2179 Libreplanet
2180 <a href="http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:FSF/User_Liberation_Video_Translation">project
2181 to track subtitles</A> for the video.</p>
2182
2183       </div>
2184       <div class="tags">
2185
2186
2187         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2188
2189
2190       </div>
2191     </div>
2192     <div class="padding"></div>
2193
2194     <div class="entry">
2195       <div class="title">
2196         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_version_of_the_Norwegian_web_service_FiksGataMi.html">Updated version of the Norwegian web service FiksGataMi</a>
2197       </div>
2198       <div class="date">
2199         30th December 2014
2200       </div>
2201       <div class="body">
2202         <p>I am very happy that we in the
2203 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG)</a>,
2204 spearheaded by Marius Halden from NUUG and Matthew Somerville from
2205 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>, finally managed to
2206 upgrade the code base for the Norwegian version of
2207 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org/">FixMyStreet</a>.  This
2208 was the first major update since 2011. The refurbished
2209 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is already live, and
2210 seem to hold up the pressure.  The
2211 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__FiksGataMi_i_oppdatert_og_mobilvennlig_klesdrakt.shtml">press
2212 release and announcement</a> went out this morning.</p>
2213
2214 <p>FixMyStreet is a web platform for allowing the citizens to easily
2215 report problems with public infrastructure to the responsible
2216 authorities.  Think of it as a shared mail client with map support,
2217 allowing everyone to see what already was reported and comment on the
2218 reports in public.</p>
2219
2220       </div>
2221       <div class="tags">
2222
2223
2224         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>.
2225
2226
2227       </div>
2228     </div>
2229     <div class="padding"></div>
2230
2231     <div class="entry">
2232       <div class="title">
2233         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Of_course_USA_loses_in_cyber_war___NSA_and_friends_made_sure_it_would_happen.html">Of course USA loses in cyber war - NSA and friends made sure it would happen</a>
2234       </div>
2235       <div class="date">
2236         19th December 2014
2237       </div>
2238       <div class="body">
2239         <p>So, Sony caved in
2240 (<a href="https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/545338568512917504">according
2241 to Rob Lowe</a>) and demonstrated that America lost its first cyberwar
2242 (<a href="https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122">according
2243 to Newt Gingrich</a>).  It should not surprise anyone, after the
2244 whistle blower Edward Snowden documented that the government of USA
2245 and their allies for many years have done their best to make sure the
2246 technology used by its citizens is filled with security holes allowing
2247 the secret services to spy on its own population.  No one in their
2248 right minds could believe that the ability to snoop on the people all
2249 over the globe could only be used by the personnel authorized to do so
2250 by the president of the United States of America.  If the capabilities
2251 are there, they will be used by friend and foe alike, and now they are
2252 being used to bring Sony on its knees.</p>
2253
2254 <p>I doubt it will a lesson learned, and expect USA to lose its next
2255 cyber war too, given how eager the western intelligence communities
2256 (and probably the non-western too, but it is less in the news) seem to
2257 be to continue its current dragnet surveillance practice.</p>
2258
2259 <p>There is a reason why China and others are trying to move away from
2260 Windows to Linux and other alternatives, and it is not to avoid
2261 sending its hard earned dollars to Cayman Islands (or whatever
2262 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven">tax haven</a>
2263 Microsoft is using these days to collect the majority of its
2264 income. :)</p>
2265
2266       </div>
2267       <div class="tags">
2268
2269
2270         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/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2271
2272
2273       </div>
2274     </div>
2275     <div class="padding"></div>
2276
2277     <div class="entry">
2278       <div class="title">
2279         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
2280       </div>
2281       <div class="date">
2282         22nd November 2014
2283       </div>
2284       <div class="body">
2285         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
2286 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
2287 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
2288 courtesy of
2289 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
2290 Schubert</a> and
2291 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
2292 McVittie</a>.
2293
2294 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
2295 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
2296 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
2297 you upgrade:</p>
2298
2299 <p><blockquote><pre>
2300 Package: systemd-sysv
2301 Pin: release o=Debian
2302 Pin-Priority: -1
2303 </pre></blockquote><p>
2304
2305 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
2306 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
2307 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
2308 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
2309 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
2310
2311 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
2312 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
2313 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
2314 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
2315 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
2316 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
2317
2318 <p><blockquote><pre>
2319 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
2320 </pre></blockquote><p>
2321
2322 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
2323
2324 <p><blockquote><pre>
2325 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
2326 </pre></blockquote><p>
2327
2328 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
2329 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
2330
2331 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
2332 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
2333 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
2334 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
2335 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
2336 Jessie is released.</p>
2337
2338 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
2339 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
2340 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
2341 line.</p>
2342
2343       </div>
2344       <div class="tags">
2345
2346
2347         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>.
2348
2349
2350       </div>
2351     </div>
2352     <div class="padding"></div>
2353
2354     <div class="entry">
2355       <div class="title">
2356         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
2357       </div>
2358       <div class="date">
2359         10th November 2014
2360       </div>
2361       <div class="body">
2362         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
2363 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
2364 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
2365
2366 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
2367 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
2368 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
2369 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
2370 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
2371 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
2372 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
2373 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
2374 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
2375 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
2376 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
2377 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
2378 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
2379 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
2380 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
2381
2382 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
2383 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
2384 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
2385 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
2386 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
2387 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
2388 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
2389 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
2390 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
2391 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
2392 were fairly easy, and
2393 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
2394 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
2395 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
2396 useful approach.</p>
2397
2398 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
2399 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
2400 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
2401 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
2402 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
2403 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
2404 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
2405 this:</p>
2406
2407 <p><blockquote><pre>
2408 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
2409   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
2410 </pre></blockquote></p>
2411
2412 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
2413 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
2414
2415 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
2416 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
2417 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
2418 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
2419 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
2420 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
2421 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
2422 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
2423 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
2424 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
2425 system.</p>
2426
2427 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
2428 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
2429 SMTorP. :)</p>
2430
2431       </div>
2432       <div class="tags">
2433
2434
2435         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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2436
2437
2438       </div>
2439     </div>
2440     <div class="padding"></div>
2441
2442     <div class="entry">
2443       <div class="title">
2444         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</a>
2445       </div>
2446       <div class="date">
2447         27th October 2014
2448       </div>
2449       <div class="body">
2450         <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
2451 sent out
2452 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
2453 announcement</a>:</p>
2454
2455 <pre>
2456 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
2457 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
2458
2459 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
2460 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
2461 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
2462 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
2463 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
2464 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
2465 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
2466
2467 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
2468 installation instructions are available, including detailed
2469 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
2470 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
2471 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
2472 of at least 5 characters!
2473
2474  [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
2475
2476 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
2477 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
2478 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
2479 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
2480 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
2481
2482 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
2483 mostly in Germany and Norway.
2484
2485 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
2486 ===============================
2487
2488 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
2489 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
2490 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
2491 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
2492 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
2493 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
2494 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
2495 machines can be installed via the network.  The provided school server
2496 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
2497 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
2498 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
2499 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
2500 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
2501 environment.
2502
2503  [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
2504  [3] &lt;URL: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</a> &gt;
2505
2506 Full release notes and manual
2507 =============================
2508
2509 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
2510 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
2511 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
2512 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
2513 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
2514
2515  [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
2516  [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
2517
2518 Where to get it
2519 ---------------
2520
2521 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
2522
2523  * <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
2524  * <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
2525  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
2526
2527 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
2528
2529 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
2530 ===============================================================================
2531
2532
2533 Installation changes
2534 --------------------
2535
2536  * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
2537
2538 Software updates
2539 ----------------
2540
2541 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
2542
2543  * Linux kernel 3.16.x
2544  * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
2545    LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
2546    choose one of the others see manual.)
2547  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
2548  * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
2549  * GOsa 2.7.4
2550  * LTSP 5.5.4
2551  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
2552  * new boot framework: systemd
2553  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
2554  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
2555  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
2556  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
2557  * golearn 0.9
2558  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
2559  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
2560  * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
2561    installation.
2562  * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
2563    notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
2564
2565  [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
2566  [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
2567
2568 Fixed bugs
2569 ----------
2570
2571  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
2572    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
2573    information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
2574  * and many others.
2575
2576 Documentation and translation updates
2577 -------------------------------------
2578
2579  * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
2580    Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
2581    Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
2582
2583 Other changes
2584 -------------
2585
2586  * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
2587    server takes more time.
2588  * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
2589    doesn't work.
2590
2591 Regressions / known problems
2592 ----------------------------
2593
2594  * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
2595    exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
2596    and Debian bug #762103).
2597  * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
2598    #764594).  The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
2599  * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
2600    work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
2601    Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
2602
2603 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
2604
2605  [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
2606
2607 How to report bugs
2608 ------------------
2609
2610 &lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
2611
2612 About Debian
2613 ============
2614
2615 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
2616 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
2617 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
2618 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
2619 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
2620 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
2621 operating system.
2622
2623 Contact Information
2624 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
2625 mail to press@debian.org.
2626
2627  [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
2628 </pre>
2629
2630       </div>
2631       <div class="tags">
2632
2633
2634         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>.
2635
2636
2637       </div>
2638     </div>
2639     <div class="padding"></div>
2640
2641     <div class="entry">
2642       <div class="title">
2643         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html">I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</a>
2644       </div>
2645       <div class="date">
2646         23rd October 2014
2647       </div>
2648       <div class="body">
2649         <p>I spent last weekend at <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
2650 Nordic</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
2651 the surrounding countries.  I had volunteered on behalf of the
2652 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
2653 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
2654 a row.  There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
2655 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
2656 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch</a>, a
2657 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
2658 live.</p>
2659
2660 <p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
2661 around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
2662 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
2663 public</a> on the MakerConNordic account.  The videos have the license
2664 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
2665 <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
2666 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>.  Many great
2667 talks available.  Check it out! :)</p>
2668
2669       </div>
2670       <div class="tags">
2671
2672
2673         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>.
2674
2675
2676       </div>
2677     </div>
2678     <div class="padding"></div>
2679
2680     <div class="entry">
2681       <div class="title">
2682         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
2683       </div>
2684       <div class="date">
2685         22nd October 2014
2686       </div>
2687       <div class="body">
2688         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
2689 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
2690 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
2691 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
2692 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
2693 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
2694 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
2695 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
2696 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
2697 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
2698 lists I recently took over:</p>
2699
2700 <p><blockquote><pre>
2701 % time listadmin xiph
2702 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
2703 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
2704
2705 real    0m1.709s
2706 user    0m0.232s
2707 sys     0m0.012s
2708 %
2709 </pre></blockquote></p>
2710
2711 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
2712 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
2713 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
2714 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
2715 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
2716 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
2717 program.</p>
2718
2719 <p>If you install
2720 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
2721 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
2722 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
2723
2724 <p><blockquote><pre>
2725 username username@example.org
2726 spamlevel 23
2727 default discard
2728 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
2729
2730 password secret
2731 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
2732 mailman-list@lists.example.com
2733
2734 password hidden
2735 other-list@otherserver.example.org
2736 </pre></blockquote></p>
2737
2738 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
2739 learn the details.</p>
2740
2741 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
2742 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
2743 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
2744 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
2745
2746 <p><blockquote><pre>
2747 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
2748 </pre></blockquote></p>
2749
2750 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
2751 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
2752 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
2753 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
2754 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
2755 email.</p>
2756
2757 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
2758 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
2759 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
2760 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
2761 software.</p>
2762
2763 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2764 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2765 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2766
2767 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
2768 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
2769 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
2770 sure why.</p>
2771
2772       </div>
2773       <div class="tags">
2774
2775
2776         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>.
2777
2778
2779       </div>
2780     </div>
2781     <div class="padding"></div>
2782
2783     <div class="entry">
2784       <div class="title">
2785         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
2786       </div>
2787       <div class="date">
2788         17th October 2014
2789       </div>
2790       <div class="body">
2791         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
2792 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
2793 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
2794 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
2795 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
2796 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
2797 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
2798
2799 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
2800 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
2801 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
2802 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
2803 of this story.)</p>
2804
2805 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
2806 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
2807 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
2808 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
2809 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
2810 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
2811 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
2812 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
2813 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
2814 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
2815
2816 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
2817 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
2818 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
2819 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
2820
2821 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
2822 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
2823
2824 <p><blockquote><pre>
2825 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
2826 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
2827 </pre></blockquote></p>
2828
2829 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
2830 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
2831 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
2832 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
2833 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
2834 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
2835 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
2836 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
2837
2838 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
2839 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
2840
2841 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
2842 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
2843 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
2844 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
2845 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
2846
2847 <p><blockquote><pre>
2848 Task: isenkram-packages
2849 Section: hardware
2850 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2851  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
2852  proposed.
2853 Test-new-install: show show
2854 Relevance: 8
2855 Packages: for-current-hardware
2856
2857 Task: isenkram-firmware
2858 Section: hardware
2859 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2860  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
2861  packages are proposed.
2862 Test-new-install: mark show
2863 Relevance: 8
2864 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
2865 </pre></blockquote></p>
2866
2867 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
2868 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
2869 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
2870 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
2871 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
2872
2873 <p><blockquote><pre>
2874 #!/bin/sh
2875 #
2876 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
2877 export PATH
2878 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2879 </pre></blockquote></p>
2880
2881 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
2882 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
2883
2884 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
2885 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
2886 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
2887 install.</p>
2888
2889 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
2890 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
2891 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
2892
2893       </div>
2894       <div class="tags">
2895
2896
2897         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/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
2898
2899
2900       </div>
2901     </div>
2902     <div class="padding"></div>
2903
2904     <div class="entry">
2905       <div class="title">
2906         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
2907       </div>
2908       <div class="date">
2909          4th October 2014
2910       </div>
2911       <div class="body">
2912         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
2913 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
2914 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
2915 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
2916
2917 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
2918
2919 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
2920 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
2921 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
2922
2923       </div>
2924       <div class="tags">
2925
2926
2927         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>.
2928
2929
2930       </div>
2931     </div>
2932     <div class="padding"></div>
2933
2934     <div class="entry">
2935       <div class="title">
2936         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
2937       </div>
2938       <div class="date">
2939          4th October 2014
2940       </div>
2941       <div class="body">
2942         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
2943 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
2944 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
2945 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
2946 Dibb.</p>
2947
2948 <p>I just wrapped up
2949 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
2950 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
2951 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
2952 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
2953 0.17.</p>
2954
2955 <ul>
2956
2957  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
2958  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
2959    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
2960  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
2961  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
2962  <li>Fix include orders</li>
2963  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
2964  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
2965  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
2966    the palette size is the same.</li>
2967  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
2968  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
2969  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
2970  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
2971    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
2972
2973 </ul>
2974
2975 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
2976 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
2977 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
2978
2979       </div>
2980       <div class="tags">
2981
2982
2983         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/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
2984
2985
2986       </div>
2987     </div>
2988     <div class="padding"></div>
2989
2990     <div class="entry">
2991       <div class="title">
2992         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
2993       </div>
2994       <div class="date">
2995         26th September 2014
2996       </div>
2997       <div class="body">
2998         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2999 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
3000 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
3001 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
3002 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
3003 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
3004 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
3005 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
3006 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
3007 future.  The
3008 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
3009 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
3010 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
3011 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
3012 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
3013
3014 <p>First, download the test ISO via
3015 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
3016 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
3017 or rsync (use
3018 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
3019 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
3020 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
3021 install with some tweaking.</p>
3022
3023 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
3024 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
3025
3026 <p><blockquote><pre>
3027 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
3028 </pre></blockquote></p>
3029
3030 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
3031 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
3032 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
3033 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
3034
3035 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
3036 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
3037 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
3038 your need.</p>
3039
3040 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
3041 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
3042 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
3043 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
3044 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
3045 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
3046 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
3047 days.</p>
3048
3049 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
3050 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
3051 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
3052 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
3053 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
3054 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
3055 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
3056 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
3057 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
3058
3059 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
3060 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
3061 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
3062
3063       </div>
3064       <div class="tags">
3065
3066
3067         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>.
3068
3069
3070       </div>
3071     </div>
3072     <div class="padding"></div>
3073
3074     <div class="entry">
3075       <div class="title">
3076         <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>
3077       </div>
3078       <div class="date">
3079         25th September 2014
3080       </div>
3081       <div class="body">
3082         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
3083 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
3084 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
3085 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
3086 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
3087 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
3088 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
3089 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
3090 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
3091 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
3092 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
3093 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
3094 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
3095
3096 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
3097 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
3098 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
3099 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
3100 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
3101 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
3102 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
3103 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
3104 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
3105 list</a>. :)</p>
3106
3107       </div>
3108       <div class="tags">
3109
3110
3111         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/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
3112
3113
3114       </div>
3115     </div>
3116     <div class="padding"></div>
3117
3118     <div class="entry">
3119       <div class="title">
3120         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
3121       </div>
3122       <div class="date">
3123         16th September 2014
3124       </div>
3125       <div class="body">
3126         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
3127 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
3128 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
3129 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
3130 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
3131 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
3132 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
3133 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
3134 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
3135 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
3136 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
3137 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
3138 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
3139 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
3140
3141 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
3142 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
3143 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
3144 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
3145 depend on the small and clever package
3146 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
3147 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
3148 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
3149 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
3150 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
3151 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
3152 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
3153 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
3154 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
3155 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
3156 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
3157
3158 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
3159 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
3160 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
3161 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
3162 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
3163 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
3164 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
3165 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
3166 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
3167 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
3168 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
3169 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
3170 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
3171 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
3172 dialog.</p>
3173
3174 <p><table>
3175
3176 <tr>
3177 <th>Machine/setup</th>
3178 <th>Original tasksel</th>
3179 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
3180 <th>Reduction</th>
3181 </tr>
3182
3183 <tr>
3184 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
3185 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
3186 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
3187 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
3188 </tr>
3189
3190 <tr>
3191 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
3192 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
3193 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
3194 <td>23 min 40%</td>
3195 </tr>
3196
3197 <tr>
3198 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
3199 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
3200 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
3201 <td>11 min 50%</td>
3202 </tr>
3203
3204 <tr>
3205 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
3206 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
3207 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
3208 <td>2 min 33%</td>
3209 </tr>
3210
3211 <tr>
3212 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
3213 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
3214 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
3215 <td>4 min 21%</td>
3216 </tr>
3217
3218 </table></p>
3219
3220 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
3221 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
3222 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
3223 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
3224 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
3225 installed.</p>
3226
3227 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
3228 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
3229 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
3230 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
3231 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
3232 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
3233 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
3234 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
3235 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
3236 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
3237 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
3238 for the entire installation.</p>
3239
3240 <p>I've implemented this in the
3241 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
3242 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
3243 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
3244 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
3245 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
3246
3247 <p><blockquote><pre>
3248 #!/bin/sh
3249 set -e
3250 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
3251 info() {
3252     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
3253 }
3254 error() {
3255     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
3256 }
3257 override_install() {
3258     apt-install eatmydata || true
3259     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
3260         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
3261             file=/usr/bin/$bin
3262             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
3263             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
3264                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
3265                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
3266                     > /target$file.edu
3267                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
3268                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
3269                     --rename --quiet --add $file
3270                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
3271             else
3272                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
3273             fi
3274         done
3275     else
3276         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
3277     fi
3278 }
3279
3280 override_install
3281 </pre></blockquote></p>
3282
3283 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
3284 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
3285
3286 <p><blockquote><pre>
3287 #! /bin/sh -e
3288 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
3289 error() {
3290     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
3291 }
3292 remove_install_override() {
3293     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
3294         file=/usr/bin/$bin
3295         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
3296             rm /target$file
3297             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
3298                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
3299             rm /target$file.edu
3300         else
3301             error "Missing divert for $file."
3302         fi
3303     done
3304     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
3305 }
3306
3307 remove_install_override
3308 </pre></blockquote></p>
3309
3310 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
3311 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
3312 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
3313
3314 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
3315 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
3316 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
3317 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
3318 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
3319 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
3320 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
3321 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
3322 everyone.</p>
3323
3324 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
3325 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
3326 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
3327 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
3328
3329 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
3330 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
3331 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
3332 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
3333 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
3334
3335 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
3336 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
3337 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
3338 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
3339 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
3340
3341       </div>
3342       <div class="tags">
3343
3344
3345         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>.
3346
3347
3348       </div>
3349     </div>
3350     <div class="padding"></div>
3351
3352     <div class="entry">
3353       <div class="title">
3354         <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>
3355       </div>
3356       <div class="date">
3357         10th September 2014
3358       </div>
3359       <div class="body">
3360         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
3361 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
3362 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
3363 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
3364 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
3365 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
3366 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
3367 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
3368 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
3369 those problems are gone now.</p>
3370
3371 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
3372 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
3373 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
3374 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
3375 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
3376
3377 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
3378 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
3379 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
3380
3381 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
3382 line:</p>
3383
3384 <p><blockquote><pre>
3385 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
3386 </pre></blockquote></p>
3387
3388 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
3389 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
3390 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
3391 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
3392
3393 <p><blockquote><pre>
3394 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
3395 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
3396 %
3397 </pre></blockquote></p>
3398
3399 <p>Now if only
3400 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
3401 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
3402 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
3403 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
3404 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
3405 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
3406 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
3407 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
3408 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
3409
3410       </div>
3411       <div class="tags">
3412
3413
3414         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>.
3415
3416
3417       </div>
3418     </div>
3419     <div class="padding"></div>
3420
3421     <div class="entry">
3422       <div class="title">
3423         <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>
3424       </div>
3425       <div class="date">
3426         25th August 2014
3427       </div>
3428       <div class="body">
3429         <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
3430 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
3431 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
3432 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
3433 agreement with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>.  If one
3434 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
3435 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
3436 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
3437 am not sure.
3438 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
3439 then</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
3440 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
3441 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
3442 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
3443 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
3444 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
3445 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
3446 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
3447 licenses are.</p>
3448
3449 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
3450 <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
3451 end user</a>
3452 <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
3453 text</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):</p>
3454
3455 <p><blockquote>
3456 <p>18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
3457 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: </p>
3458
3459 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
3460 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
3461 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
3462 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
3463 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
3464 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
3465 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
3466 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
3467 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
3468 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
3469 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
3470 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
3471 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
3472 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
3473 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
3474 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
3475 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
3476 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.</p>
3477
3478 <p>18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
3479 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:</p>
3480
3481 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
3482 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
3483 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
3484 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
3485 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
3486 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
3487 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
3488 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
3489 </blockquote></p>
3490
3491 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
3492 personal or non-commercial purposes.</p>
3493
3494 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
3495 <a href="http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms</a>:</p>
3496
3497 <p><blockquote>
3498
3499 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
3500 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
3501 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
3502 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
3503 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
3504 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
3505 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
3506 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
3507 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
3508 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
3509 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
3510 http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
3511
3512 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
3513 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
3514 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
3515 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
3516 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
3517 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
3518 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
3519 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
3520 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
3521 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
3522 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
3523 additional details.</p>
3524
3525 </blockquote></p>
3526
3527 <p>Some free software like
3528 <a href="https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</A> and
3529 <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
3530 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
3531 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.</p>
3532
3533       </div>
3534       <div class="tags">
3535
3536
3537         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</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>.
3538
3539
3540       </div>
3541     </div>
3542     <div class="padding"></div>
3543
3544     <div class="entry">
3545       <div class="title">
3546         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
3547       </div>
3548       <div class="date">
3549         31st July 2014
3550       </div>
3551       <div class="body">
3552         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
3553 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3554 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
3555 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
3556 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
3557 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
3558
3559 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3560
3561 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
3562 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
3563 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
3564 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
3565 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
3566 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
3567 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
3568 works with Windows . :-(</p>
3569
3570 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
3571 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
3572 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
3573 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
3574 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
3575 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
3576
3577 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3578 project?</strong></p>
3579
3580 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
3581 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
3582 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
3583 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
3584 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
3585 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
3586 with this job.</p>
3587
3588 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3589 Edu?</strong></p>
3590
3591 <p>The independence.</p>
3592
3593 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
3594 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
3595 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
3596
3597 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
3598 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
3599 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
3600 working reliable. </p>
3601
3602 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
3603 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
3604 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
3605 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
3606 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
3607 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
3608 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
3609 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
3610
3611 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3612 Edu?</strong></p>
3613
3614 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
3615 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
3616 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
3617
3618 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3619
3620 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
3621 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
3622
3623 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3624 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3625
3626 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
3627 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
3628 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
3629 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
3630 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
3631 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
3632 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
3633
3634       </div>
3635       <div class="tags">
3636
3637
3638         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>.
3639
3640
3641       </div>
3642     </div>
3643     <div class="padding"></div>
3644
3645     <div class="entry">
3646       <div class="title">
3647         <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>
3648       </div>
3649       <div class="date">
3650         23rd July 2014
3651       </div>
3652       <div class="body">
3653         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
3654 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
3655 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
3656 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
3657 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
3658 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
3659 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
3660 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
3661 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
3662 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
3663 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
3664 the translation show this very well:</p>
3665
3666 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
3667
3668 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
3669 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
3670 project pages and the
3671 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
3672 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
3673 and HTML version available in the
3674 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
3675 directory</a>.</p>
3676
3677 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
3678 you find any.</p>
3679
3680       </div>
3681       <div class="tags">
3682
3683
3684         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>.
3685
3686
3687       </div>
3688     </div>
3689     <div class="padding"></div>
3690
3691     <div class="entry">
3692       <div class="title">
3693         <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>
3694       </div>
3695       <div class="date">
3696         17th June 2014
3697       </div>
3698       <div class="body">
3699         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3700 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
3701 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
3702 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
3703 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
3704
3705 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
3706 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
3707 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
3708 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
3709 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
3710 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
3711 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
3712 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
3713 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
3714 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
3715 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
3716 goals.</p>
3717
3718 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
3719 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
3720 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
3721 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
3722 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
3723 chapters together into one large web page (aka
3724 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
3725 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
3726 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
3727 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
3728 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
3729 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
3730 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
3731 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
3732 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
3733 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
3734 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
3735 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
3736 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
3737 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
3738 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
3739 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
3740 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
3741 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
3742
3743 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
3744 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
3745 track the English original.  For this we use the
3746 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
3747 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
3748 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
3749 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
3750 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
3751 files), which the translations update with the native language
3752 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
3753 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
3754 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
3755 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
3756 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
3757 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
3758 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
3759 of the documentation.</p>
3760
3761 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
3762 recommend using
3763 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
3764 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
3765 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
3766 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
3767 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
3768 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
3769 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
3770 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
3771
3772 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
3773 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
3774 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
3775 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
3776 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
3777 translated images by storing translated versions in
3778 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
3779 package maintainers know more.</p>
3780
3781 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
3782 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
3783 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
3784 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
3785 PDF version</a> or the
3786 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
3787 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
3788 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
3789
3790 <p>To learn more, check out
3791 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
3792 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
3793 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
3794 manual on the wiki</a> and
3795 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
3796 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
3797
3798       </div>
3799       <div class="tags">
3800
3801
3802         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>.
3803
3804
3805       </div>
3806     </div>
3807     <div class="padding"></div>
3808
3809     <div class="entry">
3810       <div class="title">
3811         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
3812       </div>
3813       <div class="date">
3814         29th May 2014
3815       </div>
3816       <div class="body">
3817         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
3818 in my car, connected to
3819 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
3820 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
3821 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
3822 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
3823 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
3824 such car computer.</p>
3825
3826 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
3827
3828 <ul>
3829
3830  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
3831
3832  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
3833    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
3834    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
3835    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
3836    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
3837
3838  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
3839    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
3840    route.</li>
3841
3842  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
3843
3844  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
3845    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
3846    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
3847    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
3848    connection do not work.</li>
3849
3850  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
3851    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
3852
3853  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
3854    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
3855
3856  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
3857    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
3858
3859 </ul>
3860
3861 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
3862 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
3863
3864       </div>
3865       <div class="tags">
3866
3867
3868         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3869
3870
3871       </div>
3872     </div>
3873     <div class="padding"></div>
3874
3875     <div class="entry">
3876       <div class="title">
3877         <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>
3878       </div>
3879       <div class="date">
3880         29th April 2014
3881       </div>
3882       <div class="body">
3883         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
3884 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
3885 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
3886 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
3887 newer AVM2 format - see
3888 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
3889 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
3890 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
3891 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
3892 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
3893 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
3894 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
3895 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
3896 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
3897 sites do not work yet.</p>
3898
3899 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
3900 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
3901 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
3902 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
3903 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
3904 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
3905 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
3906 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
3907 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
3908 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
3909 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
3910
3911 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
3912 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
3913 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
3914 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
3915 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
3916 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
3917 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
3918
3919 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
3920 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
3921 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
3922 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
3923 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
3924
3925       </div>
3926       <div class="tags">
3927
3928
3929         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>.
3930
3931
3932       </div>
3933     </div>
3934     <div class="padding"></div>
3935
3936     <div class="entry">
3937       <div class="title">
3938         <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>
3939       </div>
3940       <div class="date">
3941         23rd April 2014
3942       </div>
3943       <div class="body">
3944         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
3945 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
3946 So I implemented one, using
3947 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
3948 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
3949 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
3950 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
3951 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
3952 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
3953
3954 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
3955 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
3956 packages to install.  The first part is in
3957 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
3958 this:</p>
3959
3960 <p><blockquote><pre>
3961 Task: isenkram
3962 Section: hardware
3963 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
3964  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
3965  proposed.
3966 Test-new-install: mark show
3967 Relevance: 8
3968 Packages: for-current-hardware
3969 </pre></blockquote></p>
3970
3971 <p>The second part is in
3972 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
3973 this:</p>
3974
3975 <p><blockquote><pre>
3976 #!/bin/sh
3977 #
3978 (
3979     isenkram-lookup
3980     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
3981 ) | sort -u
3982 </pre></blockquote></p>
3983
3984 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
3985 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
3986 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
3987 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
3988 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
3989 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
3990
3991 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
3992 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
3993 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
3994 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
3995 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
3996 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
3997 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
3998 the python-apt code (bug
3999 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
4000 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
4001 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
4002 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
4003 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
4004 unstable today.</p>
4005
4006 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
4007 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
4008 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
4009 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
4010 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
4011 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
4012 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
4013 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
4014 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
4015
4016 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
4017 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
4018 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
4019 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
4020 package.  See also
4021 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
4022 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
4023 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
4024 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
4025
4026       </div>
4027       <div class="tags">
4028
4029
4030         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>.
4031
4032
4033       </div>
4034     </div>
4035     <div class="padding"></div>
4036
4037     <div class="entry">
4038       <div class="title">
4039         <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>
4040       </div>
4041       <div class="date">
4042         15th April 2014
4043       </div>
4044       <div class="body">
4045         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
4046 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
4047 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
4048 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
4049 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
4050 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
4051
4052 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
4053 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
4054 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
4055 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
4056 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
4057 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
4058 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
4059
4060 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
4061 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
4062 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
4063 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
4064 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
4065 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
4066 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
4067 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
4068 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
4069 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
4070 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
4071 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
4072
4073 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
4074 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
4075 become root:</p>
4076
4077 <p><pre>
4078 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
4079   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
4080   u-boot-tools
4081 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
4082   freedom-maker
4083 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
4084 </pre></p>
4085
4086 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
4087 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
4088 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
4089 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
4090 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
4091 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
4092 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
4093 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
4094
4095 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
4096 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
4097 the preseed values:</p>
4098
4099 <p><pre>
4100 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
4101 </pre></p>
4102
4103 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
4104 it still work.</p>
4105
4106 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
4107 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
4108 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
4109 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
4110 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
4111 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
4112 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
4113
4114 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
4115 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
4116 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
4117 irc.debian.org)</a> and
4118 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4119 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
4120
4121       </div>
4122       <div class="tags">
4123
4124
4125         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>.
4126
4127
4128       </div>
4129     </div>
4130     <div class="padding"></div>
4131
4132     <div class="entry">
4133       <div class="title">
4134         <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>
4135       </div>
4136       <div class="date">
4137          9th April 2014
4138       </div>
4139       <div class="body">
4140         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
4141 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
4142 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
4143 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
4144 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
4145 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
4146 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
4147 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
4148 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
4149 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
4150 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
4151 have looked at a system called
4152 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
4153 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
4154
4155 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
4156 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
4157 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
4158 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
4159 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
4160 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
4161 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
4162 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
4163 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
4164 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
4165 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
4166 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
4167 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
4168
4169 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
4170 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
4171 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
4172 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
4173 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
4174 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
4175 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
4176 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
4177 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
4178 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
4179 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
4180 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
4181 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
4182 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
4183 account.</p>
4184
4185 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
4186 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
4187 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
4188 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
4189 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
4190 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
4191 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
4192
4193 <p><blockquote><pre>
4194 [s3c]
4195 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4196 backend-login: API-login
4197 backend-password: API-password
4198 fs-passphrase: local-password
4199 </pre></blockquote></p>
4200
4201 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
4202 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
4203 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
4204 details and password to create it:</p>
4205
4206 <p><blockquote><pre>
4207 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
4208 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4209   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4210 Enter backend login:
4211 Enter backend password:
4212 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
4213 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
4214 Enter encryption password:
4215 Confirm encryption password:
4216 Generating random encryption key...
4217 Creating metadata tables...
4218 Dumping metadata...
4219 ..objects..
4220 ..blocks..
4221 ..inodes..
4222 ..inode_blocks..
4223 ..symlink_targets..
4224 ..names..
4225 ..contents..
4226 ..ext_attributes..
4227 Compressing and uploading metadata...
4228 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
4229 # </pre></blockquote></p>
4230
4231 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
4232
4233 <p><blockquote><pre>
4234 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4235   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
4236 Using 4 upload threads.
4237 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
4238 Reading metadata...
4239 ..objects..
4240 ..blocks..
4241 ..inodes..
4242 ..inode_blocks..
4243 ..symlink_targets..
4244 ..names..
4245 ..contents..
4246 ..ext_attributes..
4247 Mounting filesystem...
4248 # df -h /s3ql
4249 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
4250 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
4251 #
4252 </pre></blockquote></p>
4253
4254 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
4255 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
4256 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
4257 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
4258 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
4259 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
4260
4261 <p><blockquote><pre>
4262 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
4263 #
4264 </pre></blockquote></p>
4265
4266 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
4267 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
4268 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
4269 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
4270 file system:</p>
4271
4272 <p><blockquote><pre>
4273 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4274 Using cached metadata.
4275 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
4276 Checking DB integrity...
4277 Creating temporary extra indices...
4278 Checking lost+found...
4279 Checking cached objects...
4280 Checking names (refcounts)...
4281 Checking contents (names)...
4282 Checking contents (inodes)...
4283 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
4284 Checking objects (reference counts)...
4285 Checking objects (backend)...
4286 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
4287 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
4288 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
4289 Checking objects (sizes)...
4290 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
4291 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
4292 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
4293 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
4294 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
4295 Checking inodes (sizes)...
4296 Checking extended attributes (names)...
4297 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
4298 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
4299 Checking directory reachability...
4300 Checking unix conventions...
4301 Checking referential integrity...
4302 Dropping temporary indices...
4303 Backing up old metadata...
4304 Dumping metadata...
4305 ..objects..
4306 ..blocks..
4307 ..inodes..
4308 ..inode_blocks..
4309 ..symlink_targets..
4310 ..names..
4311 ..contents..
4312 ..ext_attributes..
4313 Compressing and uploading metadata...
4314 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
4315 #
4316 </pre></blockquote></p>
4317
4318 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
4319 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
4320 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
4321 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
4322 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
4323 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
4324 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
4325 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
4326 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
4327 working set.</p>
4328
4329 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
4330 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
4331 busy:</p>
4332
4333 <p><blockquote><pre>
4334 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4335   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
4336 Using 8 upload threads.
4337 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
4338 #
4339 </pre></blockquote></p>
4340
4341 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
4342 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
4343 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
4344 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
4345 s3qlctrl:
4346
4347 <p><blockquote><pre>
4348 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
4349 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
4350 #
4351 </pre></blockquote></p>
4352
4353 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
4354 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
4355 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
4356 a report:</p>
4357
4358 <p><blockquote><pre>
4359 # s3qlstat /s3ql
4360 Directory entries:    9141
4361 Inodes:               9143
4362 Data blocks:          8851
4363 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
4364 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
4365 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
4366 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
4367 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
4368 #
4369 </pre></blockquote></p>
4370
4371 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
4372 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
4373 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
4374 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
4375 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
4376 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
4377 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
4378 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
4379 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
4380 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
4381 best.</p>
4382
4383 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
4384 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
4385 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
4386 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
4387 poster is titled
4388 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
4389 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
4390 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
4391 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
4392 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
4393
4394 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
4395 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
4396 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
4397 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
4398 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
4399 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
4400 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
4401 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
4402
4403 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
4404 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
4405 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
4406 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
4407 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
4408 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
4409 only read from it.</p>
4410
4411 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4412 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4413 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4414
4415       </div>
4416       <div class="tags">
4417
4418
4419         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>.
4420
4421
4422       </div>
4423     </div>
4424     <div class="padding"></div>
4425
4426     <div class="entry">
4427       <div class="title">
4428         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
4429       </div>
4430       <div class="date">
4431          1st April 2014
4432       </div>
4433       <div class="body">
4434         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
4435 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
4436 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
4437 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
4438 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
4439 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
4440 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
4441 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
4442 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
4443 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
4444 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
4445 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
4446 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
4447
4448 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
4449 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
4450 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
4451 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
4452 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
4453 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
4454 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
4455 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
4456 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
4457 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
4458 Linux.</p>
4459
4460 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
4461 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
4462 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
4463 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
4464 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
4465 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
4466 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
4467 Windows before metro).</p>
4468
4469 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
4470 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
4471 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
4472 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
4473 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
4474 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
4475 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
4476 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
4477 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
4478 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
4479 old Windows binaries, check it out by
4480 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
4481 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
4482 image.</p>
4483
4484       </div>
4485       <div class="tags">
4486
4487
4488         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>.
4489
4490
4491       </div>
4492     </div>
4493     <div class="padding"></div>
4494
4495     <div class="entry">
4496       <div class="title">
4497         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
4498       </div>
4499       <div class="date">
4500         30th March 2014
4501       </div>
4502       <div class="body">
4503         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
4504 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
4505 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
4506 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
4507 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
4508
4509 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4510
4511 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
4512 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
4513 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
4514 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
4515 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
4516
4517 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
4518 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
4519 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
4520
4521 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
4522 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
4523 hunger.</p>
4524
4525 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4526 project?</strong></p>
4527
4528 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
4529 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
4530 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
4531 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
4532 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
4533 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
4534 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
4535 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
4536 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
4537 running.  I just loved it.</p>
4538
4539 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4540 Edu?</strong></p>
4541
4542 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
4543 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
4544 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
4545 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
4546 be made of steel.</p>
4547
4548 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4549 Edu?</strong></p>
4550
4551 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
4552
4553 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
4554 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
4555 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
4556 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
4557 or dropped.</p>
4558
4559 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
4560 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
4561 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
4562 discourage many people too.</p>
4563
4564 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4565
4566 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
4567 Virtualbox.</p>
4568
4569
4570 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4571 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4572
4573 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
4574 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
4575 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
4576 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
4577 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
4578 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
4579 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
4580 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
4581 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
4582
4583       </div>
4584       <div class="tags">
4585
4586
4587         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>.
4588
4589
4590       </div>
4591     </div>
4592     <div class="padding"></div>
4593
4594     <div class="entry">
4595       <div class="title">
4596         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
4597       </div>
4598       <div class="date">
4599         25th March 2014
4600       </div>
4601       <div class="body">
4602         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
4603 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
4604 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
4605 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
4606 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
4607 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
4608 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
4609 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
4610 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
4611
4612 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
4613 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
4614 looked a given way.  Such
4615 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
4616 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
4617 called a
4618 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
4619 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
4620 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
4621 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
4622 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
4623 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
4624 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
4625 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
4626 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
4627 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
4628 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
4629 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
4630 There are several commercial services around providing such
4631 timestamping.  A quick search for
4632 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
4633 service</a>" pointed me to at least
4634 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
4635 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
4636 Vadis</a>,
4637 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
4638 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
4639 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
4640 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
4641
4642 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
4643 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
4644 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
4645 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
4646 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
4647 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
4648 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
4649 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
4650 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
4651 Greifswald.</p>
4652
4653 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
4654 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
4655 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
4656 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
4657 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
4658
4659 <p><blockquote><pre>
4660 #!/bin/sh
4661 set -e
4662 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
4663 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
4664 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
4665 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
4666 cafile=chain.txt
4667 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
4668     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
4669 fi
4670 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
4671     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
4672 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
4673 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
4674 base64 < "$resfile"
4675 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
4676 </pre></blockquote></p>
4677
4678 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
4679 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
4680 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
4681 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
4682 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
4683 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
4684 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
4685 changed.</p>
4686
4687 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
4688 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
4689 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
4690 to set up?</p>
4691
4692       </div>
4693       <div class="tags">
4694
4695
4696         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>.
4697
4698
4699       </div>
4700     </div>
4701     <div class="padding"></div>
4702
4703     <div class="entry">
4704       <div class="title">
4705         <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>
4706       </div>
4707       <div class="date">
4708         21st March 2014
4709       </div>
4710       <div class="body">
4711         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
4712 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
4713 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
4714 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
4715 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
4716 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
4717 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
4718
4719 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
4720 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
4721 tried using
4722 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
4723 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
4724 and program
4725 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
4726 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
4727 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
4728 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
4729 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
4730 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
4731 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
4732 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
4733 this method.</p>
4734
4735 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
4736 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
4737 problem is
4738 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
4739 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
4740 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
4741 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
4742 DVD structures, as the python library
4743 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
4744 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
4745 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
4746 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
4747 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
4748 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
4749
4750 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
4751 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
4752
4753       </div>
4754       <div class="tags">
4755
4756
4757         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>.
4758
4759
4760       </div>
4761     </div>
4762     <div class="padding"></div>
4763
4764     <div class="entry">
4765       <div class="title">
4766         <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>
4767       </div>
4768       <div class="date">
4769         14th March 2014
4770       </div>
4771       <div class="body">
4772         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
4773 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
4774 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
4775 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
4776 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
4777 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
4778 release (0.2).</p>
4779
4780 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
4781 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
4782 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
4783 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
4784 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
4785 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
4786 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
4787 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
4788 and build using
4789 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
4790 with a user with sudo access to become root:
4791
4792 <pre>
4793 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
4794   freedom-maker
4795 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
4796   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
4797   u-boot-tools
4798 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
4799 </pre>
4800
4801 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
4802 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
4803 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
4804 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
4805 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
4806 kpartx call.</p>
4807
4808 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
4809 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
4810 the preseed values:</p>
4811
4812 <pre>
4813 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
4814 </pre>
4815
4816 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
4817 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
4818 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
4819 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
4820 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
4821 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
4822
4823 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
4824 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
4825 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
4826 irc.debian.org)</a> and
4827 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4828 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
4829
4830       </div>
4831       <div class="tags">
4832
4833
4834         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>.
4835
4836
4837       </div>
4838     </div>
4839     <div class="padding"></div>
4840
4841     <div class="entry">
4842       <div class="title">
4843         <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>
4844       </div>
4845       <div class="date">
4846         12th March 2014
4847       </div>
4848       <div class="body">
4849         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
4850 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
4851 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
4852 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
4853 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
4854 document this better when one of the customers of
4855 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
4856 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
4857 get this working are the following:</p>
4858
4859 <p><ol>
4860
4861 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
4862 example host here.</li>
4863
4864 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
4865 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
4866
4867 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
4868 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
4869
4870 </ol></p>
4871
4872 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
4873 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
4874 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
4875 started).</p>
4876
4877 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
4878 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
4879
4880 <p><blockquote><pre>
4881 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
4882 Export list for nas-server:
4883 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
4884 root@tjener:~#
4885 </pre></blockquote></p>
4886
4887 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
4888 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
4889 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
4890 NFS access.</p>
4891
4892 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
4893 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
4894 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
4895
4896 <p><blockquote><pre>
4897 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4898 </pre></blockquote></p>
4899
4900 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
4901 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
4902 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
4903 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
4904
4905 <p><blockquote><pre>
4906 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4907 objectClass: automount
4908 cn: nas-server
4909 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4910
4911 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4912 objectClass: top
4913 objectClass: automountMap
4914 ou: auto.nas-server
4915
4916 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4917 objectClass: automount
4918 cn: /
4919 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
4920 </pre></blockquote></p>
4921
4922 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
4923 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
4924 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
4925
4926 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
4927 the storage server directly by just visiting the
4928 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
4929 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
4930
4931       </div>
4932       <div class="tags">
4933
4934
4935         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>.
4936
4937
4938       </div>
4939     </div>
4940     <div class="padding"></div>
4941
4942     <div class="entry">
4943       <div class="title">
4944         <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>
4945       </div>
4946       <div class="date">
4947         22nd February 2014
4948       </div>
4949       <div class="body">
4950         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
4951 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
4952 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
4953 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
4954 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
4955 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
4956 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
4957 proper home since then.</p>
4958
4959 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
4960 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
4961 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
4962 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
4963 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
4964
4965 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
4966 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
4967 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
4968 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
4969 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
4970 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
4971 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
4972 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
4973 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
4974
4975       </div>
4976       <div class="tags">
4977
4978
4979         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>.
4980
4981
4982       </div>
4983     </div>
4984     <div class="padding"></div>
4985
4986     <div class="entry">
4987       <div class="title">
4988         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
4989       </div>
4990       <div class="date">
4991          3rd February 2014
4992       </div>
4993       <div class="body">
4994         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
4995 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
4996 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
4997 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
4998 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
4999 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
5000 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
5001 <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>,
5002 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
5003
5004 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
5005 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
5006 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
5007 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
5008 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
5009 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
5010
5011 <p><blockquote><pre>
5012 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
5013 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
5014 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
5015 dhclient /dev/eth0
5016 </pre></blockquote></p>
5017
5018 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
5019 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
5020 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
5021
5022 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
5023 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
5024 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
5025 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
5026 side.</p>
5027
5028 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
5029 stuff:</p>
5030
5031 <p><blockquote><pre>
5032 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
5033 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
5034 EOF
5035 apt-get update
5036 apt-get dist-upgrade
5037 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
5038     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
5039 update-alternatives --config runsystem
5040 </pre></blockquote></p>
5041
5042 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
5043 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
5044 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
5045 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
5046 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
5047 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
5048 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
5049 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
5050 ssh instead.
5051
5052 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
5053 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
5054 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
5055 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
5056 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
5057 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
5058
5059 <p><blockquote><pre>
5060 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
5061 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
5062 EOF
5063 </pre></blockquote></p>
5064
5065 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
5066 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
5067 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
5068 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
5069
5070 <p><blockquote><pre>
5071 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
5072 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
5073 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
5074 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
5075 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
5076 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
5077 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
5078 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
5079 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
5080 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
5081 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
5082 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
5083 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
5084 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
5085 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
5086 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
5087 #
5088 </pre></blockquote></p>
5089
5090 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
5091 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
5092 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
5093 command line stuff.<p>
5094
5095       </div>
5096       <div class="tags">
5097
5098
5099         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>.
5100
5101
5102       </div>
5103     </div>
5104     <div class="padding"></div>
5105
5106     <div class="entry">
5107       <div class="title">
5108         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
5109       </div>
5110       <div class="date">
5111         29th January 2014
5112       </div>
5113       <div class="body">
5114         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
5115 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
5116 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
5117 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
5118 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
5119 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
5120 investigated in
5121 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
5122 from December 2013, in the article
5123 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
5124 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
5125 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
5126 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
5127 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
5128 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
5129 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
5130 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
5131
5132 <p><blockquote>
5133 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
5134 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
5135 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
5136 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
5137 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
5138 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
5139 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
5140 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
5141 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
5142 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
5143 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
5144 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
5145
5146 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
5147 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
5148 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
5149 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
5150 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
5151 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
5152 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
5153 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
5154 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
5155 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
5156 </blockquote><p>
5157
5158 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
5159 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
5160 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
5161 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
5162 summarized like this:</p>
5163
5164 <p><blockquote>
5165 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
5166 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
5167 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
5168 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
5169 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
5170 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
5171 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
5172 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
5173 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
5174 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
5175 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
5176 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
5177 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
5178 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
5179 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
5180 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
5181 </blockquote></p>
5182
5183 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
5184 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
5185 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
5186 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
5187
5188 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5189 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5190 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5191
5192       </div>
5193       <div class="tags">
5194
5195
5196         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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
5197
5198
5199       </div>
5200     </div>
5201     <div class="padding"></div>
5202
5203     <div class="entry">
5204       <div class="title">
5205         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
5206       </div>
5207       <div class="date">
5208         14th January 2014
5209       </div>
5210       <div class="body">
5211         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
5212 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
5213 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
5214 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
5215 the source.  The company behind it provide
5216 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
5217 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
5218 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
5219 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
5220 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
5221 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
5222 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
5223 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
5224 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
5225 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
5226 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
5227 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
5228 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
5229 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
5230 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
5231 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
5232 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
5233 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
5234 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
5235
5236 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
5237
5238 <ul>
5239
5240   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
5241   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
5242   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
5243
5244 </ul>
5245
5246 <p>You can
5247 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
5248 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
5249 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
5250 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
5251 include a test suite check.</p>
5252
5253       </div>
5254       <div class="tags">
5255
5256
5257         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>.
5258
5259
5260       </div>
5261     </div>
5262     <div class="padding"></div>
5263
5264     <div class="entry">
5265       <div class="title">
5266         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
5267       </div>
5268       <div class="date">
5269         25th December 2013
5270       </div>
5271       <div class="body">
5272         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5273 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
5274 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
5275 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
5276 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
5277 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
5278 George</a>.</p>
5279
5280 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
5281
5282 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5283
5284 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
5285 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
5286 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
5287 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
5288 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
5289 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
5290
5291 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
5292 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
5293 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
5294 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
5295 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
5296 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
5297 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
5298 to help building another school's informational education concept from
5299 scratch.</p>
5300
5301 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
5302 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
5303 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
5304
5305 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
5306 and cycling.</p>
5307
5308 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5309 project?</strong></p>
5310
5311 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
5312 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
5313 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
5314 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
5315 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
5316 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
5317
5318 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
5319 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
5320 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
5321 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
5322 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
5323 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
5324 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
5325 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
5326 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
5327
5328 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
5329 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
5330 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
5331 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
5332
5333 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5334 Edu?</strong></p>
5335
5336 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
5337 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
5338 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
5339 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
5340 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
5341 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
5342 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
5343 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
5344 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
5345 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
5346 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
5347 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
5348 that it rocks!</p>
5349
5350 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
5351 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
5352 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
5353 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
5354 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
5355 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
5356 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
5357
5358 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5359 Edu?</strong></p>
5360
5361 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
5362 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
5363 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
5364 can list a few points about that:</p>
5365
5366 <ul>
5367
5368  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
5369  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
5370  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
5371
5372 </ul>
5373
5374 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
5375
5376 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5377
5378 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
5379 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
5380 year.</p>
5381
5382 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
5383 run text tools. I use
5384 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
5385 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
5386 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
5387 based full-featured student management software with the two),
5388 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
5389 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
5390 coloured world called the WWW, I use
5391 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
5392 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
5393 e-mail.</p>
5394
5395 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
5396 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
5397 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
5398 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
5399 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
5400 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
5401 Facebook now ;).</p>
5402
5403 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5404 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5405
5406 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
5407 side is what I have experienced.</p>
5408
5409 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
5410 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
5411 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
5412 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
5413 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
5414 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
5415 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
5416 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
5417 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
5418 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
5419 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
5420 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
5421 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
5422 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
5423 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
5424 plain criminal.</p>
5425
5426 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
5427 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
5428 founded an association named
5429 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
5430 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
5431 area of free and open source software, for example the
5432 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
5433 Teckids and are the youth programme of
5434 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
5435 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
5436 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
5437 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
5438 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
5439 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
5440
5441 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
5442 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
5443 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
5444 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
5445 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
5446 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
5447 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
5448 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
5449 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
5450 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
5451 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
5452 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
5453
5454 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
5455 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
5456 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
5457 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
5458
5459 <!--
5460
5461 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
5462
5463 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
5464 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
5465
5466  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
5467    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
5468    of the decision makers above;
5469  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
5470    knowledge about free software
5471
5472 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
5473
5474 -->
5475
5476       </div>
5477       <div class="tags">
5478
5479
5480         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>.
5481
5482
5483       </div>
5484     </div>
5485     <div class="padding"></div>
5486
5487     <div class="entry">
5488       <div class="title">
5489         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
5490       </div>
5491       <div class="date">
5492          6th December 2013
5493       </div>
5494       <div class="body">
5495         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
5496 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5497 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
5498 had a new school administrator show up on
5499 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
5500 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
5501 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
5502 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
5503 Germany a few years ago.</p>
5504
5505 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5506
5507 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
5508 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
5509 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
5510 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
5511
5512 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
5513 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
5514 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
5515 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
5516 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
5517 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
5518 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
5519 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
5520 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
5521
5522 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5523 project?</strong></p>
5524
5525 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
5526 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
5527 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
5528 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
5529
5530 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5531 Edu?</strong></p>
5532
5533 <ul>
5534   <li>Quick installation,</li>
5535   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
5536   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
5537   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
5538     single company,</li>
5539   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
5540     experience and problem solutions.</li>
5541 </ul>
5542
5543 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5544 Edu?</strong></p>
5545
5546 <ul>
5547   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
5548   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
5549   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
5550   working again reliably.
5551
5552   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
5553   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
5554   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
5555   as their base.
5556
5557   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
5558   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
5559   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
5560   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
5561   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
5562   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
5563
5564   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
5565   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
5566   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
5567   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
5568   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
5569   schemes.</li>
5570
5571   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
5572   compared to Debian.</li>
5573
5574 </ul>
5575
5576 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
5577 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
5578 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
5579 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
5580
5581 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5582
5583 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
5584 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
5585 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
5586 programming languages for teaching.</p>
5587
5588 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5589 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5590
5591 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
5592
5593 <ul>
5594
5595   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
5596     teaching and learning.</li>
5597
5598   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
5599     home, and at their working place without running into license or
5600     conversion problems.</li>
5601
5602   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
5603     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
5604     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
5605     science, not products.</li>
5606
5607   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
5608     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
5609
5610 </ul>
5611
5612       </div>
5613       <div class="tags">
5614
5615
5616         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>.
5617
5618
5619       </div>
5620     </div>
5621     <div class="padding"></div>
5622
5623     <div class="entry">
5624       <div class="title">
5625         <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>
5626       </div>
5627       <div class="date">
5628         30th November 2013
5629       </div>
5630       <div class="body">
5631         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
5632 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
5633 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
5634 experiment with interesting network technology, the
5635 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
5636 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
5637 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
5638 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
5639 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
5640 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
5641 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
5642 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
5643 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
5644 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
5645 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
5646 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
5647 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
5648 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
5649 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
5650 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
5651
5652       </div>
5653       <div class="tags">
5654
5655
5656         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>.
5657
5658
5659       </div>
5660     </div>
5661     <div class="padding"></div>
5662
5663     <div class="entry">
5664       <div class="title">
5665         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
5666       </div>
5667       <div class="date">
5668         24th November 2013
5669       </div>
5670       <div class="body">
5671         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
5672 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
5673 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
5674 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
5675 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
5676 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
5677 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
5678 is working on.  I checked the
5679 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
5680 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
5681 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
5682 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
5683 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
5684 These are the release notes:</p>
5685
5686 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
5687
5688 <ul>
5689
5690   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
5691    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
5692    up.</li>
5693
5694   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
5695
5696   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
5697    Matthias Klose.</li>
5698
5699   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
5700    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
5701
5702   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
5703    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
5704    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
5705
5706 </ul>
5707
5708 <p>You can
5709 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
5710 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
5711 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
5712 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
5713 include a testsuite check.</p>
5714
5715       </div>
5716       <div class="tags">
5717
5718
5719         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>.
5720
5721
5722       </div>
5723     </div>
5724     <div class="padding"></div>
5725
5726     <div class="entry">
5727       <div class="title">
5728         <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>
5729       </div>
5730       <div class="date">
5731         21st November 2013
5732       </div>
5733       <div class="body">
5734         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
5735 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
5736 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
5737 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
5738 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
5739 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
5740 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
5741 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
5742 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
5743 TED talk
5744 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
5745 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
5746 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
5747
5748 <blockquote>
5749
5750 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
5751 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
5752 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
5753 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
5754 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
5755 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
5756 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
5757 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
5758 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
5759 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
5760 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
5761
5762 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
5763 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
5764 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
5765
5766 </blockquote>
5767
5768 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
5769 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
5770 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
5771 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
5772 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
5773 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
5774 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
5775 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
5776 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
5777
5778       </div>
5779       <div class="tags">
5780
5781
5782         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>.
5783
5784
5785       </div>
5786     </div>
5787     <div class="padding"></div>
5788
5789     <div class="entry">
5790       <div class="title">
5791         <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>
5792       </div>
5793       <div class="date">
5794         13th November 2013
5795       </div>
5796       <div class="body">
5797         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
5798 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
5799 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
5800 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
5801 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
5802 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
5803 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
5804 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
5805 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
5806 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
5807 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
5808 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
5809 right away. :)</p>
5810
5811       </div>
5812       <div class="tags">
5813
5814
5815         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>.
5816
5817
5818       </div>
5819     </div>
5820     <div class="padding"></div>
5821
5822     <div class="entry">
5823       <div class="title">
5824         <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>
5825       </div>
5826       <div class="date">
5827         10th November 2013
5828       </div>
5829       <div class="body">
5830         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
5831 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
5832 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
5833 MR3040 as a mesh node using
5834 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
5835
5836 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
5837 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
5838 and downloaded
5839 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
5840 recommended firmware image</a>
5841 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
5842 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
5843 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
5844 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
5845 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
5846
5847 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
5848 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
5849 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
5850 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
5851 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
5852 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
5853 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
5854 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
5855 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
5856 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
5857 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
5858 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
5859 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
5860
5861 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
5862 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
5863 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
5864 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
5865 them:</p>
5866
5867 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
5868
5869 <pre>
5870
5871 config interface 'loopback'
5872         option ifname 'lo'
5873         option proto 'static'
5874         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
5875         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
5876
5877 config globals 'globals'
5878         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
5879
5880 config interface 'lan'
5881         option ifname 'eth0'
5882         option type 'bridge'
5883         option proto 'dhcp'
5884         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
5885         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
5886         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
5887         option ip6assign '60'
5888
5889 config interface 'mesh'
5890         option ifname 'adhoc0'
5891         option mtu '1528'
5892         option proto 'batadv'
5893         option mesh 'bat0'
5894 </pre>
5895
5896 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
5897 <pre>
5898
5899 config wifi-device 'radio0'
5900         option type 'mac80211'
5901         option channel '11'
5902         option hwmode '11ng'
5903         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
5904         option htmode 'HT20'
5905         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
5906         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
5907         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
5908         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
5909         option disabled '0'
5910
5911 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
5912         option device 'radio0'
5913         option ifname 'adhoc0'
5914         option network 'mesh'
5915         option encryption 'none'
5916         option mode 'adhoc'
5917         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
5918         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
5919 </pre>
5920 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
5921 <pre>
5922
5923 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
5924         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
5925         option 'aggregated_ogms'
5926         option 'ap_isolation'
5927         option 'bonding'
5928         option 'fragmentation'
5929         option 'gw_bandwidth'
5930         option 'gw_mode'
5931         option 'gw_sel_class'
5932         option 'log_level'
5933         option 'orig_interval'
5934         option 'vis_mode'
5935         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
5936         option 'distributed_arp_table'
5937         option 'network_coding'
5938         option 'hop_penalty'
5939
5940 # yet another batX instance
5941 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
5942 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
5943 </pre>
5944
5945 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
5946 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
5947 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
5948
5949       </div>
5950       <div class="tags">
5951
5952
5953         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>.
5954
5955
5956       </div>
5957     </div>
5958     <div class="padding"></div>
5959
5960     <div class="entry">
5961       <div class="title">
5962         <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>
5963       </div>
5964       <div class="date">
5965          2nd November 2013
5966       </div>
5967       <div class="body">
5968         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
5969 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
5970 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
5971 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
5972 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
5973
5974 <p><pre>
5975 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
5976 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
5977 # Provides:          rsyslog
5978 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
5979 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
5980 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
5981 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
5982 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
5983 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
5984 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
5985 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
5986 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
5987 ### END INIT INFO
5988 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
5989 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
5990 </pre></p>
5991
5992 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
5993 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
5994 info/comments.</p>
5995
5996 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
5997 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
5998
5999 <p><pre>
6000 #!/bin/sh
6001
6002 # Define LSB log_* functions.
6003 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
6004 # and status_of_proc is working.
6005 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
6006
6007 #
6008 # Function that starts the daemon/service
6009
6010 #
6011 do_start()
6012 {
6013         # Return
6014         #   0 if daemon has been started
6015         #   1 if daemon was already running
6016         #   2 if daemon could not be started
6017         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
6018                 || return 1
6019         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
6020                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
6021                 || return 2
6022         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
6023         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
6024         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
6025 }
6026
6027 #
6028 # Function that stops the daemon/service
6029 #
6030 do_stop()
6031 {
6032         # Return
6033         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
6034         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
6035         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
6036         #   other if a failure occurred
6037         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
6038         RETVAL="$?"
6039         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
6040         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
6041         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
6042         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
6043         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
6044         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
6045         # sleep for some time.
6046         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
6047         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
6048         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
6049         rm -f $PIDFILE
6050         return "$RETVAL"
6051 }
6052
6053 #
6054 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
6055 #
6056 do_reload() {
6057         #
6058         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
6059         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
6060         # then implement that here.
6061         #
6062         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
6063         return 0
6064 }
6065
6066 SCRIPTNAME=$1
6067 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
6068 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
6069 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
6070     script="$1"
6071     shift
6072     . $script
6073 else
6074     exit 0
6075 fi
6076
6077 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
6078 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
6079
6080 # Exit if the package is not installed
6081 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
6082
6083 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
6084 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
6085
6086 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
6087 . /lib/init/vars.sh
6088
6089 case "$1" in
6090   start)
6091         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
6092         do_start
6093         case "$?" in
6094                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
6095                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
6096         esac
6097         ;;
6098   stop)
6099         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
6100         do_stop
6101         case "$?" in
6102                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
6103                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
6104         esac
6105         ;;
6106   status)
6107         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
6108         ;;
6109   #reload|force-reload)
6110         #
6111         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
6112         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
6113         #
6114         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
6115         #do_reload
6116         #log_end_msg $?
6117         #;;
6118   restart|force-reload)
6119         #
6120         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
6121         # 'force-reload' alias
6122         #
6123         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
6124         do_stop
6125         case "$?" in
6126           0|1)
6127                 do_start
6128                 case "$?" in
6129                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
6130                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
6131                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
6132                 esac
6133                 ;;
6134           *)
6135                 # Failed to stop
6136                 log_end_msg 1
6137                 ;;
6138         esac
6139         ;;
6140   *)
6141         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
6142         exit 3
6143         ;;
6144 esac
6145
6146 :
6147 </pre></p>
6148
6149 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
6150 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
6151 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
6152 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
6153
6154 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
6155 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
6156 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
6157 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
6158 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
6159
6160       </div>
6161       <div class="tags">
6162
6163
6164         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>.
6165
6166
6167       </div>
6168     </div>
6169     <div class="padding"></div>
6170
6171     <div class="entry">
6172       <div class="title">
6173         <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>
6174       </div>
6175       <div class="date">
6176          1st November 2013
6177       </div>
6178       <div class="body">
6179         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
6180 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
6181 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
6182 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
6183 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
6184 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
6185 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
6186 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
6187 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
6188 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
6189 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
6190 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
6191
6192 <p>The source is now available from
6193 <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>
6194
6195       </div>
6196       <div class="tags">
6197
6198
6199         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>.
6200
6201
6202       </div>
6203     </div>
6204     <div class="padding"></div>
6205
6206     <div class="entry">
6207       <div class="title">
6208         <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>
6209       </div>
6210       <div class="date">
6211         27th October 2013
6212       </div>
6213       <div class="body">
6214         <p>The
6215 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
6216 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
6217 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
6218 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
6219 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
6220 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
6221 of a plan to simplify the build system for
6222 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
6223 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
6224 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
6225 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
6226 Raspberry Pi.</p>
6227
6228 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
6229 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
6230 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
6231 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
6232 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
6233 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
6234 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
6235 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
6236 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
6237 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
6238 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
6239 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
6240 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
6241 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
6242 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
6243 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
6244 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
6245 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
6246 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
6247 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
6248 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
6249 available from
6250 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
6251 upstream project page</a>.</p>
6252
6253 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
6254 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
6255 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
6256 list:</p>
6257
6258 <p><pre>
6259 #!/bin/sh
6260 set -e # Exit on first error
6261 rootdir="$1"
6262 cd "$rootdir"
6263 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
6264 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
6265 EOF
6266 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
6267 # install a kernel somewhere too.
6268 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
6269     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
6270 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
6271 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
6272 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
6273 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
6274 </pre></p>
6275
6276 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
6277 to build the image:</p>
6278
6279 <pre>
6280 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
6281     --variant minbase \
6282     --arch armel \
6283     --distribution jessie \
6284     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
6285     --image test.img \
6286     --size 600M \
6287     --bootsize 64M \
6288     --boottype vfat \
6289     --log-level debug \
6290     --verbose \
6291     --no-kernel \
6292     --no-extlinux \
6293     --root-password raspberry \
6294     --hostname raspberrypi \
6295     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
6296     --customize `pwd`/customize \
6297     --package netbase \
6298     --package git-core \
6299     --package binutils \
6300     --package ca-certificates \
6301     --package wget \
6302     --package kmod
6303 </pre></p>
6304
6305 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
6306 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
6307 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
6308 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
6309 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
6310 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
6311 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
6312
6313 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
6314 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
6315 build dependency list.</p>
6316
6317 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
6318 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
6319 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
6320 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
6321
6322       </div>
6323       <div class="tags">
6324
6325
6326         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>.
6327
6328
6329       </div>
6330     </div>
6331     <div class="padding"></div>
6332
6333     <div class="entry">
6334       <div class="title">
6335         <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>
6336       </div>
6337       <div class="date">
6338         21st October 2013
6339       </div>
6340       <div class="body">
6341         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
6342 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
6343 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
6344 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
6345 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
6346 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
6347 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
6348 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
6349
6350 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
6351 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
6352 instead, I started playing with a
6353 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
6354 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
6355 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
6356 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
6357 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
6358 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
6359 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
6360 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
6361 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
6362 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
6363 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
6364 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
6365 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
6366 every client on the local network.</p>
6367
6368 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
6369 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
6370 and a script
6371 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
6372 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
6373 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
6374 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
6375 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
6376 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
6377 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
6378 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
6379 support.</p>
6380
6381 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
6382 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
6383
6384 <p><pre>
6385 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
6386     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
6387 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
6388 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
6389 %
6390 </pre></p>
6391
6392 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
6393 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
6394 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
6395 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
6396 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
6397 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
6398
6399 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
6400 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
6401 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
6402
6403 <p><table>
6404
6405 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
6406 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
6407 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
6408 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
6409 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
6410 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
6411
6412 </table></p>
6413
6414 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
6415 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
6416 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
6417 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
6418 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
6419 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
6420 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
6421
6422       </div>
6423       <div class="tags">
6424
6425
6426         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>.
6427
6428
6429       </div>
6430     </div>
6431     <div class="padding"></div>
6432
6433     <div class="entry">
6434       <div class="title">
6435         <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>
6436       </div>
6437       <div class="date">
6438         19th October 2013
6439       </div>
6440       <div class="body">
6441         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
6442 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
6443 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
6444 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
6445 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
6446 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
6447 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
6448 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
6449
6450       </div>
6451       <div class="tags">
6452
6453
6454         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>.
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/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>
6464       </div>
6465       <div class="date">
6466         15th October 2013
6467       </div>
6468       <div class="body">
6469         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
6470 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
6471 these. :)</p>
6472
6473 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
6474 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
6475 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
6476 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
6477 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
6478 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
6479 hope you will to. :)</p>
6480
6481 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
6482 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
6483 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
6484 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
6485 donated.  Are you next?</p>
6486
6487 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
6488 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
6489 statement under the heading
6490 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
6491 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
6492 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
6493 too.</p>
6494
6495       </div>
6496       <div class="tags">
6497
6498
6499         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>.
6500
6501
6502       </div>
6503     </div>
6504     <div class="padding"></div>
6505
6506     <div class="entry">
6507       <div class="title">
6508         <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>
6509       </div>
6510       <div class="date">
6511         11th October 2013
6512       </div>
6513       <div class="body">
6514         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
6515 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
6516 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
6517 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
6518 successful examples like
6519 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
6520 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
6521 (see
6522 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
6523 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
6524 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
6525 can be seen from their
6526 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
6527 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
6528 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
6529 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
6530 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
6531
6532 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
6533 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
6534 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
6535 my recent involvement in
6536 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
6537 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
6538 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
6539 when possible, given that most communication between people are
6540 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
6541 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
6542 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
6543 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
6544 important over the years.</p>
6545
6546 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
6547 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
6548 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
6549 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
6550 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
6551 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
6552 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
6553 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
6554 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
6555 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
6556 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
6557 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
6558 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
6559 speakers about this talk (from
6560 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
6561
6562 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
6563
6564 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
6565 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
6566 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
6567 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
6568 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
6569 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
6570 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
6571 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
6572 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
6573 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
6574 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
6575 that project (from
6576 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
6577
6578 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
6579
6580 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
6581 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
6582 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
6583 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
6584 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
6585 based community mesh networks.</p>
6586
6587 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
6588 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
6589 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
6590 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
6591 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
6592 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
6593 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
6594 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
6595 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
6596
6597 <p><table>
6598 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
6599 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
6600 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
6601 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
6602 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
6603 </table></p>
6604
6605 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
6606 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
6607 VillageTelco about
6608 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
6609 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
6610 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
6611 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
6612 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
6613 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
6614
6615 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
6616 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
6617 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
6618 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
6619
6620 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
6621 us on IRC, either channel
6622 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
6623 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
6624 irc.freenode.net.</p>
6625
6626 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
6627 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
6628 and Innovation called
6629 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
6630 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
6631 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
6632 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
6633 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
6634 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
6635 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
6636 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
6637
6638 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
6639 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
6640 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
6641 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
6642 mesh system.</p>
6643
6644       </div>
6645       <div class="tags">
6646
6647
6648         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>.
6649
6650
6651       </div>
6652     </div>
6653     <div class="padding"></div>
6654
6655     <div class="entry">
6656       <div class="title">
6657         <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>
6658       </div>
6659       <div class="date">
6660          8th October 2013
6661       </div>
6662       <div class="body">
6663         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
6664 Salvador had published a
6665 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
6666 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
6667 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
6668 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
6669 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
6670 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
6671 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
6672 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
6673 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
6674 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
6675 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
6676 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
6677 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
6678 computers without hard drives by installing one central
6679 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
6680
6681 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
6682
6683 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
6684
6685 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
6686 me know. :)</p>
6687
6688       </div>
6689       <div class="tags">
6690
6691
6692         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>.
6693
6694
6695       </div>
6696     </div>
6697     <div class="padding"></div>
6698
6699     <div class="entry">
6700       <div class="title">
6701         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
6702       </div>
6703       <div class="date">
6704         29th September 2013
6705       </div>
6706       <div class="body">
6707         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
6708 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
6709 complete announcement text can be found at
6710 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
6711 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
6712
6713 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
6714 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
6715 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
6716 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
6717
6718       </div>
6719       <div class="tags">
6720
6721
6722         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>.
6723
6724
6725       </div>
6726     </div>
6727     <div class="padding"></div>
6728
6729     <div class="entry">
6730       <div class="title">
6731         <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>
6732       </div>
6733       <div class="date">
6734         27th September 2013
6735       </div>
6736       <div class="body">
6737         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
6738 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
6739 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
6740 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
6741
6742 <ul>
6743
6744 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
6745 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
6746
6747 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
6748 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
6749
6750 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
6751 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
6752 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
6753 (Youtube)</li>
6754
6755 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
6756 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
6757
6758 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
6759 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
6760
6761 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
6762 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
6763 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
6764
6765 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
6766 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
6767 (Youtube)</li>
6768
6769 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
6770 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
6771
6772 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
6773 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
6774
6775 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
6776 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
6777 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
6778
6779 </ul>
6780
6781 <p>A larger list is available from
6782 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
6783 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
6784
6785 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
6786 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
6787 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
6788 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
6789 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
6790 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
6791 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
6792 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
6793 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
6794 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
6795 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
6796
6797       </div>
6798       <div class="tags">
6799
6800
6801         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>.
6802
6803
6804       </div>
6805     </div>
6806     <div class="padding"></div>
6807
6808     <div class="entry">
6809       <div class="title">
6810         <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>
6811       </div>
6812       <div class="date">
6813         16th September 2013
6814       </div>
6815       <div class="body">
6816         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6817 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
6818
6819 <blockquote>
6820 <p>Hi,</p>
6821
6822 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
6823 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6824 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
6825
6826 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
6827 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
6828 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
6829 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
6830
6831 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
6832 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
6833
6834 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
6835 compared to beta1:</p>
6836
6837 <ul>
6838
6839 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
6840 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
6841 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
6842 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
6843 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
6844 main server.</li>
6845 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
6846 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
6847 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
6848 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
6849 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
6850
6851 </ul>
6852
6853 <p>Where to get it:</p>
6854
6855 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6856
6857 <ul>
6858 <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>
6859 <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>
6860 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
6861 </ul>
6862
6863 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
6864
6865 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
6866 <ul>
6867 <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>
6868 <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>
6869 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
6870 </ul>
6871
6872 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
6873
6874 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
6875 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
6876 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
6877 as the other isos.</p>
6878
6879 <p>How to report bugs</p>
6880
6881 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
6882 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
6883
6884
6885 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
6886
6887 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
6888 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
6889 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
6890 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
6891 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
6892 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
6893 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
6894 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
6895 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
6896 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
6897 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
6898 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
6899 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6900
6901 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
6902 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
6903 Squeeze release.</p>
6904
6905 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
6906
6907 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
6908 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
6909 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
6910 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
6911 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
6912 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
6913 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
6914 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
6915 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
6916 directory.</p>
6917
6918
6919 <p>cheers,
6920 <br>        Holger</p>
6921 </blockquote>
6922
6923       </div>
6924       <div class="tags">
6925
6926
6927         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>.
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/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
6937       </div>
6938       <div class="date">
6939         10th September 2013
6940       </div>
6941       <div class="body">
6942         <p>I was introduced to the
6943 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
6944 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
6945 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
6946 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
6947 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
6948 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
6949 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
6950 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
6951
6952 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
6953 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
6954 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
6955 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
6956 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
6957
6958 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
6959 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
6960 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
6961 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
6962 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
6963 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
6964 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
6965 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
6966 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
6967 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
6968 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
6969 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
6970 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
6971 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
6972 missing in Debian).</p>
6973
6974 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
6975 scripts
6976 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
6977 and a administrative web interface
6978 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
6979 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
6980 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
6981 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
6982 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
6983 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
6984 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
6985 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
6986 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
6987 this is really working yet, see
6988 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
6989 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
6990 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
6991 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
6992 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
6993 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
6994 with lots of half baked features.</p>
6995
6996 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
6997 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
6998 at.</p>
6999
7000 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
7001
7002 <ol>
7003
7004 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
7005 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
7006 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
7007 to the Debian installer:<p>
7008 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
7009
7010 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
7011 install on.</li>
7012
7013 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
7014 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
7015
7016 </ol>
7017
7018 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
7019
7020 <ol>
7021
7022 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
7023 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
7024 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
7025 <pre>
7026 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
7027 </pre></li>
7028 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
7029 <pre>
7030 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
7031    apt-key add -
7032 apt-get update
7033 apt-get install freedombox-setup
7034 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
7035 </pre></li>
7036 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
7037
7038 </ol>
7039
7040 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
7041 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
7042 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
7043 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
7044 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
7045
7046 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
7047 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
7048 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
7049 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
7050
7051 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
7052 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
7053 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
7054 irc.debian.org and the
7055 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
7056 mailing list</a>.</p>
7057
7058 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
7059 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
7060 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
7061 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
7062 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
7063 default password is 'secret'.</p>
7064
7065       </div>
7066       <div class="tags">
7067
7068
7069         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>.
7070
7071
7072       </div>
7073     </div>
7074     <div class="padding"></div>
7075
7076     <div class="entry">
7077       <div class="title">
7078         <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>
7079       </div>
7080       <div class="date">
7081         22nd August 2013
7082       </div>
7083       <div class="body">
7084         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
7085 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
7086 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
7087
7088 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
7089
7090 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7091 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
7092
7093 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7094
7095 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7096 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7097 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7098 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
7099 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7100 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7101 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7102 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
7103 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
7104 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
7105 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
7106 desktop contains
7107 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
7108 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
7109 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
7110 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
7111
7112 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
7113 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
7114 release.</p>
7115
7116 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
7117 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
7118 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
7119 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
7120 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
7121 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
7122 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
7123 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
7124 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
7125 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
7126 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
7127
7128 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7129
7130 <ul>
7131
7132 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
7133     work also without a attached tty.</li>
7134 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
7135     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
7136     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
7137     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
7138     required).</li>
7139
7140 </ul>
7141
7142 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7143
7144 <ul>
7145
7146 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
7147 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
7148 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
7149 stick ISO image.</li>
7150 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
7151 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
7152 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
7153     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
7154     cope with this.</li>
7155 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
7156 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
7157     empty password hashes.</li>
7158 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
7159     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
7160     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
7161
7162 </ul>
7163
7164 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7165
7166 <ul>
7167
7168 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
7169     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
7170 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
7171     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
7172
7173 </ul>
7174
7175 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7176
7177 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7178
7179 <ul>
7180
7181 <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>
7182
7183 <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>
7184
7185 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
7186
7187 </ul>
7188
7189 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
7190 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
7191
7192 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
7193
7194 <ul>
7195
7196 <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>
7197 <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>
7198 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
7199
7200 </ul>
7201
7202 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
7203 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
7204
7205
7206 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7207
7208 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
7209
7210       </div>
7211       <div class="tags">
7212
7213
7214         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>.
7215
7216
7217       </div>
7218     </div>
7219     <div class="padding"></div>
7220
7221     <div class="entry">
7222       <div class="title">
7223         <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>
7224       </div>
7225       <div class="date">
7226         18th August 2013
7227       </div>
7228       <div class="body">
7229         <p>Earlier, I reported about
7230 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
7231 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
7232 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
7233 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
7234 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
7235 currently on the disk.</p>
7236
7237 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
7238 <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>
7239 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
7240 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
7241 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
7242 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
7243 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
7244 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
7245 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
7246 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
7247 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
7248 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
7249 the broken disks.</p>
7250
7251       </div>
7252       <div class="tags">
7253
7254
7255         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>.
7256
7257
7258       </div>
7259     </div>
7260     <div class="padding"></div>
7261
7262     <div class="entry">
7263       <div class="title">
7264         <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>
7265       </div>
7266       <div class="date">
7267          2nd August 2013
7268       </div>
7269       <div class="body">
7270         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
7271 have worked on a Norwegian
7272 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
7273 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
7274 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
7275 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
7276 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
7277 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
7278 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
7279 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
7280 progress of the translation:</p>
7281
7282 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
7283
7284 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
7285 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
7286 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
7287 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
7288 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
7289 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
7290 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
7291 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
7292 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
7293 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
7294 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
7295
7296 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
7297 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
7298 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
7299 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
7300 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
7301 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
7302 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
7303 project files currently available from
7304 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7305
7306 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
7307 the updated
7308 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
7309 and
7310 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
7311 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
7312 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
7313 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
7314
7315       </div>
7316       <div class="tags">
7317
7318
7319         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>.
7320
7321
7322       </div>
7323     </div>
7324     <div class="padding"></div>
7325
7326     <div class="entry">
7327       <div class="title">
7328         <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>
7329       </div>
7330       <div class="date">
7331         27th July 2013
7332       </div>
7333       <div class="body">
7334         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
7335 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
7336
7337 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
7338 2013-07-27</strong></p>
7339
7340 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7341 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
7342
7343 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7344
7345 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7346 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7347 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7348 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
7349 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7350 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7351 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7352 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
7353 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
7354 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
7355 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
7356 desktop contains
7357 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
7358 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
7359 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
7360 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
7361
7362 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
7363 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
7364 Squeeze release.</p>
7365
7366 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
7367 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
7368 release.</p>
7369
7370 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7371
7372 <ul>
7373
7374 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
7375    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
7376 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
7377    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
7378    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
7379    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
7380    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
7381 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
7382 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
7383 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
7384    crash bugs.</li>
7385
7386 </ul>
7387
7388 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7389
7390 <ul>
7391
7392 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
7393    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
7394 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
7395    netinst CD.</li>
7396 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
7397    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
7398 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
7399    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
7400    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
7401 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
7402    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
7403    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
7404 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
7405    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
7406    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
7407 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
7408    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
7409 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
7410
7411 </ul>
7412
7413 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7414
7415 <ul>
7416
7417 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
7418 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
7419     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
7420 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
7421
7422 </ul>
7423
7424 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7425
7426 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7427
7428 <ul>
7429
7430 <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>
7431
7432 <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>
7433
7434 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
7435
7436 </ul>
7437
7438 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
7439 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
7440
7441 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
7442
7443 <ul>
7444
7445 <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>
7446 <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>
7447 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
7448
7449 </ul>
7450
7451 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
7452 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
7453
7454
7455 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7456
7457 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
7458
7459       </div>
7460       <div class="tags">
7461
7462
7463         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>.
7464
7465
7466       </div>
7467     </div>
7468     <div class="padding"></div>
7469
7470     <div class="entry">
7471       <div class="title">
7472         <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>
7473       </div>
7474       <div class="date">
7475         17th July 2013
7476       </div>
7477       <div class="body">
7478         <p>Today I switched to
7479 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
7480 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
7481 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
7482 <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
7483 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
7484 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
7485 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
7486 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
7487 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
7488 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
7489 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
7490 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
7491 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
7492 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
7493 station from now on.</p>
7494
7495 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
7496 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
7497 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
7498 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
7499 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
7500 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
7501 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
7502 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
7503 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
7504 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
7505 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
7506 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
7507
7508 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
7509 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
7510 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
7511 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
7512 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
7513 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
7514 parameters are tuned:</p>
7515
7516 <ul>
7517
7518 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
7519     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
7520
7521 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
7522     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
7523     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
7524
7525 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
7526     systems.</li>
7527
7528 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
7529     /etc/fstab.</li>
7530
7531 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
7532
7533 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
7534     cron.daily).</li>
7535
7536 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
7537     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
7538
7539 </ul>
7540
7541 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
7542 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
7543 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
7544 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
7545 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
7546 from getting the data on the disk (see
7547 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
7548 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
7549 right thing to do.</p>
7550
7551 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
7552 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
7553 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
7554
7555 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
7556 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
7557 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
7558 instead of during my work.</p>
7559
7560 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
7561 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
7562
7563 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
7564 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
7565 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
7566
7567 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
7568 there.</p>
7569
7570 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
7571 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
7572 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
7573 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
7574 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
7575 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
7576 back.</p>
7577
7578       </div>
7579       <div class="tags">
7580
7581
7582         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>.
7583
7584
7585       </div>
7586     </div>
7587     <div class="padding"></div>
7588
7589     <div class="entry">
7590       <div class="title">
7591         <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>
7592       </div>
7593       <div class="date">
7594         10th July 2013
7595       </div>
7596       <div class="body">
7597         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
7598 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
7599 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
7600 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
7601 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
7602 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
7603 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
7604 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
7605
7606 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
7607 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
7608 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
7609 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
7610 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
7611 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
7612 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
7613 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
7614 lock up when I download a new
7615 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
7616 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
7617 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
7618
7619 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
7620 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
7621 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
7622 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
7623 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
7624 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
7625
7626 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
7627 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
7628 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
7629 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
7630 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
7631 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
7632
7633 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
7634 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
7635 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
7636 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
7637 exist).</p>
7638
7639       </div>
7640       <div class="tags">
7641
7642
7643         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>.
7644
7645
7646       </div>
7647     </div>
7648     <div class="padding"></div>
7649
7650     <div class="entry">
7651       <div class="title">
7652         <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>
7653       </div>
7654       <div class="date">
7655          9th July 2013
7656       </div>
7657       <div class="body">
7658         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
7659 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
7660 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
7661 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
7662 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7663 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
7664 Bitraf</a>.</p>
7665
7666 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
7667 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
7668 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
7669 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
7670 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
7671
7672       </div>
7673       <div class="tags">
7674
7675
7676         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>.
7677
7678
7679       </div>
7680     </div>
7681     <div class="padding"></div>
7682
7683     <div class="entry">
7684       <div class="title">
7685         <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>
7686       </div>
7687       <div class="date">
7688          5th July 2013
7689       </div>
7690       <div class="body">
7691         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
7692 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
7693 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
7694 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
7695 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
7696 ended up picking a
7697 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
7698 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
7699 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
7700 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
7701 on that below.</p>
7702
7703 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
7704 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
7705 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
7706 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
7707 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
7708 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
7709 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
7710 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
7711 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
7712
7713 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
7714 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
7715 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
7716 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
7717 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
7718 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
7719 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
7720
7721 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
7722 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
7723
7724 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
7725 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
7726 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
7727 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
7728 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
7729 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
7730 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
7731 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
7732 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
7733 kernel developers as
7734 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
7735 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
7736 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
7737 Lenovo forums, both for
7738 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
7739 2012-11-10</a> and for
7740 <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
7741 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
7742 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
7743 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
7744 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
7745 There is even a
7746 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
7747 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
7748 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
7749
7750 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
7751 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
7752 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
7753 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
7754 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
7755 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
7756 fixed. :)</p>
7757
7758       </div>
7759       <div class="tags">
7760
7761
7762         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>.
7763
7764
7765       </div>
7766     </div>
7767     <div class="padding"></div>
7768
7769     <div class="entry">
7770       <div class="title">
7771         <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>
7772       </div>
7773       <div class="date">
7774          4th July 2013
7775       </div>
7776       <div class="body">
7777         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
7778 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
7779 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
7780 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
7781 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
7782 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
7783 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
7784 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
7785 with an expencive door stop.</p>
7786
7787 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
7788 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
7789 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
7790 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
7791 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
7792 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
7793 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
7794
7795 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
7796 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
7797 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
7798 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
7799 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
7800 new laptop now. :)</p>
7801
7802 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
7803
7804       </div>
7805       <div class="tags">
7806
7807
7808         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>.
7809
7810
7811       </div>
7812     </div>
7813     <div class="padding"></div>
7814
7815     <div class="entry">
7816       <div class="title">
7817         <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>
7818       </div>
7819       <div class="date">
7820          3rd July 2013
7821       </div>
7822       <div class="body">
7823         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
7824 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
7825
7826 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
7827 2013-07-03</strong></p>
7828
7829 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7830 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
7831
7832 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7833
7834 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7835 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7836 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7837 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
7838 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7839 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7840 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7841 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
7842 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
7843 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
7844 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
7845 desktop contains
7846 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
7847 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
7848 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
7849 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
7850
7851 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
7852 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
7853 Squeeze release.</p>
7854
7855 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7856 <ul>
7857   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
7858   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
7859     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
7860     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
7861   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
7862     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
7863     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
7864   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
7865     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
7866     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
7867     too.</li>
7868   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
7869     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
7870 </ul>
7871 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7872 <ul>
7873   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
7874   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
7875   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
7876     up for some language options.</li>
7877   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
7878   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
7879   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
7880     d-i is doing it.</li>
7881   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
7882     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
7883   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
7884     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
7885     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
7886   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
7887     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
7888   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
7889   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
7890     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
7891   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
7892     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
7893 </ul>
7894 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7895 <ul>
7896   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
7897     available yet (698840).</li>
7898   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
7899 </ul>
7900 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7901
7902 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7903 <ul>
7904   <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>
7905   <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>
7906   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
7907 </ul>
7908
7909 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
7910 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
7911
7912 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
7913 <ul>
7914   <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>
7915   <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>
7916   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
7917 </ul>
7918
7919 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
7920 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
7921
7922 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7923
7924 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
7925
7926       </div>
7927       <div class="tags">
7928
7929
7930         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>.
7931
7932
7933       </div>
7934     </div>
7935     <div class="padding"></div>
7936
7937     <div class="entry">
7938       <div class="title">
7939         <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>
7940       </div>
7941       <div class="date">
7942         25th June 2013
7943       </div>
7944       <div class="body">
7945         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
7946 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
7947 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
7948 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
7949 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
7950 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
7951 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
7952 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
7953 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
7954 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
7955 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
7956
7957 <p><pre>
7958 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
7959 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
7960 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
7961 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
7962 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
7963 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
7964 firmware-ipw2x00
7965 firmware-ipw2x00
7966 Preconfiguring packages ...
7967 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
7968 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
7969 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
7970 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
7971 #
7972 </pre></p>
7973
7974 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
7975 printed instead:</p>
7976
7977 <p><pre>
7978 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
7979 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
7980 #
7981 </pre></p>
7982
7983 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
7984 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
7985
7986 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
7987 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
7988 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
7989 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
7990 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
7991 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
7992 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
7993 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
7994 machine.</p>
7995
7996 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
7997 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
7998 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
7999 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
8000 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
8001 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
8002
8003       </div>
8004       <div class="tags">
8005
8006
8007         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>.
8008
8009
8010       </div>
8011     </div>
8012     <div class="padding"></div>
8013
8014     <div class="entry">
8015       <div class="title">
8016         <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>
8017       </div>
8018       <div class="date">
8019         22nd June 2013
8020       </div>
8021       <div class="body">
8022         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8023 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
8024 which check that services are running, working, and return the
8025 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
8026 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
8027 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
8028 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
8029 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
8030 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
8031
8032 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
8033 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
8034 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
8035 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
8036 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
8037 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
8038 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
8039 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
8040 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
8041 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
8042 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
8043 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
8044 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
8045 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
8046
8047 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
8048 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
8049 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
8050 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
8051 the problem.</p>
8052
8053 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
8054 please join us on
8055 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
8056 irc.debian.org</a> and the
8057 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
8058 list.</p>
8059
8060       </div>
8061       <div class="tags">
8062
8063
8064         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>.
8065
8066
8067       </div>
8068     </div>
8069     <div class="padding"></div>
8070
8071     <div class="entry">
8072       <div class="title">
8073         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
8074       </div>
8075       <div class="date">
8076         17th June 2013
8077       </div>
8078       <div class="body">
8079         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
8080 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
8081 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
8082 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
8083 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
8084 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
8085 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
8086 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
8087
8088 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8089
8090 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
8091 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
8092 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
8093 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
8094 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
8095 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
8096 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
8097 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
8098 field.</p>
8099
8100 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
8101 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
8102 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
8103 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
8104 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
8105 the only one we have in our country.</p>
8106
8107 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8108 project?</strong></p>
8109
8110 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
8111 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
8112 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
8113 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
8114 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
8115 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
8116 ways to contribute.</p>
8117
8118 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
8119 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
8120 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
8121 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
8122 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
8123 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
8124 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
8125 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
8126 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
8127 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
8128
8129 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8130 Edu?</strong></p>
8131
8132 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
8133 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
8134 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
8135 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
8136 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
8137 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
8138 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
8139 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
8140
8141 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
8142 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
8143 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
8144 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
8145 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
8146 project.</p>
8147
8148 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8149 Edu?</strong></p>
8150
8151 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
8152 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
8153 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
8154 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
8155 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
8156 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
8157 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
8158 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
8159 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
8160
8161 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
8162 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
8163 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
8164 on.</p>
8165
8166 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8167
8168 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
8169 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
8170 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
8171 Enlightenment project a lot!),
8172 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
8173 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
8174 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
8175 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
8176 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
8177
8178 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8179 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8180
8181 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
8182 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
8183 that:</p>
8184
8185 <ul>
8186
8187 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
8188
8189 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
8190     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
8191     of teenagers more?</li>
8192
8193 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
8194     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
8195     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
8196     them!)</li>
8197
8198 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
8199     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
8200     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
8201
8202 </ul>
8203
8204 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
8205 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
8206 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
8207 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
8208 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
8209
8210       </div>
8211       <div class="tags">
8212
8213
8214         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>.
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/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
8224       </div>
8225       <div class="date">
8226         12th June 2013
8227       </div>
8228       <div class="body">
8229         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
8230 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8231 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
8232 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
8233 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
8234 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
8235
8236 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8237
8238 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
8239 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
8240 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
8241
8242 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
8243 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
8244 each other.</p>
8245
8246 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8247 project?</strong></p>
8248
8249 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
8250 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
8251 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
8252 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
8253 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
8254 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
8255 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
8256 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
8257 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
8258 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
8259 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
8260 we'll get there one day.</p>
8261
8262 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8263 Edu?</strong></p>
8264
8265 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
8266 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
8267 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
8268 very high quality work.</p>
8269
8270 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
8271 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
8272 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
8273 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
8274 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
8275
8276 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8277 Edu?</strong></p>
8278
8279 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
8280 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
8281 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
8282
8283 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
8284 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
8285 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
8286 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
8287 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
8288 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
8289 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
8290 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
8291 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
8292 currently.</p>
8293
8294 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
8295 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
8296 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
8297 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
8298 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
8299 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
8300 autonomous.</p>
8301
8302 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8303
8304 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
8305 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
8306 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
8307 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
8308 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
8309
8310 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
8311 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
8312 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
8313 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
8314 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
8315 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
8316 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
8317 X.</p>
8318
8319 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
8320 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
8321 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
8322 it :p)
8323
8324 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8325 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8326
8327 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
8328 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
8329 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
8330 that.</p>
8331
8332 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
8333 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
8334 advantage of that.</p>
8335
8336 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
8337 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
8338 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
8339 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
8340 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
8341 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
8342 best solution for them.</p>
8343
8344 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
8345 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
8346 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
8347
8348       </div>
8349       <div class="tags">
8350
8351
8352         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>.
8353
8354
8355       </div>
8356     </div>
8357     <div class="padding"></div>
8358
8359     <div class="entry">
8360       <div class="title">
8361         <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>
8362       </div>
8363       <div class="date">
8364         11th June 2013
8365       </div>
8366       <div class="body">
8367         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
8368 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
8369 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
8370 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
8371 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
8372 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
8373 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
8374 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
8375 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
8376 i915 driver used by the
8377 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
8378 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
8379
8380 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
8381 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
8382 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
8383 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
8384 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
8385
8386 <pre>
8387 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
8388 update-initramfs -u -k all
8389 </pre>
8390
8391 <p>Since March 2012 there is
8392 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
8393 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
8394 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
8395 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
8396 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
8397 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
8398 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
8399 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
8400 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
8401 number.</p>
8402
8403 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
8404 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
8405
8406 <p><pre>
8407 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
8408     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
8409     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
8410  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
8411  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
8412     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
8413  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
8414     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
8415  Latency: 0
8416  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
8417  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
8418  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
8419  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
8420  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
8421  Capabilities: <access denied>
8422  Kernel driver in use: i915
8423 </pre></p>
8424
8425 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
8426
8427 <p><pre>
8428 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
8429        ...
8430         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
8431         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
8432        ...
8433 }
8434 </pre></p>
8435
8436 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
8437 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
8438 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
8439 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
8440 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
8441 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
8442 yet shown up in
8443 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
8444 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
8445 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
8446 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
8447 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
8448 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
8449
8450 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
8451 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
8452 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
8453 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
8454 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
8455 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
8456 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
8457 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
8458 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
8459 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
8460 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
8461 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
8462
8463 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
8464 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
8465 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
8466 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
8467 backlight.</p>
8468
8469       </div>
8470       <div class="tags">
8471
8472
8473         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>.
8474
8475
8476       </div>
8477     </div>
8478     <div class="padding"></div>
8479
8480     <div class="entry">
8481       <div class="title">
8482         <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>
8483       </div>
8484       <div class="date">
8485         10th June 2013
8486       </div>
8487       <div class="body">
8488         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
8489 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
8490
8491 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
8492 2013-06-10</strong></p>
8493
8494 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
8495 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
8496
8497 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
8498
8499 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
8500 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
8501 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
8502 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
8503 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
8504 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
8505 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
8506 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
8507 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
8508 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
8509 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
8510 desktop contains
8511 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
8512 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
8513 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
8514 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
8515
8516 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
8517 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
8518 Squeeze release.</p>
8519
8520 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
8521
8522 <ul>
8523
8524 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
8525 <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).
8526 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
8527 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
8528 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
8529
8530 </ul>
8531
8532 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
8533
8534 <ul>
8535
8536 <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.
8537 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
8538 <li>New Romanian translation.
8539 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
8540 <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).
8541 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
8542 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
8543 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
8544 <li>More testsuite tests.
8545 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
8546 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
8547
8548 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
8549 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
8550
8551 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
8552 them up with GOsa².</li>
8553
8554 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
8555
8556 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
8557 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
8558 entered password). </li>
8559
8560 </ul>
8561
8562 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
8563
8564 <ul>
8565
8566 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
8567
8568 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
8569 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
8570 missing import feature).</li>
8571
8572 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
8573
8574 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
8575 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
8576 unfixed.</li>
8577
8578 </ul>
8579
8580 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
8581
8582 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
8583
8584 <ul>
8585
8586 <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>
8587
8588 <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>
8589
8590 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
8591
8592 </ul>
8593
8594 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
8595 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
8596
8597 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
8598
8599 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
8600
8601       </div>
8602       <div class="tags">
8603
8604
8605         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>.
8606
8607
8608       </div>
8609     </div>
8610     <div class="padding"></div>
8611
8612     <div class="entry">
8613       <div class="title">
8614         <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>
8615       </div>
8616       <div class="date">
8617          5th June 2013
8618       </div>
8619       <div class="body">
8620         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
8621 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
8622 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
8623 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
8624 the project:
8625
8626 <ol>
8627
8628 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
8629   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
8630   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
8631   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
8632   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
8633
8634 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
8635   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
8636   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
8637   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
8638   #698840</a>.</li>
8639
8640 </ol>
8641
8642 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
8643 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
8644 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
8645
8646       </div>
8647       <div class="tags">
8648
8649
8650         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>.
8651
8652
8653       </div>
8654     </div>
8655     <div class="padding"></div>
8656
8657     <div class="entry">
8658       <div class="title">
8659         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
8660       </div>
8661       <div class="date">
8662          4th June 2013
8663       </div>
8664       <div class="body">
8665         <p>It has been a while since my last English
8666 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
8667 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
8668 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
8669 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
8670 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
8671
8672 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8673
8674 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
8675 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
8676 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
8677 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
8678
8679 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
8680 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
8681 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
8682
8683 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8684 project?</strong></p>
8685
8686 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
8687 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
8688 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
8689 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
8690 manual.
8691
8692 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
8693 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
8694 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
8695 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
8696
8697 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
8698 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
8699 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
8700 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
8701 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
8702 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
8703 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
8704 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
8705 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
8706 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
8707
8708 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
8709 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
8710 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
8711 beautiful project.</p>
8712
8713 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8714 Edu?</strong></p>
8715
8716 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
8717 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
8718 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
8719
8720 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
8721 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
8722 of educational free software.</p>
8723
8724 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8725 Edu?</strong></p>
8726
8727 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
8728 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
8729 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
8730 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
8731 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
8732
8733 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
8734 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
8735 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
8736 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
8737 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
8738 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
8739 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
8740 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
8741
8742 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8743
8744 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
8745 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
8746 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
8747 also using the mathematical software
8748 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
8749 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
8750 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
8751
8752 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
8753 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
8754 statistics?</strong></p>
8755
8756 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
8757 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
8758 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
8759 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
8760
8761 <ul>
8762
8763 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
8764 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
8765 constructions in planar geometry
8766
8767 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
8768 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
8769 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
8770
8771 </ul>
8772
8773 <p>I like also
8774 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
8775 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
8776 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
8777
8778 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8779 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8780
8781 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
8782
8783 <ul>
8784
8785 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
8786
8787 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
8788     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
8789     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
8790
8791 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
8792
8793 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
8794     system.</li>
8795
8796 </ul>
8797
8798       </div>
8799       <div class="tags">
8800
8801
8802         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>.
8803
8804
8805       </div>
8806     </div>
8807     <div class="padding"></div>
8808
8809     <div class="entry">
8810       <div class="title">
8811         <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>
8812       </div>
8813       <div class="date">
8814          1st June 2013
8815       </div>
8816       <div class="body">
8817         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8818 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
8819 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
8820 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
8821 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
8822 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
8823 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
8824 program.</p>
8825
8826 <!-- 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 -->
8827
8828 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
8829 <p>
8830 <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>
8831 <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>
8832 <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>
8833 <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>
8834 <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>
8835 <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>
8836 <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>
8837 <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>
8838 <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>
8839 <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>
8840 <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>
8841 <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>
8842 <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>
8843 <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>
8844 </p>
8845
8846 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
8847 <p>
8848 <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>
8849 <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>
8850 <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>
8851 <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>
8852 <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>
8853 <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>
8854 </p>
8855
8856 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
8857 <p>
8858 <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>
8859 </p>
8860
8861 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
8862 <p>
8863 <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>
8864 <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>
8865 <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>
8866 <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>
8867 <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>
8868 <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>
8869 <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>
8870 <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>
8871 <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>
8872 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
8873 <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>
8874 </p>
8875
8876 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
8877 <p>
8878 <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>
8879 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
8880 </p>
8881
8882 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
8883 <p>
8884 <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>
8885 <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>
8886 <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>
8887 </p>
8888
8889 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
8890 <p>
8891 <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>
8892 <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>
8893 <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>
8894 <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>
8895 <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>
8896 </p>
8897
8898 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
8899 <p>
8900 <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>
8901 <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>
8902 <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>
8903 <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>
8904 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
8905 <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>
8906 <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>
8907 <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>
8908 <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>
8909 <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>
8910 <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>
8911 <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>
8912 <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>
8913 <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>
8914 <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>
8915 <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>
8916 <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>
8917 </p>
8918
8919 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
8920 <p>
8921 <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>
8922 <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>
8923 </p>
8924
8925 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
8926 <p>
8927 <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>
8928 <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>
8929 <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>
8930 <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>
8931 <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>
8932 <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>
8933 <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>
8934 <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>
8935 <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>
8936 <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>
8937 </p>
8938
8939 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
8940 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
8941 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
8942 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
8943 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
8944 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
8945 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
8946
8947       </div>
8948       <div class="tags">
8949
8950
8951         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>.
8952
8953
8954       </div>
8955     </div>
8956     <div class="padding"></div>
8957
8958     <div class="entry">
8959       <div class="title">
8960         <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>
8961       </div>
8962       <div class="date">
8963         27th May 2013
8964       </div>
8965       <div class="body">
8966         <p>Two days ago, I asked
8967 <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
8968 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
8969 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
8970 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
8971 and Windows 8.</p>
8972
8973 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
8974 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
8975 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
8976 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
8977 enough to tell.</p>
8978
8979 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
8980 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
8981 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
8982 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
8983 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
8984 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
8985 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
8986 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
8987 to follow.</p>
8988
8989 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
8990 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
8991 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
8992 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
8993 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
8994 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
8995 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
8996 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
8997
8998 <p>I've updated the
8999 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
9000 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
9001 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
9002 machine.</p>
9003
9004 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
9005 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
9006
9007       </div>
9008       <div class="tags">
9009
9010
9011         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>.
9012
9013
9014       </div>
9015     </div>
9016     <div class="padding"></div>
9017
9018     <div class="entry">
9019       <div class="title">
9020         <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>
9021       </div>
9022       <div class="date">
9023         25th May 2013
9024       </div>
9025       <div class="body">
9026         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
9027 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
9028 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
9029 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
9030 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
9031 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
9032
9033 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
9034 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
9035 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
9036 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
9037 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
9038 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
9039 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
9040 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
9041 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
9042 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
9043
9044 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
9045 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
9046 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
9047 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
9048 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
9049 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
9050
9051 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
9052 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
9053 on new Laptops?</p>
9054
9055       </div>
9056       <div class="tags">
9057
9058
9059         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>.
9060
9061
9062       </div>
9063     </div>
9064     <div class="padding"></div>
9065
9066     <div class="entry">
9067       <div class="title">
9068         <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>
9069       </div>
9070       <div class="date">
9071         17th May 2013
9072       </div>
9073       <div class="body">
9074         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
9075 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
9076 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
9077 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
9078 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
9079 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
9080 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
9081 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
9082 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
9083 donate some money</a>.
9084
9085 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
9086 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
9087 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
9088 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
9089 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
9090
9091 <p>The script,
9092 <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/>
9093 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
9094 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
9095 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
9096
9097 <ol>
9098
9099 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
9100 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
9101 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
9102     our configuration.</li>
9103 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
9104     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
9105     according to the profile specified in the config above,
9106     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
9107 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
9108     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
9109 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
9110
9111 </ol>
9112
9113 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
9114 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
9115 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
9116 the needed packages.</p>
9117
9118 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
9119 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
9120 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
9121 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
9122 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
9123 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
9124
9125 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
9126 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
9127 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
9128
9129 <p><pre>
9130 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
9131 DESKTOP="lxde"
9132 </pre></p>
9133
9134 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
9135 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
9136 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
9137 boot.</p>
9138
9139       </div>
9140       <div class="tags">
9141
9142
9143         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>.
9144
9145
9146       </div>
9147     </div>
9148     <div class="padding"></div>
9149
9150     <div class="entry">
9151       <div class="title">
9152         <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>
9153       </div>
9154       <div class="date">
9155         14th May 2013
9156       </div>
9157       <div class="body">
9158         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
9159 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
9160 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
9161
9162 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
9163 2013-05-14</strong></p>
9164
9165 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
9166 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
9167 codename "Wheezy".</p>
9168
9169 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
9170
9171 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
9172 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
9173 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
9174 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
9175 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
9176 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
9177 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
9178 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
9179
9180 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
9181 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
9182 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
9183
9184 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
9185 <ul>
9186   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
9187     default.</li>
9188   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
9189   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
9190   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
9191     ibus-anthy.</li>
9192 </ul>
9193
9194 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
9195 <ul>
9196
9197   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
9198     reliability improvements.</li>
9199   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
9200     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
9201   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
9202     problems.</li>
9203   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
9204     direct:// URL.</li>
9205   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
9206   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
9207   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
9208   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
9209     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
9210   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
9211     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
9212 </ul>
9213
9214 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
9215 <ul>
9216
9217   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
9218     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
9219     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
9220   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
9221   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
9222     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
9223   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
9224   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
9225   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
9226     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
9227   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
9228     password submission problem
9229     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
9230
9231 </ul>
9232
9233 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
9234
9235 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
9236 <ul>
9237
9238   <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>
9239   <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>
9240   <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>
9241
9242 </ul>
9243
9244 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
9245
9246 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
9247
9248 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
9249
9250 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
9251
9252       </div>
9253       <div class="tags">
9254
9255
9256         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>.
9257
9258
9259       </div>
9260     </div>
9261     <div class="padding"></div>
9262
9263     <div class="entry">
9264       <div class="title">
9265         <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>
9266       </div>
9267       <div class="date">
9268         11th May 2013
9269       </div>
9270       <div class="body">
9271         <P>In January,
9272 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
9273 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
9274 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
9275 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
9276 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
9277 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
9278 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
9279 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
9280 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
9281 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
9282 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
9283 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
9284
9285 <p><table>
9286 <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>
9287 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
9288 <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>
9289 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
9290 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
9291 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
9292 <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>
9293 <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>
9294 <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>
9295 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
9296 </table></p>
9297
9298 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
9299 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
9300 available in experimental.</p>
9301
9302 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
9303 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
9304 for LEGO designers.</p>
9305
9306       </div>
9307       <div class="tags">
9308
9309
9310         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>.
9311
9312
9313       </div>
9314     </div>
9315     <div class="padding"></div>
9316
9317     <div class="entry">
9318       <div class="title">
9319         <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>
9320       </div>
9321       <div class="date">
9322          5th May 2013
9323       </div>
9324       <div class="body">
9325         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
9326 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
9327 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
9328 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
9329 soon.</p>
9330
9331 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
9332 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
9333 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
9334 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
9335 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
9336 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
9337 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
9338 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
9339 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
9340 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
9341 Edu.</a>
9342
9343 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
9344 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
9345 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
9346 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
9347 follow.<p>
9348
9349       </div>
9350       <div class="tags">
9351
9352
9353         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>.
9354
9355
9356       </div>
9357     </div>
9358     <div class="padding"></div>
9359
9360     <div class="entry">
9361       <div class="title">
9362         <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>
9363       </div>
9364       <div class="date">
9365         26th April 2013
9366       </div>
9367       <div class="body">
9368         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
9369 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
9370 announcement:</p>
9371
9372 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
9373 2013-04-26</strong></p>
9374
9375 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
9376 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
9377
9378 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
9379
9380 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
9381 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
9382 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
9383 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
9384 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
9385 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
9386 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
9387 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
9388 installed via the network.</p>
9389
9390 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
9391 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
9392 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
9393
9394 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
9395
9396 <ul>
9397 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
9398   <ul>
9399      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
9400      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
9401          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
9402          manual.)</li>
9403      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
9404      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
9405      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
9406      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
9407      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
9408      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
9409      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
9410      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
9411      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
9412      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
9413      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
9414      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
9415          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
9416          manual</a> for more details.</li>
9417      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
9418          installation.</li>
9419      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
9420          <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>
9421   </ul></li>
9422 </ul>
9423
9424 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
9425 <ul>
9426 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
9427     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
9428     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
9429 </ul>
9430
9431 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
9432 <ul>
9433 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
9434     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
9435     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
9436 </ul>
9437
9438 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
9439 <ul>
9440 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
9441     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
9442     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
9443 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
9444     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
9445     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
9446 </ul>
9447
9448 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
9449 <ul>
9450 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
9451     yet.</li>
9452 </ul>
9453
9454 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
9455
9456 <ul>
9457 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
9458     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
9459     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
9460 </ul>
9461
9462 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
9463
9464 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
9465 <ul>
9466 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
9467 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
9468 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
9469 </ul>
9470
9471 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
9472
9473 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
9474
9475 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
9476
9477 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
9478
9479       </div>
9480       <div class="tags">
9481
9482
9483         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>.
9484
9485
9486       </div>
9487     </div>
9488     <div class="padding"></div>
9489
9490     <div class="entry">
9491       <div class="title">
9492         <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>
9493       </div>
9494       <div class="date">
9495         16th April 2013
9496       </div>
9497       <div class="body">
9498         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
9499 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
9500 Details about the gathering can be found
9501 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
9502 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
9503 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
9504 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
9505 weekend.</p>
9506
9507 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
9508 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
9509 Edu release.</p>
9510
9511 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
9512
9513       </div>
9514       <div class="tags">
9515
9516
9517         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>.
9518
9519
9520       </div>
9521     </div>
9522     <div class="padding"></div>
9523
9524     <div class="entry">
9525       <div class="title">
9526         <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>
9527       </div>
9528       <div class="date">
9529          3rd April 2013
9530       </div>
9531       <div class="body">
9532         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
9533 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
9534 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
9535 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
9536
9537 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
9538 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
9539 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
9540 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
9541 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
9542 BTS. :)</p>
9543
9544       </div>
9545       <div class="tags">
9546
9547
9548         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>.
9549
9550
9551       </div>
9552     </div>
9553     <div class="padding"></div>
9554
9555     <div class="entry">
9556       <div class="title">
9557         <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>
9558       </div>
9559       <div class="date">
9560         26th March 2013
9561       </div>
9562       <div class="body">
9563         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
9564 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
9565 font you use when printing.</p>
9566
9567 <p>Three years ago,
9568 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
9569 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
9570 changed their default front from
9571 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
9572 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
9573 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
9574 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
9575 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
9576 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
9577 prints.</p>
9578
9579 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
9580 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
9581 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
9582 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
9583 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
9584 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
9585 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
9586 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
9587 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
9588 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
9589 depend on the documents printed.</p>
9590
9591 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
9592 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
9593 and save some money in the process.</p>
9594
9595 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
9596 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
9597 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
9598 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
9599 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
9600 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
9601 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
9602 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
9603 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
9604
9605       </div>
9606       <div class="tags">
9607
9608
9609         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9610
9611
9612       </div>
9613     </div>
9614     <div class="padding"></div>
9615
9616     <div class="entry">
9617       <div class="title">
9618         <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>
9619       </div>
9620       <div class="date">
9621         24th March 2013
9622       </div>
9623       <div class="body">
9624         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
9625 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
9626 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
9627 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
9628 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
9629 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
9630 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
9631 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
9632 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
9633 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
9634 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
9635 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
9636
9637 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
9638 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
9639 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
9640 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
9641 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
9642 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
9643 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
9644 all I had to do was to use the
9645 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
9646 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
9647 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
9648 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
9649 xsltproc/fop (aka
9650 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
9651 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
9652 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
9653 technical detail.</p>
9654
9655 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
9656 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
9657 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
9658 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
9659 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
9660 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
9661
9662 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
9663 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
9664 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
9665 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
9666 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
9667 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
9668 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
9669 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
9670 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
9671
9672 <p><blockquote><pre>
9673 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9674 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
9675   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
9676     &lt;hr/&gt;
9677   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9678 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9679 </pre></blockquote></p>
9680
9681 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
9682
9683 <p><blockquote><pre>
9684 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9685 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
9686   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
9687     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
9688       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
9689     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
9690   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9691 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9692 </pre></blockquote></p>
9693
9694 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
9695 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
9696 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
9697 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
9698 enough.</p>
9699
9700 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
9701 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
9702 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
9703 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
9704 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
9705 look like this:</p>
9706
9707 <p><blockquote><pre>
9708 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9709 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
9710   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
9711     &lt;br/&gt;
9712   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9713 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9714 </pre></blockquote></p>
9715
9716 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
9717
9718 <p><blockquote><pre>
9719 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9720 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
9721   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
9722   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
9723     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
9724   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9725 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9726 </pre></blockquote></p>
9727
9728 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
9729 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
9730 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
9731 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
9732 page.</p>
9733
9734 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
9735 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
9736 github</a>
9737 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
9738 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
9739 days.</p>
9740
9741       </div>
9742       <div class="tags">
9743
9744
9745         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>.
9746
9747
9748       </div>
9749     </div>
9750     <div class="padding"></div>
9751
9752     <div class="entry">
9753       <div class="title">
9754         <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>
9755       </div>
9756       <div class="date">
9757         17th March 2013
9758       </div>
9759       <div class="body">
9760         <p>Via
9761 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
9762 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
9763 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
9764 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
9765 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
9766 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
9767 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
9768
9769 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
9770 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
9771
9772 <blockquote>
9773 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
9774 </blockquote>
9775
9776 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
9777
9778 <blockquote>
9779 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
9780 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
9781 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
9782 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
9783 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
9784 </blockquote>
9785
9786 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
9787 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
9788 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
9789 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
9790
9791 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
9792 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
9793
9794 <blockquote>
9795 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
9796 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
9797 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
9798 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
9799 </blockquote>
9800
9801 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
9802 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
9803 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
9804 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
9805 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
9806
9807 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
9808 embedding:</p>
9809
9810 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
9811
9812       </div>
9813       <div class="tags">
9814
9815
9816         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>.
9817
9818
9819       </div>
9820     </div>
9821     <div class="padding"></div>
9822
9823     <div class="entry">
9824       <div class="title">
9825         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
9826       </div>
9827       <div class="date">
9828          8th March 2013
9829       </div>
9830       <div class="body">
9831         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
9832 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
9833 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
9834 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
9835 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
9836 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
9837 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
9838
9839 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
9840
9841 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
9842 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
9843
9844 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
9845 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
9846 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
9847 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
9848 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
9849 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
9850
9851 <p>Images are available for download at
9852 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
9853
9854 <p>md5sums:
9855 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
9856 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
9857 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
9858
9859 <p>sha1sums:
9860 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
9861 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
9862 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
9863
9864 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
9865
9866 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
9867 2013-03-03:</p>
9868
9869 <ul>
9870   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
9871   <ul>
9872         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
9873         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
9874   </ul></li>
9875   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
9876   <ul>
9877         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
9878         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
9879   </ul></li>
9880   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
9881      <ul>
9882         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
9883         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
9884         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
9885                 Closes: #664596</li>
9886         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
9887                 Closes: #664976</li>
9888         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
9889            <ul>
9890                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
9891                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
9892            </ul></li>
9893         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
9894            <ul>
9895                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
9896                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
9897                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
9898                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
9899                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
9900            </ul></li>
9901         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
9902     </ul>
9903   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
9904     <ul>
9905         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
9906     </ul></li>
9907 </ul>
9908
9909 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
9910 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
9911 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
9912 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
9913
9914 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
9915 mailinglist
9916 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
9917 </p></blockquote>
9918
9919 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
9920
9921       </div>
9922       <div class="tags">
9923
9924
9925         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>.
9926
9927
9928       </div>
9929     </div>
9930     <div class="padding"></div>
9931
9932     <div class="entry">
9933       <div class="title">
9934         <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>
9935       </div>
9936       <div class="date">
9937          3rd March 2013
9938       </div>
9939       <div class="body">
9940         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
9941 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
9942 support using
9943 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
9944 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
9945 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
9946 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
9947 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
9948 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
9949 using the GNU LGPL, and
9950 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
9951
9952 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
9953 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
9954 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
9955 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
9956 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
9957 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
9958
9959 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
9960 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
9961 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
9962 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
9963 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
9964 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
9965 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
9966 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
9967 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
9968 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
9969 signal distribution is handled using
9970 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
9971 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
9972 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
9973 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
9974 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
9975 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
9976 them up a bit more first.</p>
9977
9978 <p>The development is coordinated on the
9979 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
9980 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
9981 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
9982 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
9983 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
9984 development.</p>
9985
9986       </div>
9987       <div class="tags">
9988
9989
9990         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>.
9991
9992
9993       </div>
9994     </div>
9995     <div class="padding"></div>
9996
9997     <div class="entry">
9998       <div class="title">
9999         <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>
10000       </div>
10001       <div class="date">
10002         27th February 2013
10003       </div>
10004       <div class="body">
10005         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
10006 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
10007 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
10008 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
10009 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
10010 (where I am the chair of the board) and
10011 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
10012 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
10013 GNU», with this description:
10014
10015 <p><blockquote>
10016 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
10017 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
10018 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
10019 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
10020 </blockquote></p>
10021
10022 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
10023 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
10024 am really curious how many will show up.  See
10025 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
10026 page</a> for the location details.</p>
10027
10028       </div>
10029       <div class="tags">
10030
10031
10032         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>.
10033
10034
10035       </div>
10036     </div>
10037     <div class="padding"></div>
10038
10039     <div class="entry">
10040       <div class="title">
10041         <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>
10042       </div>
10043       <div class="date">
10044         15th February 2013
10045       </div>
10046       <div class="body">
10047         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
10048 now a great source of free maps available from
10049 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
10050 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
10051 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
10052 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
10053 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
10054 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
10055 page for descriptions).</p>
10056
10057 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
10058 map you can just edit the
10059 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
10060 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
10061
10062       </div>
10063       <div class="tags">
10064
10065
10066         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>.
10067
10068
10069       </div>
10070     </div>
10071     <div class="padding"></div>
10072
10073     <div class="entry">
10074       <div class="title">
10075         <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>
10076       </div>
10077       <div class="date">
10078         12th February 2013
10079       </div>
10080       <div class="body">
10081         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
10082 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
10083 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
10084 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
10085 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
10086 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
10087 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
10088 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
10089 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
10090 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
10091 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
10092 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
10093 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
10094 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
10095 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
10096 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
10097
10098 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
10099 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
10100 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
10101 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
10102 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
10103 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
10104 fields:</p>
10105
10106 <p><pre>
10107 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
10108 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
10109 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
10110 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
10111 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
10112 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
10113 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
10114 </pre></p>
10115
10116 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
10117 answer regarding
10118 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
10119 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
10120 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
10121 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
10122
10123 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
10124
10125 <p><pre>
10126 BEGIN:VCARD
10127 VERSION:2.1
10128 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
10129 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
10130 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
10131 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
10132 REV:20130212T095000Z
10133 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
10134 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
10135 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
10136 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
10137 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
10138 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
10139 END:VCARD
10140 </pre></p>
10141
10142 <p>The resulting QR code created using
10143 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
10144 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
10145 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
10146 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
10147 system.</p>
10148
10149 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
10150
10151 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
10152 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
10153 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
10154 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
10155
10156 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
10157 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
10158
10159       </div>
10160       <div class="tags">
10161
10162
10163         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>.
10164
10165
10166       </div>
10167     </div>
10168     <div class="padding"></div>
10169
10170     <div class="entry">
10171       <div class="title">
10172         <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>
10173       </div>
10174       <div class="date">
10175         10th February 2013
10176       </div>
10177       <div class="body">
10178         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
10179
10180 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
10181 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
10182 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
10183 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
10184 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
10185 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
10186 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
10187 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
10188 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
10189 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
10190 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
10191
10192 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
10193 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
10194 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
10195 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
10196 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
10197 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
10198 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
10199 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
10200 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
10201 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
10202 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
10203 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
10204 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
10205 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
10206 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
10207 ones own
10208 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
10209 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
10210 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
10211 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
10212 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
10213 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
10214 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
10215 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
10216 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
10217 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
10218 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
10219
10220 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
10221 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
10222 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
10223 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
10224 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
10225 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
10226
10227 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
10228 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
10229 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
10230
10231       </div>
10232       <div class="tags">
10233
10234
10235         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10236
10237
10238       </div>
10239     </div>
10240     <div class="padding"></div>
10241
10242     <div class="entry">
10243       <div class="title">
10244         <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>
10245       </div>
10246       <div class="date">
10247          2nd February 2013
10248       </div>
10249       <div class="body">
10250         <p>My
10251 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
10252 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
10253 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
10254 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
10255 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
10256 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
10257 version too.</p>
10258
10259 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
10260 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
10261 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
10262 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
10263 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
10264 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
10265 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
10266 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
10267
10268 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
10269 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
10270 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
10271 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
10272 it. :)</p>
10273
10274 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
10275 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
10276 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
10277
10278       </div>
10279       <div class="tags">
10280
10281
10282         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>.
10283
10284
10285       </div>
10286     </div>
10287     <div class="padding"></div>
10288
10289     <div class="entry">
10290       <div class="title">
10291         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
10292       </div>
10293       <div class="date">
10294         22nd January 2013
10295       </div>
10296       <div class="body">
10297         <p>Yesterday, I
10298 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
10299 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
10300 pluggable hardware devices, which I
10301 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
10302 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
10303 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
10304 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
10305 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
10306 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
10307 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
10308 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
10309 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
10310 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
10311
10312 <pre>
10313 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
10314 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
10315 </pre>
10316
10317 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
10318 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
10319 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
10320 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
10321
10322 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
10323 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
10324 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
10325 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
10326 word.</p>
10327
10328 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
10329 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
10330 process.</p>
10331
10332 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
10333 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
10334
10335       </div>
10336       <div class="tags">
10337
10338
10339         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>.
10340
10341
10342       </div>
10343     </div>
10344     <div class="padding"></div>
10345
10346     <div class="entry">
10347       <div class="title">
10348         <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>
10349       </div>
10350       <div class="date">
10351         21st January 2013
10352       </div>
10353       <div class="body">
10354         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
10355 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
10356 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
10357 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
10358 it, fetch the
10359 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
10360 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
10361 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
10362 autostart script.</p>
10363
10364 <p>The design is simple:</p>
10365
10366 <ul>
10367
10368 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
10369 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
10370
10371 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
10372 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
10373 initially did.</li>
10374
10375 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
10376 the APT database, a database
10377 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
10378 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
10379
10380 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
10381 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
10382 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
10383 package or packages.</li>
10384
10385 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
10386 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
10387
10388 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
10389 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
10390
10391 </ul>
10392
10393 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
10394 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
10395 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
10396 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
10397
10398 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
10399 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
10400 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
10401 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
10402 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
10403
10404 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
10405 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
10406 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
10407 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
10408 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
10409 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
10410 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
10411 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
10412
10413 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
10414 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
10415 '<tt>svn checkout
10416 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
10417 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
10418 devscripts package.</p>
10419
10420 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
10421 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
10422 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
10423 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
10424 instructions</a> for details.</p>
10425
10426       </div>
10427       <div class="tags">
10428
10429
10430         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>.
10431
10432
10433       </div>
10434     </div>
10435     <div class="padding"></div>
10436
10437     <div class="entry">
10438       <div class="title">
10439         <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>
10440       </div>
10441       <div class="date">
10442         19th January 2013
10443       </div>
10444       <div class="body">
10445         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
10446 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
10447 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
10448 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
10449 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
10450 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
10451 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
10452 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
10453 not a durable solution.
10454
10455 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
10456 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
10457
10458 <ul>
10459
10460 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
10461   than A4).</li>
10462 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
10463 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
10464 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
10465 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
10466 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
10467 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
10468 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
10469 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
10470 size).</li>
10471 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
10472   X.org packages.</li>
10473 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
10474   the time).
10475
10476 </ul>
10477
10478 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
10479 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
10480 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
10481 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
10482 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
10483 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
10484 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
10485 still be useful.</p>
10486
10487 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
10488 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
10489 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
10490 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
10491 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
10492 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
10493
10494       </div>
10495       <div class="tags">
10496
10497
10498         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>.
10499
10500
10501       </div>
10502     </div>
10503     <div class="padding"></div>
10504
10505     <div class="entry">
10506       <div class="title">
10507         <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>
10508       </div>
10509       <div class="date">
10510         18th January 2013
10511       </div>
10512       <div class="body">
10513         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
10514 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
10515 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
10516 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
10517 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
10518 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
10519 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
10520
10521 <pre>
10522 #!/usr/bin/python
10523 import sys
10524 import apt
10525 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
10526     cache = apt.Cache()
10527     cache.open(None)
10528     thepkgs = []
10529     for pkg in cache:
10530         version = pkg.candidate
10531         if version is None:
10532             version = pkg.installed
10533         if version is None:
10534             continue
10535         record = version.record
10536         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
10537             continue
10538         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
10539         for t in mime_types:
10540             t = t.rstrip().strip()
10541             if t == mimetype:
10542                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
10543     return thepkgs
10544 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
10545 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
10546     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
10547 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
10548 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
10549     print "  %s" %pkg
10550 </pre>
10551
10552 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
10553
10554 <pre>
10555 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
10556 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
10557   gecko-mediaplayer
10558 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
10559 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
10560   browser-plugin-gnash
10561 %
10562 </pre>
10563
10564 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
10565 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
10566 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
10567 anyone working on adding it?</p>
10568
10569 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
10570 request for icweasel support for this feature is
10571 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
10572 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
10573 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
10574 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
10575
10576       </div>
10577       <div class="tags">
10578
10579
10580         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>.
10581
10582
10583       </div>
10584     </div>
10585     <div class="padding"></div>
10586
10587     <div class="entry">
10588       <div class="title">
10589         <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>
10590       </div>
10591       <div class="date">
10592         16th January 2013
10593       </div>
10594       <div class="body">
10595         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
10596 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
10597 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
10598 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
10599 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
10600 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
10601 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
10602 downloaded by the browser.</p>
10603
10604 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
10605 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
10606 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
10607 can be found on the
10608 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
10609 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
10610 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
10611 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
10612 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
10613
10614 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
10615
10616 <pre>
10617   count MIME type
10618   ----- -----------------------
10619      32 text/plain
10620      30 audio/mpeg
10621      29 image/png
10622      28 image/jpeg
10623      27 application/ogg
10624      26 audio/x-mp3
10625      25 image/tiff
10626      25 image/gif
10627      22 image/bmp
10628      22 audio/x-wav
10629      20 audio/x-flac
10630      19 audio/x-mpegurl
10631      18 video/x-ms-asf
10632      18 audio/x-musepack
10633      18 audio/x-mpeg
10634      18 application/x-ogg
10635      17 video/mpeg
10636      17 audio/x-scpls
10637      17 audio/ogg
10638      16 video/x-ms-wmv
10639 </pre>
10640
10641 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
10642
10643 <pre>
10644   count MIME type
10645   ----- -----------------------
10646      33 text/plain
10647      32 image/png
10648      32 image/jpeg
10649      29 audio/mpeg
10650      27 image/gif
10651      26 image/tiff
10652      26 application/ogg
10653      25 audio/x-mp3
10654      22 image/bmp
10655      21 audio/x-wav
10656      19 audio/x-mpegurl
10657      19 audio/x-mpeg
10658      18 video/mpeg
10659      18 audio/x-scpls
10660      18 audio/x-flac
10661      18 application/x-ogg
10662      17 video/x-ms-asf
10663      17 text/html
10664      17 audio/x-musepack
10665      16 image/x-xbitmap
10666 </pre>
10667
10668 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
10669
10670 <pre>
10671   count MIME type
10672   ----- -----------------------
10673      31 text/plain
10674      31 image/png
10675      31 image/jpeg
10676      29 audio/mpeg
10677      28 application/ogg
10678      27 image/gif
10679      26 image/tiff
10680      26 audio/x-mp3
10681      23 audio/x-wav
10682      22 image/bmp
10683      21 audio/x-flac
10684      20 audio/x-mpegurl
10685      19 audio/x-mpeg
10686      18 video/x-ms-asf
10687      18 video/mpeg
10688      18 audio/x-scpls
10689      18 application/x-ogg
10690      17 audio/x-musepack
10691      16 video/x-ms-wmv
10692      16 video/x-msvideo
10693 </pre>
10694
10695 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
10696 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
10697 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
10698 issues.</p>
10699
10700 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
10701 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
10702
10703       </div>
10704       <div class="tags">
10705
10706
10707         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>.
10708
10709
10710       </div>
10711     </div>
10712     <div class="padding"></div>
10713
10714     <div class="entry">
10715       <div class="title">
10716         <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>
10717       </div>
10718       <div class="date">
10719         15th January 2013
10720       </div>
10721       <div class="body">
10722         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
10723 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
10724 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
10725 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
10726 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
10727 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
10728 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
10729 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
10730 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
10731 packages.</p>
10732
10733 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
10734 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
10735 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
10736 modalias.</p>
10737
10738 <p><blockquote>
10739 Package: package-name
10740 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
10741 </blockquote></p>
10742
10743 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
10744 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
10745
10746 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
10747 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
10748
10749 <p><blockquote>
10750 Package: cheese
10751 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
10752 </blockquote></p>
10753
10754 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
10755 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
10756
10757 <p><blockquote>
10758 Package: pcmciautils
10759 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
10760 </blockquote></p>
10761
10762 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
10763 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
10764
10765 <p><blockquote>
10766 Package: colorhug-client
10767 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
10768 </blockquote></p>
10769
10770 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
10771 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
10772 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
10773
10774 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
10775 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
10776 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
10777 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
10778 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
10779 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
10780 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
10781 Raring.</p>
10782
10783 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
10784 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
10785 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
10786 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
10787 try the
10788 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
10789 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
10790 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
10791 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
10792
10793 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
10794 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
10795
10796 <p><blockquote>
10797 % ./hw-support-lookup
10798 <br>yubikey-personalization
10799 <br>%
10800 </blockquote></p>
10801
10802 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
10803 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
10804
10805 <p><blockquote>
10806 % ./hw-support-lookup
10807 <br>pcmciautils
10808 <br>%
10809 </blockquote></p>
10810
10811 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
10812 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
10813 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
10814
10815 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
10816 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
10817 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
10818 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
10819 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
10820 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
10821 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
10822 see if it work.</p>
10823
10824 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
10825 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
10826 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
10827 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
10828
10829       </div>
10830       <div class="tags">
10831
10832
10833         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>.
10834
10835
10836       </div>
10837     </div>
10838     <div class="padding"></div>
10839
10840     <div class="entry">
10841       <div class="title">
10842         <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>
10843       </div>
10844       <div class="date">
10845         14th January 2013
10846       </div>
10847       <div class="body">
10848         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
10849 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
10850 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
10851 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
10852 in
10853 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
10854 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
10855
10856 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
10857
10858 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
10859 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
10860 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
10861 &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;,
10862 &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
10863 &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;.
10864
10865 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
10866 this shell script:</p>
10867
10868 <pre>
10869 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
10870 </pre>
10871
10872 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
10873 using modinfo:</p>
10874
10875 <pre>
10876 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
10877 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
10878 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
10879 %
10880 </pre>
10881
10882 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
10883
10884 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
10885 Bridge memory controller:</p>
10886
10887 <p><blockquote>
10888 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
10889 </blockquote></p>
10890
10891 <p>This represent these values:</p>
10892
10893 <pre>
10894  v   00008086  (vendor)
10895  d   00002770  (device)
10896  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
10897  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
10898  bc  06        (bus class)
10899  sc  00        (bus subclass)
10900  i   00        (interface)
10901 </pre>
10902
10903 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
10904 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
10905 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
10906 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
10907
10908 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
10909 means.</p>
10910
10911 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
10912
10913 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
10914 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
10915
10916 <p><blockquote>
10917 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
10918 </blockquote></p>
10919
10920 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
10921
10922 <pre>
10923  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
10924  p    0001  (device product)
10925  d    0206  (bcddevice)
10926  dc     09  (device class)
10927  dsc    00  (device subclass)
10928  dp     00  (device protocol)
10929  ic     09  (interface class)
10930  isc    00  (interface subclass)
10931  ip     00  (interface protocol)
10932 </pre>
10933
10934 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
10935 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
10936 these alias entries show up:</p>
10937
10938 <p><blockquote>
10939 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
10940 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
10941 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
10942 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
10943 </blockquote></p>
10944
10945 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
10946 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
10947 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
10948
10949 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
10950
10951 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
10952 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
10953
10954 <p><blockquote>
10955 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
10956 </blockquote></p>
10957
10958 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
10959
10960 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
10961
10962 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
10963 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
10964 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
10965
10966 <p><blockquote>
10967 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
10968 </blockquote></p>
10969
10970 <p>The values present are</p>
10971
10972 <pre>
10973  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
10974  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
10975  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
10976  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
10977  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
10978  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
10979  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
10980  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
10981  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
10982  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
10983  ct   10             (chassis type)
10984  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
10985 </pre>
10986
10987 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
10988 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
10989
10990 <pre>
10991   3 Desktop
10992   4 Low Profile Desktop
10993   5 Pizza Box
10994   6 Mini Tower
10995   7 Tower
10996   8 Portable
10997   9 Laptop
10998  10 Notebook
10999  11 Hand Held
11000  12 Docking Station
11001  13 All In One
11002  14 Sub Notebook
11003  15 Space-saving
11004  16 Lunch Box
11005  17 Main Server Chassis
11006  18 Expansion Chassis
11007  19 Sub Chassis
11008  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
11009  21 Peripheral Chassis
11010  22 RAID Chassis
11011  23 Rack Mount Chassis
11012  24 Sealed-case PC
11013  25 Multi-system
11014  26 CompactPCI
11015  27 AdvancedTCA
11016  28 Blade
11017  29 Blade Enclosing
11018 </pre>
11019
11020 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
11021 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
11022 claim it is a desktop.</p>
11023
11024 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
11025
11026 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
11027 test machine:</p>
11028
11029 <p><blockquote>
11030 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
11031 </blockquote></p>
11032
11033 <p>The values present are</p>
11034
11035 <pre>
11036   ty  01  (type)
11037   pr  00  (prototype)
11038   id  00  (id)
11039   ex  00  (extra)
11040 </pre>
11041
11042 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
11043 the valid values are.</p>
11044
11045 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
11046
11047 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
11048 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
11049 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
11050 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
11051 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
11052 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
11053 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
11054
11055 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
11056
11057 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
11058 one can use the following shell script:</p>
11059
11060 <pre>
11061   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
11062     echo "$id" ; \
11063     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
11064   done
11065 </pre>
11066
11067 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
11068 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
11069
11070 <pre>
11071   acpi:ACPI0003:
11072     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
11073   acpi:device:
11074   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
11075   acpi:IBM0068:
11076     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
11077     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
11078     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
11079     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
11080   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
11081     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
11082     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
11083     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
11084   [...]
11085 </pre>
11086
11087 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
11088 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
11089 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
11090 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
11091
11092 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
11093 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
11094 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
11095
11096       </div>
11097       <div class="tags">
11098
11099
11100         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>.
11101
11102
11103       </div>
11104     </div>
11105     <div class="padding"></div>
11106
11107     <div class="entry">
11108       <div class="title">
11109         <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>
11110       </div>
11111       <div class="date">
11112         10th January 2013
11113       </div>
11114       <div class="body">
11115         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
11116 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
11117 Launcher and updated the Debian package
11118 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
11119 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
11120 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
11121 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
11122 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
11123 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
11124 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
11125 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
11126 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
11127 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
11128 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
11129 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
11130 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
11131 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
11132 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
11133
11134       </div>
11135       <div class="tags">
11136
11137
11138         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>.
11139
11140
11141       </div>
11142     </div>
11143     <div class="padding"></div>
11144
11145     <div class="entry">
11146       <div class="title">
11147         <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>
11148       </div>
11149       <div class="date">
11150          9th January 2013
11151       </div>
11152       <div class="body">
11153         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
11154 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
11155 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
11156 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
11157 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
11158 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
11159 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
11160 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
11161 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
11162 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
11163 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
11164
11165 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
11166 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
11167 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
11168 simple:
11169
11170 <ul>
11171
11172 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
11173   starting when a user log in.</li>
11174
11175 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
11176   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
11177
11178 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
11179   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
11180   packages.</li>
11181
11182 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
11183   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
11184
11185 </ul>
11186
11187 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
11188 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
11189 discover database to find packages and
11190 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
11191 packages.</p>
11192
11193 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
11194 draft package is now checked into
11195 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
11196 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
11197 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
11198 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
11199 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
11200 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
11201 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
11202 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
11203 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
11204 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
11205 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
11206 because of the freeze).</p>
11207
11208 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
11209 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
11210 inserted):</p>
11211
11212 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
11213
11214 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
11215 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
11216 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
11217
11218 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
11219 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
11220 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
11221 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
11222 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
11223 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
11224 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
11225
11226 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
11227 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
11228 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
11229 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
11230 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
11231 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
11232 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
11233 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
11234 not be installed?</p>
11235
11236 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
11237 please send me an email. :)</p>
11238
11239       </div>
11240       <div class="tags">
11241
11242
11243         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>.
11244
11245
11246       </div>
11247     </div>
11248     <div class="padding"></div>
11249
11250     <div class="entry">
11251       <div class="title">
11252         <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>
11253       </div>
11254       <div class="date">
11255          2nd January 2013
11256       </div>
11257       <div class="body">
11258         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
11259 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
11260 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
11261 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
11262 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
11263 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
11264 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
11265 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
11266 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
11267 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
11268
11269 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
11270 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
11271 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
11272
11273       </div>
11274       <div class="tags">
11275
11276
11277         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>.
11278
11279
11280       </div>
11281     </div>
11282     <div class="padding"></div>
11283
11284     <div class="entry">
11285       <div class="title">
11286         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
11287       </div>
11288       <div class="date">
11289         28th December 2012
11290       </div>
11291       <div class="body">
11292         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
11293 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
11294 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
11295 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
11296 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
11297 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
11298 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
11299 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
11300 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
11301 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
11302 followed by many others. :)</p>
11303
11304 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
11305 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
11306 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
11307 you want to donate to the project.</p>
11308
11309       </div>
11310       <div class="tags">
11311
11312
11313         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>.
11314
11315
11316       </div>
11317     </div>
11318     <div class="padding"></div>
11319
11320     <div class="entry">
11321       <div class="title">
11322         <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>
11323       </div>
11324       <div class="date">
11325         25th December 2012
11326       </div>
11327       <div class="body">
11328         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
11329 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
11330
11331 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
11332 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
11333 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
11334 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
11335 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
11336 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
11337 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
11338 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
11339 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
11340 name.</p>
11341
11342 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
11343 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
11344 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
11345
11346 <blockquote><pre>
11347 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
11348 cd bitcoin
11349 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
11350 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
11351 </pre></blockquote>
11352
11353 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
11354 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
11355 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
11356 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
11357 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
11358 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
11359 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
11360 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
11361 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
11362
11363 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
11364 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
11365 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
11366
11367       </div>
11368       <div class="tags">
11369
11370
11371         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>.
11372
11373
11374       </div>
11375     </div>
11376     <div class="padding"></div>
11377
11378     <div class="entry">
11379       <div class="title">
11380         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
11381       </div>
11382       <div class="date">
11383         21st December 2012
11384       </div>
11385       <div class="body">
11386         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
11387 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
11388 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
11389 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
11390 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
11391 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
11392 is now maintained by a
11393 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
11394 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
11395 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
11396 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
11397 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
11398 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
11399 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
11400 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
11401 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
11402 Corallo in a
11403 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
11404 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
11405 Debian package.</p>
11406
11407 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
11408 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
11409 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
11410 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
11411 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
11412 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
11413 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
11414 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
11415 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
11416 new version to unstable.
11417
11418 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
11419 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
11420 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
11421 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
11422 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
11423 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
11424 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
11425 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
11426 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
11427 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
11428 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
11429 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
11430 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
11431 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
11432 have not tested them.</p>
11433
11434 <p>My
11435 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
11436 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
11437 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
11438 years ago, as can be
11439 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
11440 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
11441 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
11442 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
11443 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
11444 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
11445 the same address as last time,
11446 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
11447
11448       </div>
11449       <div class="tags">
11450
11451
11452         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>.
11453
11454
11455       </div>
11456     </div>
11457     <div class="padding"></div>
11458
11459     <div class="entry">
11460       <div class="title">
11461         <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>
11462       </div>
11463       <div class="date">
11464         18th December 2012
11465       </div>
11466       <div class="body">
11467         <p>A few days ago I came across
11468 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
11469 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
11470 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
11471 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
11472 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
11473 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
11474 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
11475 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
11476 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
11477
11478 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
11479 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
11480 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
11481 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
11482
11483 <blockquote><pre>
11484 2004-05-27 Book Store
11485       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
11486       Liabilities:Visa
11487 </pre></blockquote>
11488
11489 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
11490 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
11491 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
11492 Spang</a>,
11493 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
11494 Keen</a>,
11495 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
11496 Cantino</a> and
11497 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
11498 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
11499 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
11500 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
11501 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
11502
11503 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
11504 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
11505 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
11506 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
11507 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
11508
11509 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
11510 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
11511 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
11512 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
11513 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
11514 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
11515 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
11516 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
11517 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
11518
11519       </div>
11520       <div class="tags">
11521
11522
11523         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>.
11524
11525
11526       </div>
11527     </div>
11528     <div class="padding"></div>
11529
11530     <div class="entry">
11531       <div class="title">
11532         <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>
11533       </div>
11534       <div class="date">
11535          6th December 2012
11536       </div>
11537       <div class="body">
11538         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
11539 Oslo</a>, we use the
11540 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
11541 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
11542 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
11543 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
11544 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
11545 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
11546 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
11547 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
11548 Python.</p>
11549
11550 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
11551 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
11552 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
11553 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
11554 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
11555 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
11556
11557 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
11558 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
11559 user currently logged in:</p>
11560
11561 <blockquote><pre>
11562 #!/usr/bin/env python
11563 import getpass
11564 import xmlrpclib
11565 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
11566 username = getpass.getuser()
11567 password = getpass.getpass()
11568 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
11569 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
11570 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
11571 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
11572 result = server.logout(sessionid)
11573 print result
11574 </pre></blockquote>
11575
11576 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
11577 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
11578
11579       </div>
11580       <div class="tags">
11581
11582
11583         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>.
11584
11585
11586       </div>
11587     </div>
11588     <div class="padding"></div>
11589
11590     <div class="entry">
11591       <div class="title">
11592         <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>
11593       </div>
11594       <div class="date">
11595         17th November 2012
11596       </div>
11597       <div class="body">
11598         <p>While working on a
11599 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
11600 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
11601 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
11602 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
11603 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
11604 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
11605
11606 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
11607 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
11608 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
11609 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
11610 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
11611 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
11612 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
11613 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
11614 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
11615 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
11616 arguments.</p>
11617
11618 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
11619 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
11620 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
11621 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
11622 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
11623 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
11624 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
11625 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
11626
11627 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
11628 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
11629 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
11630 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
11631 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
11632 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
11633 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
11634 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
11635 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
11636 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
11637 correct right holder.</p>
11638
11639 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
11640 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
11641 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
11642 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
11643 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
11644 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
11645 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
11646 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
11647 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
11648 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
11649 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
11650 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
11651 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
11652 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
11653
11654 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
11655 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
11656 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
11657
11658 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
11659 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
11660
11661       </div>
11662       <div class="tags">
11663
11664
11665         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>.
11666
11667
11668       </div>
11669     </div>
11670     <div class="padding"></div>
11671
11672     <div class="entry">
11673       <div class="title">
11674         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
11675       </div>
11676       <div class="date">
11677         14th November 2012
11678       </div>
11679       <div class="body">
11680         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
11681 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
11682 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
11683 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
11684 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
11685 the people behind the German
11686 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
11687 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
11688 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
11689
11690 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11691
11692 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
11693 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
11694 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
11695
11696 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
11697 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
11698 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
11699 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
11700 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
11701 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
11702
11703 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
11704 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
11705 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
11706 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
11707 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
11708 relationship management and the communication processes in the
11709 project.</p>
11710
11711 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
11712 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
11713 and a yoga teacher.</p>
11714
11715 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
11716 project?</strong></p>
11717
11718 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
11719
11720 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
11721 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
11722 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
11723 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
11724 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
11725 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
11726 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
11727 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
11728 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
11729 parents.</p>
11730
11731 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
11732 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
11733 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
11734 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
11735 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
11736 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
11737 Germany.</p>
11738
11739 <p>For information about our school project you can read
11740 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
11741 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
11742
11743 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11744 Edu?</strong></p>
11745
11746 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
11747 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
11748
11749 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
11750 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
11751 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
11752 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
11753 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
11754 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
11755 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
11756 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
11757 teachers, parents...</p>
11758
11759 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11760 Edu?</strong></p>
11761
11762 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
11763 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
11764
11765 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
11766 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
11767 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
11768 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
11769 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
11770
11771 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
11772 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
11773 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
11774 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
11775 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
11776 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
11777 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
11778
11779 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11780
11781 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
11782 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
11783 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
11784 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
11785
11786 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11787 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11788
11789 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
11790 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
11791 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
11792 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
11793 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
11794
11795 <ul>
11796
11797 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
11798 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
11799 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
11800
11801 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
11802 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
11803 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
11804 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
11805 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
11806 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
11807 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
11808
11809 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
11810 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
11811 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
11812 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
11813
11814 </ul>
11815
11816       </div>
11817       <div class="tags">
11818
11819
11820         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>.
11821
11822
11823       </div>
11824     </div>
11825     <div class="padding"></div>
11826
11827     <div class="entry">
11828       <div class="title">
11829         <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>
11830       </div>
11831       <div class="date">
11832          4th November 2012
11833       </div>
11834       <div class="body">
11835         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
11836 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
11837 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
11838 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
11839 see how a member of the bitcoin community
11840 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
11841 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
11842 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
11843 competition.  My thoughts go to the
11844 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
11845 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
11846 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
11847 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
11848 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
11849
11850 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
11851 that the community already seem to have
11852 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
11853 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
11854 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
11855 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
11856 wealth is available.</p>
11857
11858       </div>
11859       <div class="tags">
11860
11861
11862         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>.
11863
11864
11865       </div>
11866     </div>
11867     <div class="padding"></div>
11868
11869     <div class="entry">
11870       <div class="title">
11871         <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>
11872       </div>
11873       <div class="date">
11874         26th October 2012
11875       </div>
11876       <div class="body">
11877         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
11878 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
11879 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
11880 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
11881 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
11882 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
11883 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
11884 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
11885 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
11886 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
11887 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
11888 it every time.</p>
11889
11890 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
11891 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
11892 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
11893 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
11894 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
11895 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
11896 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
11897 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
11898 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
11899 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
11900 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
11901 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
11902
11903 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
11904 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
11905 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
11906 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
11907 article: First the unplanned outage:
11908
11909 <blockquote><pre>
11910 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
11911 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
11912 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
11913 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
11914 Duration:    40 minutes
11915 Scope:       Exchange 2003
11916 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
11917              a cluster failover.
11918
11919 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
11920              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
11921 Technician:  [xxx]
11922 </pre></blockquote>
11923
11924 Next the planned outage:
11925
11926 <blockquote><pre>
11927 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
11928 Severity:    Major (Planned)
11929 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
11930 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
11931 Duration:    10 hours
11932 Scope:       H2 Transport
11933 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
11934              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
11935              4510s.
11936 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
11937              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
11938              connectivity.
11939 Technician:  [xxx]
11940 </pre></blockquote>
11941
11942 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
11943 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
11944 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
11945 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
11946 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
11947 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
11948 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
11949
11950 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
11951 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
11952 university too.  We do register
11953 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
11954 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
11955 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
11956 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
11957 for other sites to consider too?</p>
11958
11959       </div>
11960       <div class="tags">
11961
11962
11963         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/usenix">usenix</a>.
11964
11965
11966       </div>
11967     </div>
11968     <div class="padding"></div>
11969
11970     <div class="entry">
11971       <div class="title">
11972         <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>
11973       </div>
11974       <div class="date">
11975         22nd October 2012
11976       </div>
11977       <div class="body">
11978         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
11979 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
11980 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
11981 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
11982 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
11983 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
11984 background information is available in Norwegian from
11985 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
11986 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
11987 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
11988 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
11989 willing to
11990 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
11991 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
11992 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
11993 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
11994 sounded like
11995 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
11996 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
11997 later.</p>
11998
11999 <p>And thought this action is
12000 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
12001 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
12002 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
12003 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
12004 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
12005 rights.</p>
12006
12007 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
12008 unacceptable terms.  For example
12009 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
12010 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
12011 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
12012 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
12013 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
12014
12015 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
12016 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
12017 restored the account of the user, as reported by
12018 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
12019 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
12020 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
12021 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
12022 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
12023 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
12024 reading two opinions from
12025 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
12026 Phipps</a> and
12027 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
12028 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
12029 details about the original story.</p>
12030
12031       </div>
12032       <div class="tags">
12033
12034
12035         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>.
12036
12037
12038       </div>
12039     </div>
12040     <div class="padding"></div>
12041
12042     <div class="entry">
12043       <div class="title">
12044         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
12045       </div>
12046       <div class="date">
12047         18th October 2012
12048       </div>
12049       <div class="body">
12050         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
12051 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
12052 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
12053 across a marvellous drawing by
12054 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
12055 visualising some of what is going on.
12056
12057 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
12058 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
12059
12060 <blockquote>
12061 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
12062 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
12063 </blockquote>
12064
12065 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
12066 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
12067 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
12068 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
12069 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
12070 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
12071
12072       </div>
12073       <div class="tags">
12074
12075
12076         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>.
12077
12078
12079       </div>
12080     </div>
12081     <div class="padding"></div>
12082
12083     <div class="entry">
12084       <div class="title">
12085         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
12086       </div>
12087       <div class="date">
12088         12th October 2012
12089       </div>
12090       <div class="body">
12091         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
12092 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
12093 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
12094 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
12095 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
12096 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
12097 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
12098 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
12099 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
12100 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
12101 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
12102 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
12103 matter".</p>
12104
12105 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
12106 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
12107 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
12108 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
12109 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
12110 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
12111 to argue its side.</p>
12112
12113 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
12114 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
12115 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
12116 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
12117
12118 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
12119 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
12120 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
12121
12122       </div>
12123       <div class="tags">
12124
12125
12126         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>.
12127
12128
12129       </div>
12130     </div>
12131     <div class="padding"></div>
12132
12133     <div class="entry">
12134       <div class="title">
12135         <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>
12136       </div>
12137       <div class="date">
12138          3rd October 2012
12139       </div>
12140       <div class="body">
12141         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
12142 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
12143 the computer science book collection available in his local
12144 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
12145 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
12146 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
12147 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
12148 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
12149 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
12150 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
12151 recently published books.</p>
12152
12153 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
12154 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
12155 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
12156 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
12157 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
12158 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
12159 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
12160 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
12161 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
12162 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
12163 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
12164 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
12165 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
12166 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
12167 for the library that evening.</p>
12168
12169 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
12170 going to know that for example
12171 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
12172 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
12173 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
12174 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
12175 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
12176 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
12177 book right away.</p>
12178
12179       </div>
12180       <div class="tags">
12181
12182
12183         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12184
12185
12186       </div>
12187     </div>
12188     <div class="padding"></div>
12189
12190     <div class="entry">
12191       <div class="title">
12192         <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>
12193       </div>
12194       <div class="date">
12195         23rd September 2012
12196       </div>
12197       <div class="body">
12198         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
12199 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
12200 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
12201 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
12202 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
12203 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
12204
12205 When I started, I
12206 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
12207 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
12208 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
12209 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
12210 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
12211 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
12212 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
12213
12214 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
12215
12216 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
12217 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
12218 the project files currently available from
12219 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12220
12221 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
12222 the updated
12223 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
12224 and
12225 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
12226 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
12227 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
12228 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
12229
12230       </div>
12231       <div class="tags">
12232
12233
12234         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>.
12235
12236
12237       </div>
12238     </div>
12239     <div class="padding"></div>
12240
12241     <div class="entry">
12242       <div class="title">
12243         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
12244       </div>
12245       <div class="date">
12246         17th September 2012
12247       </div>
12248       <div class="body">
12249         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
12250 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12251 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
12252 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
12253 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
12254 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
12255 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
12256
12257 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12258
12259 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
12260 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
12261 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
12262 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
12263 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
12264 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
12265 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
12266 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
12267 training is anyway very important</p>
12268
12269 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
12270 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
12271 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
12272 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
12273 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
12274
12275 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12276 project?</strong></p>
12277
12278 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
12279 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
12280 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
12281 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
12282 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
12283 hole.</p>
12284
12285 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12286 Edu?</strong></p>
12287
12288 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
12289 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
12290 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
12291 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
12292 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
12293 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
12294 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
12295 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
12296 hassle.</p>
12297
12298 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12299 Edu?</strong></p>
12300
12301 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
12302 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
12303 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
12304 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
12305 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
12306 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
12307 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
12308 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
12309
12310 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12311
12312 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
12313 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
12314 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
12315 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
12316 has the same...</p>
12317
12318 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
12319 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
12320 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
12321 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
12322
12323 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12324 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12325
12326 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
12327 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
12328 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
12329
12330 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
12331 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
12332 don't.</p>
12333
12334 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
12335 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
12336 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
12337 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
12338 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
12339 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
12340 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
12341
12342       </div>
12343       <div class="tags">
12344
12345
12346         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>.
12347
12348
12349       </div>
12350     </div>
12351     <div class="padding"></div>
12352
12353     <div class="entry">
12354       <div class="title">
12355         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
12356       </div>
12357       <div class="date">
12358         15th September 2012
12359       </div>
12360       <div class="body">
12361         <p>After the
12362 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
12363 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
12364 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
12365 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
12366 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
12367 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
12368 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
12369 was
12370 <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
12371 formal working group should be formed.</p>
12372
12373 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
12374 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
12375 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
12376 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
12377 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
12378 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
12379 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
12380 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
12381
12382 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
12383 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
12384 IETF.</p>
12385
12386       </div>
12387       <div class="tags">
12388
12389
12390         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>.
12391
12392
12393       </div>
12394     </div>
12395     <div class="padding"></div>
12396
12397     <div class="entry">
12398       <div class="title">
12399         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
12400       </div>
12401       <div class="date">
12402         12th September 2012
12403       </div>
12404       <div class="body">
12405         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
12406 publication of of
12407 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
12408 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
12409 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
12410 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
12411 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
12412 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
12413 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
12414 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
12415 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
12416 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
12417
12418 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
12419 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
12420 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
12421 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
12422
12423 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
12424 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
12425
12426       </div>
12427       <div class="tags">
12428
12429
12430         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>.
12431
12432
12433       </div>
12434     </div>
12435     <div class="padding"></div>
12436
12437     <div class="entry">
12438       <div class="title">
12439         <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>
12440       </div>
12441       <div class="date">
12442          7th September 2012
12443       </div>
12444       <div class="body">
12445         <p>As I
12446 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
12447 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
12448 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
12449 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
12450 repository for the project</a>.</p>
12451
12452 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
12453 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
12454 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
12455 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
12456
12457 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
12458 PostScript formats at
12459 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
12460 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
12461
12462       </div>
12463       <div class="tags">
12464
12465
12466         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>.
12467
12468
12469       </div>
12470     </div>
12471     <div class="padding"></div>
12472
12473     <div class="entry">
12474       <div class="title">
12475         <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>
12476       </div>
12477       <div class="date">
12478         23rd August 2012
12479       </div>
12480       <div class="body">
12481         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
12482 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
12483 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
12484 revisit the great site
12485 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
12486 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
12487 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
12488
12489       </div>
12490       <div class="tags">
12491
12492
12493         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>.
12494
12495
12496       </div>
12497     </div>
12498     <div class="padding"></div>
12499
12500     <div class="entry">
12501       <div class="title">
12502         <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>
12503       </div>
12504       <div class="date">
12505         17th August 2012
12506       </div>
12507       <div class="body">
12508         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
12509 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
12510 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
12511 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
12512 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
12513 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
12514 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
12515 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
12516 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
12517 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
12518 summer I
12519 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
12520 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
12521 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
12522
12523 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
12524 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
12525 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
12526 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
12527 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
12528 progress:</p>
12529
12530 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
12531
12532 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
12533 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
12534 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
12535 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
12536 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
12537 english version of the docbook source.</p>
12538
12539 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
12540 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
12541 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
12542 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
12543 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
12544 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
12545 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
12546 project files currently available from <a
12547 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12548
12549 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
12550 the updated
12551 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
12552 and
12553 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
12554 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
12555 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
12556 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
12557
12558       </div>
12559       <div class="tags">
12560
12561
12562         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>.
12563
12564
12565       </div>
12566     </div>
12567     <div class="padding"></div>
12568
12569     <div class="entry">
12570       <div class="title">
12571         <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>
12572       </div>
12573       <div class="date">
12574         10th August 2012
12575       </div>
12576       <div class="body">
12577         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
12578 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
12579 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
12580 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
12581 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
12582 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
12583 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
12584 case for the language
12585 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
12586 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
12587
12588 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
12589 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
12590 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
12591 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
12592 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
12593
12594 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
12595 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
12596 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
12597 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
12598 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
12599 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
12600 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
12601 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
12602 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
12603 alias for 'nb'.</p>
12604
12605 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
12606 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
12607 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
12608 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
12609 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
12610 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
12611 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
12612 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
12613 at the same time. :(</p>
12614
12615 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
12616 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
12617 processors. :(</p>
12618
12619 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
12620
12621       </div>
12622       <div class="tags">
12623
12624
12625         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>.
12626
12627
12628       </div>
12629     </div>
12630     <div class="padding"></div>
12631
12632     <div class="entry">
12633       <div class="title">
12634         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
12635       </div>
12636       <div class="date">
12637         31st July 2012
12638       </div>
12639       <div class="body">
12640         <p>I tried to send this text to the
12641 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
12642 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
12643 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
12644 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
12645 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
12646 out.</p>
12647
12648 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
12649 learning curve at the moment.</p>
12650
12651 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
12652 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
12653 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
12654 available from
12655 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
12656 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
12657 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
12658 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
12659 Squeeze.</p>
12660
12661 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
12662 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
12663 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
12664 problems.</p>
12665
12666 <ul>
12667
12668 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
12669    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
12670    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
12671    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
12672    index references spanning several pages (See
12673    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
12674    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
12675    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
12676
12677 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
12678    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
12679    #683163</a>).</li>
12680
12681 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
12682    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
12683    footnote and text body, see
12684    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
12685    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
12686    refs listed are not right).</li>
12687
12688 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
12689
12690 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
12691    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
12692
12693 </ul>
12694
12695 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
12696 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
12697 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
12698
12699 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
12700
12701       </div>
12702       <div class="tags">
12703
12704
12705         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>.
12706
12707
12708       </div>
12709     </div>
12710     <div class="padding"></div>
12711
12712     <div class="entry">
12713       <div class="title">
12714         <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>
12715       </div>
12716       <div class="date">
12717         21st July 2012
12718       </div>
12719       <div class="body">
12720         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
12721 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
12722 norwegian version</a> of the book
12723 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
12724 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
12725 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
12726 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
12727 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12728
12729 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
12730 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
12731 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
12732 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
12733 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
12734 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
12735 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
12736 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
12737 print. :)</p>
12738
12739 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
12740 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
12741 language.</p>
12742
12743       </div>
12744       <div class="tags">
12745
12746
12747         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>.
12748
12749
12750       </div>
12751     </div>
12752     <div class="padding"></div>
12753
12754     <div class="entry">
12755       <div class="title">
12756         <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>
12757       </div>
12758       <div class="date">
12759         16th July 2012
12760       </div>
12761       <div class="body">
12762         <p>I am currently working on a
12763 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
12764 to translate</a> the book
12765 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
12766 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
12767 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
12768 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
12769 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
12770 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
12771 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12772
12773 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
12774 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
12775 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
12776 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
12777 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
12778 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
12779 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
12780 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
12781 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
12782
12783       </div>
12784       <div class="tags">
12785
12786
12787         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>.
12788
12789
12790       </div>
12791     </div>
12792     <div class="padding"></div>
12793
12794     <div class="entry">
12795       <div class="title">
12796         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
12797       </div>
12798       <div class="date">
12799          9th July 2012
12800       </div>
12801       <div class="body">
12802         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12803 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
12804 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
12805 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
12806 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
12807 to adjust and scale the just released
12808 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
12809 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
12810 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
12811
12812 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12813
12814 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
12815 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
12816 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
12817 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
12818 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
12819 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
12820 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
12821 perspective when working with IT.</p>
12822
12823 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12824 project?</strong></p>
12825
12826 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
12827 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
12828 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
12829 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
12830 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
12831 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
12832
12833 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12834 Edu?</strong></p>
12835
12836 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
12837 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
12838 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
12839 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
12840 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
12841 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
12842 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
12843 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
12844 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
12845 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
12846 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
12847 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
12848 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
12849 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
12850 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
12851 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
12852 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
12853 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
12854 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
12855 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
12856 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
12857 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
12858 quicker to update.
12859
12860 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12861 Edu?</strong></p>
12862
12863 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
12864 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
12865 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
12866 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
12867 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
12868 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
12869
12870 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
12871 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
12872 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
12873 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
12874 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
12875 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
12876 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
12877 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
12878 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
12879 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
12880 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
12881 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
12882 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
12883 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
12884 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
12885
12886 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
12887 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
12888 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
12889 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
12890 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
12891 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
12892 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
12893 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
12894
12895 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
12896 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
12897 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
12898 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
12899 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
12900 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
12901 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
12902 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
12903 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
12904 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
12905 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
12906 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
12907 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
12908 sound file.</p>
12909
12910 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
12911 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
12912 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
12913 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
12914 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
12915 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
12916 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
12917 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
12918 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
12919
12920 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12921
12922 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
12923 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
12924 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
12925 )</p>
12926
12927 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12928 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12929
12930 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
12931 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
12932 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
12933 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
12934 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
12935 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
12936 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
12937 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
12938 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
12939 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
12940 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
12941 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
12942 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
12943 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
12944 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
12945
12946 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
12947 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
12948 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
12949 management with Airtime</a>,
12950 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
12951 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
12952 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
12953 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
12954 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
12955
12956       </div>
12957       <div class="tags">
12958
12959
12960         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>.
12961
12962
12963       </div>
12964     </div>
12965     <div class="padding"></div>
12966
12967     <div class="entry">
12968       <div class="title">
12969         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
12970       </div>
12971       <div class="date">
12972          8th July 2012
12973       </div>
12974       <div class="body">
12975         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
12976 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
12977 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
12978 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
12979 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
12980 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
12981 Steinberg in his blog post
12982 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
12983 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
12984 spending of your tax money.</p>
12985
12986 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
12987 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
12988 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
12989 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
12990 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
12991 purchases.</p>
12992
12993       </div>
12994       <div class="tags">
12995
12996
12997         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>.
12998
12999
13000       </div>
13001     </div>
13002     <div class="padding"></div>
13003
13004     <div class="entry">
13005       <div class="title">
13006         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
13007       </div>
13008       <div class="date">
13009          7th July 2012
13010       </div>
13011       <div class="body">
13012         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
13013 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
13014 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
13015 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
13016 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
13017 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
13018 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
13019 receive.  The software is
13020
13021 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
13022 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
13023 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
13024 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
13025 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
13026 Windows</a>.</p>
13027
13028 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
13029 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
13030
13031 <p><ul>
13032
13033   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
13034     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
13035
13036   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
13037     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
13038     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
13039     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
13040     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
13041     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
13042     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
13043     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
13044     </li>
13045
13046   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
13047     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
13048
13049   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
13050     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
13051
13052   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
13053     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
13054
13055   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
13056
13057   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
13058     formats </li>
13059
13060   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
13061     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
13062     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
13063     (as separate sets)</li>
13064
13065   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
13066     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
13067     percentage)</li>
13068
13069   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
13070     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
13071     memory):
13072     <ul>
13073       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
13074       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
13075       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
13076       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
13077       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
13078       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
13079       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
13080       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
13081       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
13082       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
13083           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
13084           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
13085           activity)</li>
13086       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
13087       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
13088     </ul></li>
13089
13090   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
13091     <ul>
13092       <li>Break periods</li>
13093       <li>For teacher(s):
13094         <ul>
13095           <li>Not available periods</li>
13096           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
13097           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
13098           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
13099           <li>Min hours daily</li>
13100           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
13101
13102           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
13103             days per week</li>
13104         </ul></li>
13105       <li>For students (sets):
13106         <ul>
13107           <li>Not available periods</li>
13108           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
13109           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
13110           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
13111           <li>Min hours daily</li>
13112           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
13113
13114           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
13115             days per week</li>
13116         </ul></li>
13117       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
13118         <ul>
13119           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
13120           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
13121           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
13122           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
13123           <li>End(s) students day</li>
13124           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
13125           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
13126             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
13127           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
13128           <li>Not overlapping</li>
13129           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
13130           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
13131         </ul></li>
13132     </ul></li>
13133
13134   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
13135     <ul>
13136       <li>Room not available periods</li>
13137       <li>For teacher(s):
13138         <ul>
13139           <li>Home room(s)</li>
13140           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
13141           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
13142         </ul>
13143       </li>
13144
13145       <li>For students (sets):
13146         <ul>
13147           <li>Home room(s)</li>
13148           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
13149           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
13150         </ul>
13151       </li>
13152       <li>Preferred room(s):
13153         <ul>
13154           <li>For a subject</li>
13155           <li>For an activity tag</li>
13156           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
13157           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
13158         </ul>
13159       </li>
13160
13161       <li>For a set of activities:
13162         <ul>
13163           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
13164         </ul>
13165       </li>
13166     </ul>
13167   </li>
13168 </ul></p>
13169
13170 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
13171 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
13172 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
13173 manually, check it out.
13174
13175 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
13176 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
13177 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
13178 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
13179 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
13180 section</a>.</p>
13181
13182       </div>
13183       <div class="tags">
13184
13185
13186         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>.
13187
13188
13189       </div>
13190     </div>
13191     <div class="padding"></div>
13192
13193     <div class="entry">
13194       <div class="title">
13195         <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>
13196       </div>
13197       <div class="date">
13198          3rd July 2012
13199       </div>
13200       <div class="body">
13201         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
13202 project (Norwegian version of
13203 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
13204 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
13205 a problem with the municipalities using
13206 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
13207 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
13208 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
13209 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
13210 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
13211 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
13212 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
13213 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
13214 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
13215 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
13216 the From: header.</p>
13217
13218 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
13219 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
13220 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
13221 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
13222 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
13223 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
13224 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
13225 behaviour.</p>
13226
13227 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
13228 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
13229 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
13230 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
13231 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
13232 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
13233 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
13234
13235       </div>
13236       <div class="tags">
13237
13238
13239         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>.
13240
13241
13242       </div>
13243     </div>
13244     <div class="padding"></div>
13245
13246     <div class="entry">
13247       <div class="title">
13248         <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>
13249       </div>
13250       <div class="date">
13251         26th June 2012
13252       </div>
13253       <div class="body">
13254         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
13255 another interview with the people behind
13256 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
13257 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
13258 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
13259 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
13260 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
13261 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13262 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
13263
13264 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13265
13266 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
13267 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
13268 ICT in schools</p>
13269
13270 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13271 project?</strong></p>
13272
13273 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
13274 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
13275 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
13276 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
13277
13278 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13279 Edu?</strong></p>
13280
13281 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
13282 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
13283 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
13284 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
13285
13286 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13287 Edu?</strong></p>
13288
13289 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
13290 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
13291 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
13292 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
13293 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
13294 technologies in school.</p>
13295
13296 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13297
13298 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
13299 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
13300 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
13301
13302 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13303 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13304
13305 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
13306 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
13307 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
13308 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
13309
13310 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
13311 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
13312 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
13313
13314 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
13315 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
13316 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
13317 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
13318 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
13319 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
13320 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
13321 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
13322 working there.</p>
13323
13324       </div>
13325       <div class="tags">
13326
13327
13328         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>.
13329
13330
13331       </div>
13332     </div>
13333     <div class="padding"></div>
13334
13335     <div class="entry">
13336       <div class="title">
13337         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
13338       </div>
13339       <div class="date">
13340         24th June 2012
13341       </div>
13342       <div class="body">
13343         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
13344 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
13345 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
13346 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
13347 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
13348 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
13349 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
13350 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
13351 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
13352 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
13353 missing in my book.</p>
13354
13355 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
13356 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
13357 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
13358 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
13359 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
13360 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
13361 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
13362
13363       </div>
13364       <div class="tags">
13365
13366
13367         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>.
13368
13369
13370       </div>
13371     </div>
13372     <div class="padding"></div>
13373
13374     <div class="entry">
13375       <div class="title">
13376         <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>
13377       </div>
13378       <div class="date">
13379         11th June 2012
13380       </div>
13381       <div class="body">
13382         <p>During my work on
13383 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
13384 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
13385 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
13386 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
13387 explanation.</p>
13388
13389 <p><ul>
13390
13391 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
13392 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
13393 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
13394 system depend on tasksel tasks in
13395 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
13396 installation.</li>
13397
13398 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
13399 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
13400 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
13401 at least try to enable it for these services:
13402 <ul>
13403
13404   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
13405     quotas.</li>
13406   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
13407   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
13408   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
13409   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
13410   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
13411
13412 </ul></li>
13413
13414 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
13415 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
13416 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
13417 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
13418
13419 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
13420 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
13421 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
13422
13423 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
13424 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
13425 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
13426 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
13427 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
13428 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
13429
13430 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
13431 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
13432 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
13433 in Wheezy.
13434
13435 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
13436 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
13437 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
13438
13439 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
13440 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
13441 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
13442 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
13443
13444 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
13445 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
13446 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
13447 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
13448
13449 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
13450 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
13451 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
13452
13453 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
13454 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
13455 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
13456
13457 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
13458 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
13459 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
13460 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
13461 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
13462
13463 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
13464 <ul>
13465
13466 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
13467 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
13468 <li>and probably more?</li>
13469 </ul></li>
13470
13471 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
13472 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
13473 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
13474 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
13475 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
13476 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
13477 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
13478 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
13479
13480
13481 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
13482 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
13483 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
13484 use.</li>
13485
13486 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
13487 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
13488 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
13489 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
13490 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
13491
13492 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
13493 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
13494 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
13495 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
13496 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
13497 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
13498
13499 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
13500 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
13501 There are at least three implementations,
13502 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
13503 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
13504 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
13505 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
13506 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
13507 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
13508 given room.</li>
13509
13510 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
13511 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
13512 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
13513 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
13514 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
13515 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
13516 investigated.</li>
13517
13518 </ul></p>
13519
13520 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
13521 version.</p>
13522
13523       </div>
13524       <div class="tags">
13525
13526
13527         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>.
13528
13529
13530       </div>
13531     </div>
13532     <div class="padding"></div>
13533
13534     <div class="entry">
13535       <div class="title">
13536         <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>
13537       </div>
13538       <div class="date">
13539          9th June 2012
13540       </div>
13541       <div class="body">
13542         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
13543 <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
13544 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
13545 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
13546 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
13547 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
13548 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
13549 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
13550 be willing to pay for.</p>
13551
13552 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
13553 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
13554 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
13555 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
13556 Orwell</a>.</p>
13557
13558       </div>
13559       <div class="tags">
13560
13561
13562         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>.
13563
13564
13565       </div>
13566     </div>
13567     <div class="padding"></div>
13568
13569     <div class="entry">
13570       <div class="title">
13571         <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>
13572       </div>
13573       <div class="date">
13574          6th June 2012
13575       </div>
13576       <div class="body">
13577         <p>A few days ago
13578 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
13579 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
13580 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
13581 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
13582 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
13583 code for HP, Dell and IBM
13584 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
13585 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
13586 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
13587 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
13588 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
13589
13590 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
13591 output:
13592
13593 <blockquote><pre>
13594 % 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>
13595 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": ""})
13596 %
13597 </pre></blockquote>
13598
13599 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
13600 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
13601 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
13602
13603       </div>
13604       <div class="tags">
13605
13606
13607         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>.
13608
13609
13610       </div>
13611     </div>
13612     <div class="padding"></div>
13613
13614     <div class="entry">
13615       <div class="title">
13616         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
13617       </div>
13618       <div class="date">
13619          2nd June 2012
13620       </div>
13621       <div class="body">
13622         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
13623 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
13624 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
13625 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
13626 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13627 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
13628
13629 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13630
13631 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
13632 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
13633 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
13634 by Angela).</p>
13635
13636 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
13637 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
13638 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
13639 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
13640 becoming an osteopath.</p>
13641
13642 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
13643 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
13644 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
13645 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
13646 skills with communication skills.</p>
13647
13648 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13649 project?</strong></p>
13650
13651 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
13652 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
13653 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
13654 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
13655 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
13656
13657 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
13658 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
13659 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
13660 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
13661 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
13662 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
13663 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
13664 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
13665 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
13666
13667 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
13668 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
13669 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
13670
13671 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
13672
13673 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
13674 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
13675 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
13676 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
13677 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
13678 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
13679 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
13680 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
13681 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
13682 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
13683 point.</p>
13684
13685 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
13686 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
13687 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
13688 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
13689 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
13690 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
13691
13692 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
13693 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
13694 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
13695 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
13696 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
13697 spare time.</p>
13698
13699 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
13700 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
13701 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
13702 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
13703 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
13704
13705 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
13706 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
13707 avoidance do exist.</p>
13708
13709 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
13710 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
13711 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
13712 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
13713 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
13714 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
13715 and probably a gain for all.</p>
13716
13717 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13718 Edu?</strong></p>
13719
13720 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
13721 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
13722 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
13723 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
13724 project communication, honest communication within the group of
13725 developers, etc.</p>
13726
13727 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13728 Edu?</strong></p>
13729
13730 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
13731
13732 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
13733 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
13734 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
13735 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
13736 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
13737 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
13738 contribute).</p>
13739
13740 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
13741 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
13742 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
13743 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
13744 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
13745 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
13746 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
13747 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
13748 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
13749 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
13750
13751 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13752
13753 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
13754
13755 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
13756 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
13757 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
13758
13759 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
13760 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
13761 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
13762 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
13763
13764 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
13765 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
13766 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
13767 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
13768 whiteboard.</p>
13769
13770 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
13771
13772 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13773 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13774
13775 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
13776 enrol people.</p>
13777
13778       </div>
13779       <div class="tags">
13780
13781
13782         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>.
13783
13784
13785       </div>
13786     </div>
13787     <div class="padding"></div>
13788
13789     <div class="entry">
13790       <div class="title">
13791         <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>
13792       </div>
13793       <div class="date">
13794          1st June 2012
13795       </div>
13796       <div class="body">
13797         <p>A few years ago I wrote
13798 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
13799 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
13800 I have learned from colleges here at the
13801 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
13802 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
13803 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
13804 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
13805 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
13806
13807 <p><pre>
13808 use strict;
13809 use warnings;
13810 use SOAP::Lite;
13811 use Data::Dumper;
13812 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
13813 my $App = 'test';
13814 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
13815 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
13816 my $s = SOAP::Lite
13817     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
13818     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
13819     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
13820     ;
13821 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
13822     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
13823     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
13824     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
13825 );
13826 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
13827 </pre></p>
13828
13829 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
13830
13831 <p><pre>
13832 $VAR1 = {
13833           'Asset' => {
13834                      'Entitlements' => {
13835                                        'EntitlementData' => [
13836                                                             {
13837                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
13838                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
13839                                                               'Provider' => '',
13840                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
13841                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
13842                                                             },
13843                                                             {
13844                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
13845                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
13846                                                               'Provider' => '',
13847                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
13848                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
13849                                                             },
13850                                                             {
13851                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
13852                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
13853                                                               'Provider' => '',
13854                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
13855                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
13856                                                             }
13857                                                           ]
13858                                      },
13859                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
13860                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
13861                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
13862                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
13863                                           'Buid' => '2323',
13864                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
13865                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
13866                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
13867                                         }
13868                    }
13869         };
13870 </pre></p>
13871
13872 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
13873 service outside the
13874 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
13875 documentation</a>, and according to
13876 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
13877 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
13878 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
13879
13880 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
13881 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
13882
13883       </div>
13884       <div class="tags">
13885
13886
13887         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>.
13888
13889
13890       </div>
13891     </div>
13892     <div class="padding"></div>
13893
13894     <div class="entry">
13895       <div class="title">
13896         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
13897       </div>
13898       <div class="date">
13899         31st May 2012
13900       </div>
13901       <div class="body">
13902         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
13903 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
13904 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
13905 running Debian Squeeze, where
13906 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
13907 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
13908 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
13909 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
13910 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
13911 another day.</p>
13912
13913 <p>After calibration, I get a
13914 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
13915 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
13916 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
13917 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
13918 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
13919 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
13920 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
13921 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
13922 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
13923 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
13924 and a simple</p>
13925
13926 <p><pre>
13927 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
13928 </pre></p>
13929
13930 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
13931 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
13932 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
13933 enough for now.</p>
13934
13935       </div>
13936       <div class="tags">
13937
13938
13939         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13940
13941
13942       </div>
13943     </div>
13944     <div class="padding"></div>
13945
13946     <div class="entry">
13947       <div class="title">
13948         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
13949       </div>
13950       <div class="date">
13951         27th May 2012
13952       </div>
13953       <div class="body">
13954         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
13955 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
13956 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
13957 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
13958 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
13959 since then, helping to make sure the
13960 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13961 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
13962
13963 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13964
13965 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
13966 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
13967 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
13968 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
13969 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
13970 our computer network.</p>
13971
13972 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
13973 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
13974 (4 months).</p>
13975
13976 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13977 project?</strong></p>
13978
13979 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
13980 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
13981 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
13982 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
13983 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
13984 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
13985 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
13986 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
13987 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
13988 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
13989 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
13990 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
13991 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
13992 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
13993
13994 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13995 Edu?</strong></p>
13996
13997 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
13998 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
13999 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
14000 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
14001 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
14002 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
14003 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
14004 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
14005
14006 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14007 Edu?</strong></p>
14008
14009 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
14010 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
14011 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
14012 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
14013 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
14014 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
14015 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
14016 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
14017 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
14018 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
14019 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
14020 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
14021
14022 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14023
14024 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
14025 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
14026 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
14027
14028 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14029 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14030
14031 <p><ol>
14032
14033 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
14034 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
14035 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
14036 developing.</li>
14037
14038 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
14039 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
14040 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
14041 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
14042 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
14043
14044 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
14045 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
14046 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
14047
14048 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
14049 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
14050 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
14051 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
14052
14053 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
14054 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
14055 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
14056
14057 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
14058
14059 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
14060 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
14061 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
14062 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
14063
14064 </ol></p>
14065
14066       </div>
14067       <div class="tags">
14068
14069
14070         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>.
14071
14072
14073       </div>
14074     </div>
14075     <div class="padding"></div>
14076
14077     <div class="entry">
14078       <div class="title">
14079         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
14080       </div>
14081       <div class="date">
14082         26th May 2012
14083       </div>
14084       <div class="body">
14085         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
14086 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
14087 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
14088 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
14089 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
14090
14091 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
14092 <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>
14093 comment:</p>
14094
14095 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
14096 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
14097 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
14098 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
14099 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
14100 </blockquote></p>
14101
14102 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
14103 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
14104 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
14105 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
14106 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
14107 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
14108 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
14109 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
14110 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
14111 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
14112 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
14113 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
14114 of wasted effort.</p>
14115
14116 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
14117 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
14118 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
14119
14120 <p>See
14121 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
14122 and
14123 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
14124 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
14125 </blockquote></p>
14126
14127       </div>
14128       <div class="tags">
14129
14130
14131         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>.
14132
14133
14134       </div>
14135     </div>
14136     <div class="padding"></div>
14137
14138     <div class="entry">
14139       <div class="title">
14140         <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>
14141       </div>
14142       <div class="date">
14143         18th May 2012
14144       </div>
14145       <div class="body">
14146         <p>In january, I
14147 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
14148 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
14149 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
14150 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
14151 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
14152 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
14153 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
14154 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
14155 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
14156 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
14157
14158 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
14159 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
14160 drivers. :)</p>
14161
14162       </div>
14163       <div class="tags">
14164
14165
14166         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14167
14168
14169       </div>
14170     </div>
14171     <div class="padding"></div>
14172
14173     <div class="entry">
14174       <div class="title">
14175         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
14176       </div>
14177       <div class="date">
14178         13th May 2012
14179       </div>
14180       <div class="body">
14181         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
14182 publish another interview with the people behind
14183 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
14184 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
14185 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
14186 details get right before release.
14187
14188 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14189
14190 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
14191 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
14192 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
14193 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
14194 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
14195 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
14196 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
14197 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
14198
14199 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
14200 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
14201 home since 2006.</p>
14202
14203 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14204 project?</strong></p>
14205
14206 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
14207 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
14208 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
14209 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
14210 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
14211 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
14212
14213 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
14214 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
14215 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
14216 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
14217 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
14218 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
14219 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
14220 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
14221 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
14222 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
14223 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
14224 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
14225 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
14226 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
14227 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
14228 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
14229
14230 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14231 Edu?</strong></p>
14232
14233 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
14234 for me as today.</p>
14235
14236 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
14237
14238 <p><ul>
14239
14240 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
14241 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
14242
14243 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
14244 cost.</li>
14245
14246 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
14247 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
14248 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
14249 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
14250 server</li>
14251
14252 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
14253 school.</li>
14254
14255 </ul></p>
14256
14257 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
14258 came up in this way:</p>
14259
14260 <p><ul>
14261
14262 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
14263 now.</li>
14264
14265 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
14266 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
14267 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
14268
14269 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
14270 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
14271 interfaces used in the past.</li>
14272
14273 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
14274 different needs.</li>
14275
14276 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
14277
14278 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
14279 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
14280 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
14281
14282 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
14283 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
14284
14285 </ul></p>
14286
14287 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14288 Edu?</strong></p>
14289
14290 <p><ul>
14291
14292 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
14293 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
14294 whole municipality areas.</li>
14295
14296 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
14297 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
14298 politicians.</li>
14299
14300 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
14301
14302 </ul></p>
14303
14304 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14305
14306 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
14307 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
14308 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
14309 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
14310 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
14311 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
14312
14313 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
14314 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
14315 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
14316 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
14317 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
14318
14319 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14320 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14321
14322 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
14323 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
14324 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
14325
14326       </div>
14327       <div class="tags">
14328
14329
14330         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>.
14331
14332
14333       </div>
14334     </div>
14335     <div class="padding"></div>
14336
14337     <div class="entry">
14338       <div class="title">
14339         <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>
14340       </div>
14341       <div class="date">
14342         30th April 2012
14343       </div>
14344       <div class="body">
14345         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
14346 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
14347
14348 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
14349 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
14350 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
14351 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
14352 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
14353 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
14354 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
14355 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
14356 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
14357 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
14358 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
14359 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
14360 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
14361 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
14362 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
14363 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
14364
14365 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
14366 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
14367 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
14368 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
14369 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
14370 finally found a Danish supplier
14371 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
14372 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
14373 days ago.</p>
14374
14375 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
14376 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
14377 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
14378 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
14379 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
14380 toys.</p>
14381
14382       </div>
14383       <div class="tags">
14384
14385
14386         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14387
14388
14389       </div>
14390     </div>
14391     <div class="padding"></div>
14392
14393     <div class="entry">
14394       <div class="title">
14395         <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>
14396       </div>
14397       <div class="date">
14398         26th April 2012
14399       </div>
14400       <div class="body">
14401         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
14402 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
14403 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
14404 that the video editor application included with
14405 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
14406 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
14407 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
14408
14409 <p><blockquote>
14410 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
14411 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
14412 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
14413 </blockquote></p>
14414
14415 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
14416
14417 <p><blockquote>
14418 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
14419 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
14420 </blockquote></p>
14421
14422 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
14423 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
14424 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
14425 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
14426 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
14427 video.  AMR is
14428 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
14429 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
14430 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
14431 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
14432 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
14433 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
14434 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
14435
14436 <p>I know why I prefer
14437 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
14438 standards</a> also for video.</p>
14439
14440       </div>
14441       <div class="tags">
14442
14443
14444         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/h264">h264</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>.
14445
14446
14447       </div>
14448     </div>
14449     <div class="padding"></div>
14450
14451     <div class="entry">
14452       <div class="title">
14453         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
14454       </div>
14455       <div class="date">
14456         19th April 2012
14457       </div>
14458       <div class="body">
14459         <p>Here in Norway, the
14460 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
14461 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
14462 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
14463 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
14464 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
14465 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
14466 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
14467 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
14468 on the same level.</p>
14469
14470 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
14471 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
14472 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
14473 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
14474 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
14475 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
14476 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
14477 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
14478 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
14479 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
14480 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
14481 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
14482 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
14483 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
14484 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
14485 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
14486 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
14487 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
14488
14489 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
14490 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
14491 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
14492 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
14493 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
14494 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
14495 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
14496 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
14497
14498 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
14499 from Simon Phipps
14500 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
14501 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
14502
14503 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
14504 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
14505 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
14506 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
14507 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
14508 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
14509 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
14510 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
14511 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
14512
14513       </div>
14514       <div class="tags">
14515
14516
14517         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>.
14518
14519
14520       </div>
14521     </div>
14522     <div class="padding"></div>
14523
14524     <div class="entry">
14525       <div class="title">
14526         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
14527       </div>
14528       <div class="date">
14529         15th April 2012
14530       </div>
14531       <div class="body">
14532         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
14533 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
14534 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
14535 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
14536 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
14537 up in the recently released
14538 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
14539 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
14540
14541 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14542
14543 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
14544 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
14545 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
14546 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
14547 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
14548 information technology and science/technology.</p>
14549
14550 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14551 project?</strong></p>
14552
14553 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
14554 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
14555 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
14556 contributing.</p>
14557
14558 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14559 Edu?</strong></p>
14560
14561 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
14562 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
14563 Debian Project!</p>
14564
14565 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14566 Edu?</strong></p>
14567
14568 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
14569 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
14570 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
14571 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
14572 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
14573 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
14574 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
14575
14576 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
14577 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
14578
14579 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14580
14581 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
14582 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
14583 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
14584 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
14585
14586 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14587 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14588
14589 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
14590 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
14591 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
14592 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
14593 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
14594 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
14595 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
14596
14597 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
14598 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
14599 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
14600 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
14601 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
14602 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
14603 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
14604 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
14605
14606       </div>
14607       <div class="tags">
14608
14609
14610         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>.
14611
14612
14613       </div>
14614     </div>
14615     <div class="padding"></div>
14616
14617     <div class="entry">
14618       <div class="title">
14619         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
14620       </div>
14621       <div class="date">
14622          8th April 2012
14623       </div>
14624       <div class="body">
14625         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
14626 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
14627 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
14628 contributor to the
14629 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
14630 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
14631
14632 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14633
14634 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
14635 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
14636
14637 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14638 project?</strong></p>
14639
14640 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
14641 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
14642 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
14643 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
14644 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
14645 "localisation".</p>
14646
14647 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14648 Edu?</strong></p>
14649
14650 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14651 Edu?</strong></p>
14652
14653 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
14654 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
14655 education system.</p>
14656
14657 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
14658 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
14659 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
14660 money on the latest hardware.</p>
14661
14662 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14663
14664 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
14665 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
14666 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
14667
14668 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14669 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14670
14671 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
14672 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
14673 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
14674
14675       </div>
14676       <div class="tags">
14677
14678
14679         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>.
14680
14681
14682       </div>
14683     </div>
14684     <div class="padding"></div>
14685
14686     <div class="entry">
14687       <div class="title">
14688         <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>
14689       </div>
14690       <div class="date">
14691          6th April 2012
14692       </div>
14693       <div class="body">
14694         <p>Recently I have spent time with
14695 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
14696 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
14697 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
14698 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
14699 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
14700 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
14701 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
14702 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
14703
14704 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
14705 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
14706 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
14707 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
14708 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
14709 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
14710 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
14711 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
14712
14713 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
14714 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
14715 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
14716 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
14717 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
14718 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
14719 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
14720 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
14721
14722 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
14723 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
14724 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
14725 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
14726 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
14727 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
14728 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
14729 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
14730 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
14731 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
14732
14733 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
14734 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
14735 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
14736 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
14737
14738 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
14739 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
14740
14741 <p>Update 2015-08-04: The
14742 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-edu/upstream/kde-icon-cache.git/">source
14743 of the scripts and associated Debian package</a> is available from the
14744 Debian Edu github repository.</p>
14745
14746       </div>
14747       <div class="tags">
14748
14749
14750         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>.
14751
14752
14753       </div>
14754     </div>
14755     <div class="padding"></div>
14756
14757     <div class="entry">
14758       <div class="title">
14759         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
14760       </div>
14761       <div class="date">
14762          5th April 2012
14763       </div>
14764       <div class="body">
14765         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
14766 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
14767 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
14768 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
14769 for schools.  Check out his article
14770 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
14771 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
14772
14773       </div>
14774       <div class="tags">
14775
14776
14777         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>.
14778
14779
14780       </div>
14781     </div>
14782     <div class="padding"></div>
14783
14784     <div class="entry">
14785       <div class="title">
14786         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
14787       </div>
14788       <div class="date">
14789          1st April 2012
14790       </div>
14791       <div class="body">
14792         <p>Germany is a core area for the
14793 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
14794 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
14795 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
14796
14797 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14798
14799 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
14800 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
14801 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
14802 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
14803 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
14804 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
14805 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
14806 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
14807
14808 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
14809 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
14810 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
14811 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
14812 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
14813 the end of April this year.</p>
14814
14815 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14816 project?</strong></p>
14817
14818 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
14819 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
14820 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
14821 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
14822 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
14823 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
14824 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
14825 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
14826 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
14827 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
14828 Skolelinux.</p>
14829
14830 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
14831 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
14832 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
14833 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
14834 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
14835 the admin teachers.</p>
14836
14837 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14838 Edu?</strong></p>
14839
14840 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
14841 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
14842 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
14843
14844 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
14845 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
14846 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
14847 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
14848 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
14849
14850 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14851 Edu?</strong></p>
14852
14853 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
14854
14855 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14856
14857 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
14858 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
14859 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
14860 LibreOffice.</p>
14861
14862 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14863 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14864
14865 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
14866 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
14867 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
14868
14869       </div>
14870       <div class="tags">
14871
14872
14873         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>.
14874
14875
14876       </div>
14877     </div>
14878     <div class="padding"></div>
14879
14880     <div class="entry">
14881       <div class="title">
14882         <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>
14883       </div>
14884       <div class="date">
14885         25th March 2012
14886       </div>
14887       <div class="body">
14888         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
14889
14890 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
14891 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
14892 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
14893 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
14894 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
14895 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
14896 and download as a
14897 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
14898 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
14899
14900 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
14901   <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"' />
14902     <p>Download video as
14903       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
14904 </video></p>
14905
14906       </div>
14907       <div class="tags">
14908
14909
14910         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>.
14911
14912
14913       </div>
14914     </div>
14915     <div class="padding"></div>
14916
14917     <div class="entry">
14918       <div class="title">
14919         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
14920       </div>
14921       <div class="date">
14922         19th March 2012
14923       </div>
14924       <div class="body">
14925         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
14926 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
14927 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
14928 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
14929 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
14930
14931 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14932
14933 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
14934 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
14935 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
14936 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
14937 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
14938 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
14939 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
14940 installations.</p>
14941
14942 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14943 project?</strong></p>
14944
14945 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
14946 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
14947 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
14948 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
14949 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
14950 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
14951 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
14952 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
14953 these things we decided to try it.</p>
14954
14955 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14956 Edu?</strong></p>
14957
14958 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
14959 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
14960 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
14961 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
14962 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
14963 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
14964 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
14965 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
14966
14967 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14968 Edu?</strong></p>
14969
14970 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
14971 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
14972 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
14973 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
14974 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
14975
14976 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14977
14978 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
14979 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
14980 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
14981 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
14982 that counts...)</p>
14983
14984 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14985 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14986
14987 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
14988 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
14989 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
14990 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
14991 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
14992 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
14993 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
14994 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
14995 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
14996 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
14997 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
14998
14999 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
15000 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
15001 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
15002
15003       </div>
15004       <div class="tags">
15005
15006
15007         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>.
15008
15009
15010       </div>
15011     </div>
15012     <div class="padding"></div>
15013
15014     <div class="entry">
15015       <div class="title">
15016         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
15017       </div>
15018       <div class="date">
15019         16th March 2012
15020       </div>
15021       <div class="body">
15022         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
15023 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
15024 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
15025 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
15026
15027 <ol>
15028
15029 <li>The documentation is written in a
15030 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
15031 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
15032 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
15033 docbook XML.</li>
15034
15035 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
15036 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
15037 with the translated text.</li>
15038
15039 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
15040 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
15041 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
15042 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
15043 images.</li>
15044
15045 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
15046 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
15047
15048 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
15049 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
15050
15051 </ol>
15052
15053 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
15054 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
15055 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
15056 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
15057 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
15058
15059 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
15060 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
15061 package</a>.</p>
15062
15063       </div>
15064       <div class="tags">
15065
15066
15067         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>.
15068
15069
15070       </div>
15071     </div>
15072     <div class="padding"></div>
15073
15074     <div class="entry">
15075       <div class="title">
15076         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
15077       </div>
15078       <div class="date">
15079         11th March 2012
15080       </div>
15081       <div class="body">
15082         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
15083 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
15084 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
15085 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
15086 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
15087 you have not done so already.</p>
15088
15089 <p>I plan to present the new version at
15090 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
15091 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
15092 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
15093
15094       </div>
15095       <div class="tags">
15096
15097
15098         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>.
15099
15100
15101       </div>
15102     </div>
15103     <div class="padding"></div>
15104
15105     <div class="entry">
15106       <div class="title">
15107         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
15108       </div>
15109       <div class="date">
15110          9th March 2012
15111       </div>
15112       <div class="body">
15113         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
15114 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
15115 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
15116 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
15117 more international audience.</p>
15118
15119 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
15120 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
15121 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
15122 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
15123 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
15124 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
15125 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
15126
15127
15128 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
15129
15130 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
15131 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
15132 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
15133 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
15134 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
15135 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
15136 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
15137 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
15138 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
15139 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
15140 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
15141
15142 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
15143 project?</strong></p>
15144
15145 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
15146 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
15147 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
15148 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
15149 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
15150 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
15151 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
15152 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
15153 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
15154 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
15155 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
15156 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
15157 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
15158
15159 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15160 Edu?</strong></p>
15161
15162 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
15163 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
15164 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
15165 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
15166 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
15167 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
15168 Japan.</p>
15169
15170 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15171 Edu?</strong></p>
15172
15173 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
15174 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
15175 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
15176 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
15177 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
15178 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
15179 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
15180 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
15181 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
15182 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
15183 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
15184 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
15185 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
15186 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
15187 help.</p>
15188
15189 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
15190
15191 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
15192 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
15193 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
15194 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
15195 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
15196 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
15197 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
15198 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
15199 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
15200 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
15201 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
15202
15203 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
15204 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
15205
15206 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
15207 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
15208 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
15209 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
15210 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
15211 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
15212 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
15213 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
15214 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
15215 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
15216 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
15217 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
15218
15219       </div>
15220       <div class="tags">
15221
15222
15223         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>.
15224
15225
15226       </div>
15227     </div>
15228     <div class="padding"></div>
15229
15230     <div class="entry">
15231       <div class="title">
15232         <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>
15233       </div>
15234       <div class="date">
15235          7th March 2012
15236       </div>
15237       <div class="body">
15238         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
15239
15240 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
15241 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
15242 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
15243 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
15244 download as a
15245 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
15246 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
15247
15248 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
15249   <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"' />
15250     <p>Download video as
15251       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
15252 </video></p>
15253
15254       </div>
15255       <div class="tags">
15256
15257
15258         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>.
15259
15260
15261       </div>
15262     </div>
15263     <div class="padding"></div>
15264
15265     <div class="entry">
15266       <div class="title">
15267         <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>
15268       </div>
15269       <div class="date">
15270          4th March 2012
15271       </div>
15272       <div class="body">
15273         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
15274 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
15275 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
15276 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
15277 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
15278 need a software solution for your school.</p>
15279
15280       </div>
15281       <div class="tags">
15282
15283
15284         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>.
15285
15286
15287       </div>
15288     </div>
15289     <div class="padding"></div>
15290
15291     <div class="entry">
15292       <div class="title">
15293         <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>
15294       </div>
15295       <div class="date">
15296          3rd March 2012
15297       </div>
15298       <div class="body">
15299         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
15300 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
15301 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
15302 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
15303 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
15304 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
15305 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
15306 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
15307 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
15308 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
15309 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
15310 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
15311 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
15312 year...</p>
15313
15314 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
15315 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
15316 name,
15317 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
15318 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
15319 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
15320 mean). I've been following
15321 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
15322 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
15323 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
15324 Check it out. :)</p>
15325
15326       </div>
15327       <div class="tags">
15328
15329
15330         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>.
15331
15332
15333       </div>
15334     </div>
15335     <div class="padding"></div>
15336
15337     <div class="entry">
15338       <div class="title">
15339         <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>
15340       </div>
15341       <div class="date">
15342         27th February 2012
15343       </div>
15344       <div class="body">
15345         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
15346 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
15347 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
15348 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
15349 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
15350 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
15351 need a software solution for your school.</p>
15352
15353       </div>
15354       <div class="tags">
15355
15356
15357         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>.
15358
15359
15360       </div>
15361     </div>
15362     <div class="padding"></div>
15363
15364     <div class="entry">
15365       <div class="title">
15366         <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>
15367       </div>
15368       <div class="date">
15369         19th February 2012
15370       </div>
15371       <div class="body">
15372         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
15373 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
15374 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
15375 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
15376 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
15377 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
15378 solution for your school.</p>
15379
15380       </div>
15381       <div class="tags">
15382
15383
15384         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>.
15385
15386
15387       </div>
15388     </div>
15389     <div class="padding"></div>
15390
15391     <div class="entry">
15392       <div class="title">
15393         <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>
15394       </div>
15395       <div class="date">
15396         14th February 2012
15397       </div>
15398       <div class="body">
15399         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
15400 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
15401 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
15402 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
15403 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
15404 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
15405 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
15406 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
15407 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
15408
15409 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
15410 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
15411 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
15412 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
15413 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
15414
15415 <blockquote><pre>
15416 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
15417 do
15418     printf "Failed disk $d: "
15419     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
15420 done
15421 </blockquote></pre>
15422
15423 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
15424 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
15425
15426 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
15427
15428 <blockquote><pre>
15429 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
15430 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
15431 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
15432 </blockquote></pre>
15433
15434 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
15435 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
15436 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
15437 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
15438 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
15439 mounted inside my box.</p>
15440
15441 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
15442 Software RAID in the
15443 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
15444 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
15445 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
15446 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
15447 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
15448 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
15449
15450       </div>
15451       <div class="tags">
15452
15453
15454         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>.
15455
15456
15457       </div>
15458     </div>
15459     <div class="padding"></div>
15460
15461     <div class="entry">
15462       <div class="title">
15463         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
15464       </div>
15465       <div class="date">
15466         13th February 2012
15467       </div>
15468       <div class="body">
15469         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
15470 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
15471 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
15472 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
15473 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
15474 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
15475 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
15476 change the global proxy setting by editing
15477 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
15478 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
15479
15480 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
15481 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
15482 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
15483
15484 <blockquote><pre>
15485 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
15486 {
15487    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
15488        isPlainHostName(host) ||
15489        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
15490       return "DIRECT";
15491    else
15492       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
15493 }
15494 </pre></blockquote>
15495
15496 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
15497
15498 <blockquote><pre>
15499 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
15500 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
15501 </pre></blockquote>
15502
15503 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
15504 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
15505 would be used for
15506 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
15507 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
15508 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
15509 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
15510 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
15511 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
15512 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
15513 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
15514 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
15515 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
15516
15517 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
15518 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
15519 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
15520 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
15521 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
15522 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
15523
15524 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
15525 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
15526 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
15527 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
15528 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
15529 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
15530 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
15531 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
15532 the network setup changes.</p>
15533
15534 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
15535 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
15536 draft</a> and a
15537 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
15538 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
15539
15540       </div>
15541       <div class="tags">
15542
15543
15544         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>.
15545
15546
15547       </div>
15548     </div>
15549     <div class="padding"></div>
15550
15551     <div class="entry">
15552       <div class="title">
15553         <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>
15554       </div>
15555       <div class="date">
15556          5th February 2012
15557       </div>
15558       <div class="body">
15559         <p>Since the Lenny version of
15560 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
15561 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
15562 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
15563 in the morning.  This is done using the
15564 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
15565
15566 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
15567 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
15568 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
15569 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
15570 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
15571 the
15572 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
15573 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
15574 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
15575 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
15576 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
15577
15578 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
15579 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
15580 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
15581 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
15582 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
15583 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
15584 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
15585
15586 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
15587 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
15588 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
15589 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
15590 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
15591
15592       </div>
15593       <div class="tags">
15594
15595
15596         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>.
15597
15598
15599       </div>
15600     </div>
15601     <div class="padding"></div>
15602
15603     <div class="entry">
15604       <div class="title">
15605         <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>
15606       </div>
15607       <div class="date">
15608          4th February 2012
15609       </div>
15610       <div class="body">
15611         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
15612 publish the third beta version of
15613 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
15614 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
15615 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
15616 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
15617 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
15618 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
15619 on the project announcement list.</p>
15620
15621 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
15622 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
15623
15624 <ul>
15625
15626 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
15627   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
15628   the installation.</li>
15629
15630 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
15631   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
15632
15633 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
15634   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
15635   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
15636
15637 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
15638   for the local system administrator is created during installation
15639   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
15640   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
15641   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
15642   up to date on the system.</li>
15643
15644 </ul>
15645
15646 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
15647 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
15648 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
15649 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
15650
15651 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
15652 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
15653 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
15654 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
15655 will see you there?</p>
15656
15657       </div>
15658       <div class="tags">
15659
15660
15661         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>.
15662
15663
15664       </div>
15665     </div>
15666     <div class="padding"></div>
15667
15668     <div class="entry">
15669       <div class="title">
15670         <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>
15671       </div>
15672       <div class="date">
15673         27th January 2012
15674       </div>
15675       <div class="body">
15676         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
15677 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
15678 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
15679 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
15680 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
15681 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
15682 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
15683
15684 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
15685 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
15686 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
15687 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
15688 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
15689 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
15690 not taken care of by this.</p>
15691
15692 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
15693 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
15694 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
15695 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
15696 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
15697 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
15698 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
15699 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
15700 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
15701 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
15702 firmware packages.</p>
15703
15704 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
15705 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
15706 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
15707 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
15708 initrd with extra firmware, the
15709 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
15710 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
15711 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
15712
15713 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
15714 network cards working.  For this,
15715 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
15716 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
15717 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
15718
15719 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
15720 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
15721 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
15722
15723 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
15724 try.</p>
15725
15726       </div>
15727       <div class="tags">
15728
15729
15730         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>.
15731
15732
15733       </div>
15734     </div>
15735     <div class="padding"></div>
15736
15737     <div class="entry">
15738       <div class="title">
15739         <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>
15740       </div>
15741       <div class="date">
15742         25th January 2012
15743       </div>
15744       <div class="body">
15745         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
15746 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
15747 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
15748 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
15749 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
15750
15751 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
15752 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
15753 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
15754 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
15755 this is done, log on to the central server and run
15756 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
15757 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
15758 will look similar to this:</p>
15759
15760 <p><blockquote><pre>
15761 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
15762 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
15763 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.
15764
15765 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
15766
15767 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15768 enter password: *******
15769 %
15770 </pre></blockquote></p>
15771
15772 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
15773 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
15774 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
15775 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
15776 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
15777 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
15778 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
15779 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
15780 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
15781 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
15782 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
15783 automatically.</p>
15784
15785 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
15786 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
15787
15788 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
15789 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
15790 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
15791
15792       </div>
15793       <div class="tags">
15794
15795
15796         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>.
15797
15798
15799       </div>
15800     </div>
15801     <div class="padding"></div>
15802
15803     <div class="entry">
15804       <div class="title">
15805         <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>
15806       </div>
15807       <div class="date">
15808         10th January 2012
15809       </div>
15810       <div class="body">
15811         <p>In the Squeeze version of
15812 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
15813 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
15814 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
15815 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
15816 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
15817 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
15818 first time.</p>
15819
15820 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
15821 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
15822 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
15823 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
15824
15825 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
15826 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
15827 new setting.</p>
15828
15829 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
15830 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
15831 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
15832
15833       </div>
15834       <div class="tags">
15835
15836
15837         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>.
15838
15839
15840       </div>
15841     </div>
15842     <div class="padding"></div>
15843
15844     <div class="entry">
15845       <div class="title">
15846         <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>
15847       </div>
15848       <div class="date">
15849          7th January 2012
15850       </div>
15851       <div class="body">
15852         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
15853 the second beta version of
15854 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
15855 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
15856 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
15857 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
15858 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
15859 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
15860 on the project announcement list.</p>
15861
15862       </div>
15863       <div class="tags">
15864
15865
15866         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>.
15867
15868
15869       </div>
15870     </div>
15871     <div class="padding"></div>
15872
15873     <div class="entry">
15874       <div class="title">
15875         <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>
15876       </div>
15877       <div class="date">
15878          3rd January 2012
15879       </div>
15880       <div class="body">
15881         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
15882 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
15883 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
15884 interesting.</p>
15885
15886 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
15887 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
15888 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
15889 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
15890 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
15891 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
15892 wrap up its tasks.</p>
15893
15894 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
15895 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
15896 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
15897 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
15898 because I was typing.</P>
15899
15900 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
15901 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
15902 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
15903 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
15904 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
15905 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
15906 generate entropy.</p>
15907
15908 <p>The fix is in
15909 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
15910 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
15911 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
15912 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
15913
15914       </div>
15915       <div class="tags">
15916
15917
15918         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>.
15919
15920
15921       </div>
15922     </div>
15923     <div class="padding"></div>
15924
15925     <div class="entry">
15926       <div class="title">
15927         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
15928       </div>
15929       <div class="date">
15930         21st November 2011
15931       </div>
15932       <div class="body">
15933         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
15934 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
15935 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
15936 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
15937 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
15938 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
15939 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
15940 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
15941 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
15942 the tools to do so.</p>
15943
15944 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
15945 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
15946 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
15947 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
15948
15949 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
15950 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
15951 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
15952 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
15953 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
15954 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
15955 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
15956 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
15957
15958 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
15959 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
15960 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
15961
15962 <p><pre>
15963 #!/usr/bin/perl
15964 use strict;
15965 use warnings;
15966 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
15967 BEGIN {
15968     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
15969     my %rhelmodules = (
15970         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
15971         );
15972     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
15973         eval "use $module;";
15974         if ($@) {
15975             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
15976             system("yum install -y $pkg");
15977             eval "use $module;";
15978         }
15979     }
15980 }
15981 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
15982
15983 upgrade_dell();
15984
15985 exit 0;
15986
15987 sub run_firmware_script {
15988     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
15989     unless ($script) {
15990         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
15991         exit 1
15992     }
15993     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
15994
15995     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
15996         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
15997     } else {
15998         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
15999     }
16000 }
16001
16002 sub run_firmware_scripts {
16003     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
16004     # Run firmware packages
16005     for my $dir (@dirs) {
16006         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
16007         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
16008         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
16009             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
16010             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
16011         }
16012         closedir $dh;
16013     }
16014 }
16015
16016 sub download {
16017     my $url = shift;
16018     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
16019     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
16020 }
16021
16022 sub upgrade_dell {
16023     my @dirs;
16024     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
16025     chomp $product;
16026
16027     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
16028
16029         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
16030         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
16031
16032         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
16033             CLEANUP => 1
16034             );
16035         chdir($tmpdir);
16036         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
16037         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
16038         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
16039         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
16040         my $fwopts = "-q";
16041         if (@paths) {
16042             for my $url (@paths) {
16043                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
16044             }
16045             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
16046         } else {
16047             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
16048             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
16049         }
16050         chdir('/');
16051     } else {
16052         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
16053         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
16054     }
16055 }
16056
16057 sub fetch_dell_fw {
16058     my $path = shift;
16059     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
16060     download($url);
16061 }
16062
16063 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
16064 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
16065 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
16066 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
16067     my $filename = shift;
16068
16069     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
16070     chomp $product;
16071     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
16072
16073     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
16074
16075     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
16076     my @paths;
16077     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
16078         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
16079         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
16080         my $oscode;
16081         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
16082             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
16083         } else {
16084             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
16085         }
16086         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
16087         {
16088             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
16089         }
16090     }
16091     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
16092         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
16093
16094         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
16095         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
16096
16097         my $cpath = $component->{path};
16098         for my $path (@paths) {
16099             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
16100                 push(@paths, $cpath);
16101             }
16102         }
16103     }
16104     return @paths;
16105 }
16106 </pre>
16107
16108 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
16109 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
16110 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
16111 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
16112 outdated.</p>
16113
16114       </div>
16115       <div class="tags">
16116
16117
16118         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>.
16119
16120
16121       </div>
16122     </div>
16123     <div class="padding"></div>
16124
16125     <div class="entry">
16126       <div class="title">
16127         <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>
16128       </div>
16129       <div class="date">
16130          7th October 2011
16131       </div>
16132       <div class="body">
16133         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
16134 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
16135 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
16136 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
16137 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
16138 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
16139 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
16140 models.</p>
16141
16142 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
16143 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
16144 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
16145 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
16146
16147 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
16148 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
16149 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
16150 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
16151 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
16152 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
16153 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
16154 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
16155 distributed.</p>
16156
16157 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
16158
16159 <ul>
16160
16161 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
16162   other relevant equipment.</li>
16163
16164 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
16165
16166 </ul>
16167
16168 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
16169 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
16170 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
16171 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
16172 books available.</p>
16173
16174 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
16175 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
16176 libraries. :)</p>
16177
16178       </div>
16179       <div class="tags">
16180
16181
16182         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>.
16183
16184
16185       </div>
16186     </div>
16187     <div class="padding"></div>
16188
16189     <div class="entry">
16190       <div class="title">
16191         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
16192       </div>
16193       <div class="date">
16194         17th September 2011
16195       </div>
16196       <div class="body">
16197         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
16198 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
16199 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
16200 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
16201 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
16202 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
16203 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
16204 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
16205
16206 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
16207
16208 <blockquote><pre>
16209 #!/bin/sh
16210 # apt-get install lsdvd
16211 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
16212 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
16213 </pre></blockquote>
16214
16215 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
16216 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
16217 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
16218 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
16219
16220 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
16221 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
16222 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
16223 back as an ISO.
16224
16225 <blockquote><pre>
16226 #!/bin/sh
16227 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
16228 set -e
16229 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
16230 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
16231 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
16232 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
16233 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
16234 </pre></blockquote>
16235
16236 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
16237
16238 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
16239 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
16240 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
16241 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
16242 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
16243
16244 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
16245 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
16246 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
16247 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
16248 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
16249 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
16250
16251       </div>
16252       <div class="tags">
16253
16254
16255         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>.
16256
16257
16258       </div>
16259     </div>
16260     <div class="padding"></div>
16261
16262     <div class="entry">
16263       <div class="title">
16264         <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>
16265       </div>
16266       <div class="date">
16267          4th August 2011
16268       </div>
16269       <div class="body">
16270         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
16271 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
16272 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
16273 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
16274 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
16275 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
16276 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
16277 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
16278 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
16279
16280 <p><blockquote>
16281 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
16282 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
16283 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
16284 </blockquote></p>
16285
16286 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
16287 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
16288 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
16289 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
16290 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
16291 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
16292 hard to explain.</p>
16293
16294 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
16295 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
16296 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
16297 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
16298 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
16299 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
16300 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
16301 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
16302 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
16303 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
16304 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
16305 mode).</p>
16306
16307 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
16308 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
16309 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
16310 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
16311 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
16312 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
16313 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
16314 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
16315 after visiting single user mode.</p>
16316
16317 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
16318 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
16319 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
16320 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
16321 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
16322 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
16323 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
16324 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
16325
16326 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
16327 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
16328 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
16329
16330       </div>
16331       <div class="tags">
16332
16333
16334         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>.
16335
16336
16337       </div>
16338     </div>
16339     <div class="padding"></div>
16340
16341     <div class="entry">
16342       <div class="title">
16343         <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>
16344       </div>
16345       <div class="date">
16346         30th July 2011
16347       </div>
16348       <div class="body">
16349         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
16350 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
16351 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
16352 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
16353 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
16354 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
16355 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
16356 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
16357 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
16358 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
16359 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
16360 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
16361 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
16362
16363 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
16364 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
16365 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
16366 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
16367 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
16368 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
16369 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
16370 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
16371 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
16372
16373 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
16374 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
16375 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
16376 is presented.</p>
16377
16378 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
16379 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
16380 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
16381 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
16382 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
16383 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
16384 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
16385 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
16386 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
16387 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
16388 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
16389 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
16390 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
16391 find time to push this forward.</p>
16392
16393       </div>
16394       <div class="tags">
16395
16396
16397         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>.
16398
16399
16400       </div>
16401     </div>
16402     <div class="padding"></div>
16403
16404     <div class="entry">
16405       <div class="title">
16406         <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>
16407       </div>
16408       <div class="date">
16409         29th July 2011
16410       </div>
16411       <div class="body">
16412         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
16413 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
16414 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
16415 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
16416 issues.</p>
16417
16418 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
16419 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
16420 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
16421
16422 <ol>
16423
16424 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
16425 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
16426 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
16427 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
16428 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
16429 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
16430 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
16431 Debian.</li>
16432
16433 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
16434 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
16435 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
16436 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
16437 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
16438 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
16439 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
16440 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
16441 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
16442 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
16443 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
16444 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
16445 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
16446
16447 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
16448 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
16449 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
16450 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
16451 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
16452 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
16453 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
16454 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
16455 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
16456 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
16457
16458 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
16459 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
16460 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
16461 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
16462 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
16463 latter behaviour.</li>
16464
16465 </ol>
16466
16467 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
16468 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
16469 it do not matter much.</p>
16470
16471 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
16472 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
16473 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
16474
16475       </div>
16476       <div class="tags">
16477
16478
16479         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/h264">h264</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>.
16480
16481
16482       </div>
16483     </div>
16484     <div class="padding"></div>
16485
16486     <div class="entry">
16487       <div class="title">
16488         <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>
16489       </div>
16490       <div class="date">
16491         26th July 2011
16492       </div>
16493       <div class="body">
16494         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
16495 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
16496 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
16497 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
16498 security support for a few years.</p>
16499
16500 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
16501 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
16502 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
16503 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
16504 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
16505 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
16506 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
16507 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
16508 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
16509 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
16510 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
16511 easier in the future.</p>
16512
16513 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
16514 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
16515 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
16516 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
16517 do not have time for.</p>
16518
16519       </div>
16520       <div class="tags">
16521
16522
16523         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>.
16524
16525
16526       </div>
16527     </div>
16528     <div class="padding"></div>
16529
16530     <div class="entry">
16531       <div class="title">
16532         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
16533       </div>
16534       <div class="date">
16535         20th June 2011
16536       </div>
16537       <div class="body">
16538         <p>Reading
16539 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
16540 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
16541 parts of the
16542 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
16543 and
16544 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
16545 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
16546 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
16547 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
16548
16549       </div>
16550       <div class="tags">
16551
16552
16553         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>.
16554
16555
16556       </div>
16557     </div>
16558     <div class="padding"></div>
16559
16560     <div class="entry">
16561       <div class="title">
16562         <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>
16563       </div>
16564       <div class="date">
16565         30th April 2011
16566       </div>
16567       <div class="body">
16568         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
16569 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
16570 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
16571 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
16572 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
16573 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
16574 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
16575 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
16576 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
16577 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
16578
16579 <p>Where is it?  Visit
16580 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
16581 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
16582 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
16583 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
16584
16585       </div>
16586       <div class="tags">
16587
16588
16589         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>.
16590
16591
16592       </div>
16593     </div>
16594     <div class="padding"></div>
16595
16596     <div class="entry">
16597       <div class="title">
16598         <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>
16599       </div>
16600       <div class="date">
16601         29th April 2011
16602       </div>
16603       <div class="body">
16604         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
16605 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
16606 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
16607 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
16608 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
16609 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
16610 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
16611 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
16612 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
16613 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
16614 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
16615 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
16616 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
16617
16618 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
16619 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
16620 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
16621 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
16622 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
16623 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
16624 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
16625 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
16626 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
16627 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
16628 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
16629 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
16630 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
16631
16632 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
16633 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
16634 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
16635 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
16636 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
16637 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
16638 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
16639 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
16640 it.</p>
16641
16642 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
16643 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
16644 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
16645 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
16646 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
16647 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
16648 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
16649
16650 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
16651 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
16652 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
16653 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
16654 and range= options.</p>
16655
16656 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
16657 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
16658 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
16659 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
16660 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
16661 to best handle this.  I've noticed
16662 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
16663 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
16664 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
16665 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
16666
16667 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
16668 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
16669 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
16670 discussions instead of only
16671 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
16672 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
16673 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
16674 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
16675 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
16676 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
16677
16678       </div>
16679       <div class="tags">
16680
16681
16682         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>.
16683
16684
16685       </div>
16686     </div>
16687     <div class="padding"></div>
16688
16689     <div class="entry">
16690       <div class="title">
16691         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
16692       </div>
16693       <div class="date">
16694          6th April 2011
16695       </div>
16696       <div class="body">
16697         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
16698 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
16699 A few days ago the project
16700 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
16701 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
16702 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
16703 into Gnash.</p>
16704
16705       </div>
16706       <div class="tags">
16707
16708
16709         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>.
16710
16711
16712       </div>
16713     </div>
16714     <div class="padding"></div>
16715
16716     <div class="entry">
16717       <div class="title">
16718         <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>
16719       </div>
16720       <div class="date">
16721          3rd April 2011
16722       </div>
16723       <div class="body">
16724         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
16725 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
16726 update in English.</p>
16727
16728 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
16729 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
16730 of the British service
16731 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
16732 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
16733 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
16734 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
16735 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
16736 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
16737 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
16738 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
16739 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
16740 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
16741 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
16742 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
16743 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
16744
16745 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
16746 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
16747 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
16748 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
16749 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
16750 public infrastructure.</p>
16751
16752 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
16753 such service?</p>
16754
16755       </div>
16756       <div class="tags">
16757
16758
16759         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>.
16760
16761
16762       </div>
16763     </div>
16764     <div class="padding"></div>
16765
16766     <div class="entry">
16767       <div class="title">
16768         <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>
16769       </div>
16770       <div class="date">
16771         28th January 2011
16772       </div>
16773       <div class="body">
16774         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
16775 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
16776 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
16777 available on the Internet, and check our locally
16778 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
16779 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
16780 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
16781 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
16782 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
16783 out which security holes were present in our free software
16784 collection.</p>
16785
16786 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
16787 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
16788 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
16789 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
16790 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
16791 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
16792 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
16793 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
16794 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
16795 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
16796 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
16797 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
16798 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
16799 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
16800 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
16801 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
16802
16803 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
16804 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
16805 check out, one could look up
16806 <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
16807 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
16808 The most recent one is
16809 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
16810 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
16811 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
16812
16813 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
16814 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
16815 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
16816 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
16817 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
16818 security issues out.</p>
16819
16820 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
16821 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
16822 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
16823 RHEL is providing
16824 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
16825 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
16826 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
16827
16828 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
16829 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
16830 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
16831 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
16832 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
16833 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
16834 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
16835 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
16836 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
16837 established soon.</p>
16838
16839 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
16840 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
16841 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
16842 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
16843 for their packages.</p>
16844
16845       </div>
16846       <div class="tags">
16847
16848
16849         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>.
16850
16851
16852       </div>
16853     </div>
16854     <div class="padding"></div>
16855
16856     <div class="entry">
16857       <div class="title">
16858         <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>
16859       </div>
16860       <div class="date">
16861         23rd January 2011
16862       </div>
16863       <div class="body">
16864         <p>In the
16865 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
16866 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
16867 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
16868 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
16869 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
16870 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
16871 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
16872 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
16873 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
16874 one of my machines like this:</p>
16875
16876 <pre>
16877 loaded modules:
16878 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
16879 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
16880 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
16881 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
16882 10de:03ec pata_amd
16883 10de:03f6 sata_nv
16884 1022:1103 k8temp
16885 109e:036e bttv
16886 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
16887 11ab:4364 sky2
16888 </pre>
16889
16890 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
16891 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
16892
16893 <pre>
16894 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
16895     echo loaded pci modules:
16896     (
16897         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
16898         for address in * ; do
16899             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
16900                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
16901                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
16902                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
16903                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
16904                     echo "$id $module"
16905                 fi
16906             fi
16907         done
16908     )
16909     echo
16910 fi
16911 </pre>
16912
16913 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
16914 mappings:</p>
16915
16916 <pre>
16917 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
16918     echo loaded usb modules:
16919     (
16920         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
16921         for address in * ; do
16922             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
16923                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
16924                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
16925                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
16926                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
16927                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
16928                         echo "$id $module"
16929                     fi
16930                 fi
16931             fi
16932         done
16933     )
16934     echo
16935 fi
16936 </pre>
16937
16938 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
16939 well.</p>
16940
16941       </div>
16942       <div class="tags">
16943
16944
16945         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>.
16946
16947
16948       </div>
16949     </div>
16950     <div class="padding"></div>
16951
16952     <div class="entry">
16953       <div class="title">
16954         <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>
16955       </div>
16956       <div class="date">
16957         16th January 2011
16958       </div>
16959       <div class="body">
16960         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
16961 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
16962 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
16963 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
16964 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
16965 the Wikipedia article on
16966 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
16967 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
16968 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
16969 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
16970 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
16971 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
16972 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
16973 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
16974 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
16975 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
16976 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
16977 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
16978
16979 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
16980 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
16981 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
16982 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
16983 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
16984 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
16985 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
16986 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
16987 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
16988 from last week</a>.</p>
16989
16990 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
16991 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
16992 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
16993 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
16994 was without royalties and license terms, check out
16995 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
16996 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
16997
16998 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
16999 available from
17000 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
17001 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
17002 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
17003
17004 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
17005 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
17006 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
17007 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
17008
17009       </div>
17010       <div class="tags">
17011
17012
17013         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</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>.
17014
17015
17016       </div>
17017     </div>
17018     <div class="padding"></div>
17019
17020     <div class="entry">
17021       <div class="title">
17022         <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>
17023       </div>
17024       <div class="date">
17025         12th January 2011
17026       </div>
17027       <div class="body">
17028         <p>Today I discovered
17029 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
17030 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
17031 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
17032 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
17033 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
17034 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
17035 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
17036 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
17037 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
17038 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
17039 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
17040 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
17041 on the Google announcement is available from
17042 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
17043 A good read. :)</p>
17044
17045 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
17046 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
17047 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
17048 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
17049 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
17050 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
17051 browsers support H.264, and others support
17052 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
17053 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
17054 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
17055 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
17056 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
17057 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
17058 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
17059 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
17060
17061 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
17062 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
17063 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
17064 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
17065 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
17066 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
17067 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
17068
17069 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
17070 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
17071 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
17072 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
17073 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
17074 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
17075 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
17076
17077 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
17078 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
17079 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
17080 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
17081 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
17082 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
17083 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
17084
17085 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
17086 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
17087 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
17088 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
17089 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
17090 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
17091 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
17092 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
17093 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
17094 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
17095 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
17096 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
17097 I guess time will tell.</p>
17098
17099 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
17100 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
17101 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
17102
17103       </div>
17104       <div class="tags">
17105
17106
17107         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</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>.
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/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
17117       </div>
17118       <div class="date">
17119         30th December 2010
17120       </div>
17121       <div class="body">
17122         <p>After trying to
17123 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
17124 Ogg Theora</a> to
17125 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
17126 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
17127 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
17128 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
17129 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
17130 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
17131 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
17132
17133 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
17134 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
17135 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
17136 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
17137 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
17138 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
17139 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
17140
17141 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
17142 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
17143
17144       </div>
17145       <div class="tags">
17146
17147
17148         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>.
17149
17150
17151       </div>
17152     </div>
17153     <div class="padding"></div>
17154
17155     <div class="entry">
17156       <div class="title">
17157         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
17158       </div>
17159       <div class="date">
17160         27th December 2010
17161       </div>
17162       <div class="body">
17163         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
17164 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
17165 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
17166 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
17167 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
17168 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
17169 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
17170 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
17171
17172 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
17173 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
17174 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
17175 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
17176 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
17177 page</a>.</p>
17178
17179 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
17180 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
17181 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
17182 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
17183 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
17184 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
17185 specification on equal terms.</p>
17186
17187 <blockquote>
17188
17189 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
17190 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
17191 open standard:</p>
17192
17193 <ul>
17194
17195 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
17196 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
17197 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
17198 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
17199
17200 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
17201 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
17202 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
17203 nominal fee.</li>
17204
17205 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
17206 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
17207 free basis.</li>
17208
17209 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
17210
17211 </ul>
17212 </blockquote>
17213
17214 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
17215 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
17216 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
17217 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
17218 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
17219 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
17220 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
17221
17222 <blockquote>
17223
17224 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
17225
17226 <ol>
17227
17228 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
17229 tilgængelig.</li>
17230
17231 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
17232 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
17233
17234 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
17235 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
17236
17237 </ol>
17238
17239 </blockquote>
17240
17241 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
17242 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
17243
17244 <blockquote>
17245
17246 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
17247
17248 <ol>
17249
17250 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
17251 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
17252
17253 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
17254 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
17255 Standard themselves;</li>
17256
17257 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
17258 any party or in any business model;</li>
17259
17260 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
17261 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
17262 parties;</li>
17263
17264 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
17265 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
17266 parties.</li>
17267
17268 </ol>
17269
17270 </blockquote>
17271
17272 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
17273 its
17274 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
17275 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
17276
17277 <blockquote>
17278 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
17279
17280 <ul>
17281
17282 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
17283   democratic:
17284
17285          <ul>
17286
17287          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
17288             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
17289             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
17290             and managed.</li>
17291
17292          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
17293             method, can be changed through input from all
17294             participants.</li>
17295
17296          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
17297             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
17298
17299          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
17300             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
17301
17302          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
17303             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
17304             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
17305
17306          </ul>
17307
17308 </li>
17309
17310 </ul>
17311
17312 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
17313 <ul>
17314
17315 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
17316   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
17317   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
17318   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
17319   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
17320
17321 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
17322   a technical or economic barriers</li>
17323
17324 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
17325   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
17326   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
17327   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
17328   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
17329   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
17330   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
17331   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
17332   intended to function.</li>
17333
17334 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
17335   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
17336   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
17337
17338 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
17339   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
17340   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
17341   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
17342   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
17343   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
17344   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
17345   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
17346
17347       <ul>
17348
17349       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
17350         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
17351         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
17352
17353       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
17354         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
17355         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
17356         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
17357
17358       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
17359         licensor</li>
17360
17361       </ul>
17362 </li>
17363
17364 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
17365   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
17366   or restricted licensing terms</li>
17367
17368 </ul>
17369
17370 </blockquote>
17371
17372 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
17373 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
17374 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
17375 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
17376 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
17377 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
17378 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
17379 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
17380 Standards.</p>
17381
17382       </div>
17383       <div class="tags">
17384
17385
17386         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>.
17387
17388
17389       </div>
17390     </div>
17391     <div class="padding"></div>
17392
17393     <div class="entry">
17394       <div class="title">
17395         <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>
17396       </div>
17397       <div class="date">
17398         25th December 2010
17399       </div>
17400       <div class="body">
17401         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
17402 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
17403
17404 <blockquote>
17405
17406 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
17407 as follows:</p>
17408
17409 <ol>
17410
17411 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
17412 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
17413 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
17414
17415 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
17416 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
17417 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
17418 parties.</li>
17419
17420 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
17421 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
17422 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
17423
17424 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
17425 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
17426
17427 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
17428
17429 </ol>
17430
17431 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
17432 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
17433 products based on the standard.</p>
17434 </blockquote>
17435
17436 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
17437 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
17438 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
17439 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
17440 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
17441 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
17442 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
17443 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
17444
17445 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
17446
17447 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
17448 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
17449 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
17450 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
17451 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
17452 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
17453 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
17454 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
17455 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
17456 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
17457 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
17458 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
17459 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
17460 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
17461
17462 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
17463
17464 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
17465 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
17466 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
17467 documentation indicating this.</p>
17468
17469 <p>According to
17470 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
17471 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
17472 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
17473 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
17474 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
17475 report is correct.</p>
17476
17477 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
17478
17479 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
17480 container format</a> and both the
17481 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
17482 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
17483 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
17484
17485 <blockquote>
17486
17487 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
17488 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
17489 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
17490 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
17491 specification compliance.
17492
17493 </blockquote>
17494
17495 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
17496 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
17497 this is the term:<p>
17498
17499 <blockquote>
17500
17501 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
17502 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
17503 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
17504 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
17505 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
17506 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
17507 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
17508 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
17509 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
17510 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
17511 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
17512 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
17513
17514 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
17515 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
17516 </blockquote>
17517
17518 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
17519 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
17520 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
17521 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
17522 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
17523
17524 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
17525
17526 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
17527 Theora format.
17528 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
17529 and
17530 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
17531 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
17532 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
17533 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
17534 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
17535 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
17536 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
17537 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
17538
17539 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
17540
17541 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
17542
17543 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
17544
17545 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
17546 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
17547 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
17548 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
17549 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
17550 this.</p>
17551
17552 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
17553 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
17554
17555       </div>
17556       <div class="tags">
17557
17558
17559         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/h264">h264</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>.
17560
17561
17562       </div>
17563     </div>
17564     <div class="padding"></div>
17565
17566     <div class="entry">
17567       <div class="title">
17568         <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>
17569       </div>
17570       <div class="date">
17571         25th December 2010
17572       </div>
17573       <div class="body">
17574         <p>A few days ago
17575 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
17576 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
17577 2.0 of
17578 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
17579 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
17580 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
17581 Nothing very surprising there, given
17582 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
17583 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
17584 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
17585 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
17586 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
17587 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
17588 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
17589 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
17590 standard definition from its content.</p>
17591
17592 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
17593 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
17594 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
17595 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
17596 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
17597 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
17598 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
17599 background information about that story is available in
17600 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
17601 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
17602
17603 <blockquote>
17604 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
17605 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
17606 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
17607
17608 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
17609
17610 <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>
17611
17612 <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>
17613
17614 <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>
17615
17616 <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>
17617
17618 <p>
17619 <ul>
17620 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
17621 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
17622 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
17623 </ul>
17624 </p>
17625
17626 <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>
17627
17628 <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>
17629
17630 <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>
17631
17632 <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>
17633
17634 <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>
17635
17636
17637 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
17638 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
17639 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
17640 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
17641 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
17642 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
17643
17644 </p>
17645
17646 <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>
17647
17648 <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>
17649
17650 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
17651
17652 <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>
17653
17654 <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>
17655
17656 <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>
17657
17658 <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>
17659
17660 <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>
17661
17662 <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>
17663
17664 <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>
17665
17666 <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>
17667
17668 <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>
17669
17670 <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>
17671
17672 <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>
17673
17674 <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>
17675
17676 <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>
17677
17678 <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>
17679
17680 <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>
17681
17682 <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>
17683
17684 <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>
17685
17686 <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>
17687
17688 <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>
17689
17690 <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>
17691
17692 <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>
17693
17694 <p>On security:</p>
17695
17696 <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>
17697
17698 <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>
17699
17700 <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>
17701
17702 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
17703
17704 <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>
17705
17706 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
17707
17708 <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>
17709
17710 <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>
17711
17712 <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>
17713
17714 <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>
17715
17716 <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>
17717
17718 <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>
17719
17720 <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>
17721
17722 <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>
17723
17724 <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>
17725
17726 <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>
17727
17728 <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>
17729
17730 <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>
17731
17732 <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>
17733
17734 <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>
17735
17736 <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>
17737
17738 <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>
17739
17740 <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>
17741
17742 <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>
17743
17744 <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>
17745
17746 <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>
17747
17748 <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>
17749
17750 <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>
17751
17752 <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>
17753
17754 <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>
17755
17756 <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>
17757
17758 <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>
17759
17760 <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>
17761
17762 <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>
17763
17764 <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>
17765
17766 <p>Cordially,<br>
17767 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
17768 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
17769 </blockquote>
17770
17771       </div>
17772       <div class="tags">
17773
17774
17775         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>.
17776
17777
17778       </div>
17779     </div>
17780     <div class="padding"></div>
17781
17782     <div class="entry">
17783       <div class="title">
17784         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
17785       </div>
17786       <div class="date">
17787         25th December 2010
17788       </div>
17789       <div class="body">
17790         <p>Half a year ago I
17791 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
17792 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
17793 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
17794 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
17795
17796 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
17797 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
17798 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
17799 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
17800 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
17801 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
17802 got such a great test tool available.</p>
17803
17804       </div>
17805       <div class="tags">
17806
17807
17808         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>.
17809
17810
17811       </div>
17812     </div>
17813     <div class="padding"></div>
17814
17815     <div class="entry">
17816       <div class="title">
17817         <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>
17818       </div>
17819       <div class="date">
17820         22nd December 2010
17821       </div>
17822       <div class="body">
17823         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
17824 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
17825 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
17826 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
17827 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
17828 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
17829 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
17830 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
17831 university.</p>
17832
17833 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
17834 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
17835 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
17836 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
17837 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
17838 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
17839 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
17840 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
17841
17842 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
17843 I perform on a new model.</p>
17844
17845 <ul>
17846
17847 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
17848 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
17849 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
17850
17851 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
17852 installation, X.org is working.</li>
17853
17854 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
17855 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
17856 reported by the program.</li>
17857
17858 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
17859 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
17860 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
17861 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
17862 normally test this by playing
17863 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
17864 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
17865
17866 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
17867 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
17868
17869 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
17870 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
17871
17872 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
17873 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
17874
17875 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
17876 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
17877 few.</li>
17878
17879 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
17880 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
17881 notice this.</li>
17882
17883 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
17884 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
17885 resume.</li>
17886
17887 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
17888 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
17889 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
17890 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
17891 not.</li>
17892
17893 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
17894 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
17895 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
17896 existence.</li>
17897
17898 </ul>
17899
17900 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
17901 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
17902 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
17903 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
17904 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
17905 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
17906 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
17907 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
17908
17909       </div>
17910       <div class="tags">
17911
17912
17913         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>.
17914
17915
17916       </div>
17917     </div>
17918     <div class="padding"></div>
17919
17920     <div class="entry">
17921       <div class="title">
17922         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
17923       </div>
17924       <div class="date">
17925         11th December 2010
17926       </div>
17927       <div class="body">
17928         <p>As I continue to explore
17929 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
17930 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
17931 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
17932
17933 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
17934 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
17935 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
17936 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
17937 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
17938 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
17939 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
17940 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
17941 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
17942 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
17943 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
17944 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
17945 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
17946 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
17947 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
17948 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
17949 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
17950 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
17951 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
17952 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
17953
17954 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
17955 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
17956 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
17957 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
17958 If the Skolelinux foundation
17959 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
17960 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
17961 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
17962 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
17963 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
17964 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
17965 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
17966 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
17967
17968 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
17969 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
17970 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
17971 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
17972 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
17973 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
17974 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
17975 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
17976 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
17977 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
17978 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
17979 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
17980 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
17981 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
17982 currencies.</p>
17983
17984 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
17985 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
17986 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
17987 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
17988 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
17989 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
17990 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
17991 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
17992 BitCoins.  Check out
17993 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
17994 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
17995 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
17996 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
17997 yet.</p>
17998
17999 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
18000 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
18001 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
18002 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
18003 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
18004
18005       </div>
18006       <div class="tags">
18007
18008
18009         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>.
18010
18011
18012       </div>
18013     </div>
18014     <div class="padding"></div>
18015
18016     <div class="entry">
18017       <div class="title">
18018         <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>
18019       </div>
18020       <div class="date">
18021         10th December 2010
18022       </div>
18023       <div class="body">
18024         <p>With this weeks lawless
18025 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
18026 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
18027 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
18028 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
18029 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
18030 A blog post from
18031 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
18032 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
18033 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
18034 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
18035 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
18036 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
18037 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
18038
18039 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
18040 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
18041 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
18042 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
18043 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
18044 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
18045 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
18046 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
18047 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
18048 Debian</a> soon.</p>
18049
18050 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
18051 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
18052 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
18053 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
18054 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
18055 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
18056 you can even get
18057 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
18058 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
18059 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
18060 on the current exchange rates.</p>
18061
18062 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
18063 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
18064 donations to the address
18065 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
18066
18067       </div>
18068       <div class="tags">
18069
18070
18071         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>.
18072
18073
18074       </div>
18075     </div>
18076     <div class="padding"></div>
18077
18078     <div class="entry">
18079       <div class="title">
18080         <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>
18081       </div>
18082       <div class="date">
18083          9th December 2010
18084       </div>
18085       <div class="body">
18086         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
18087 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
18088 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
18089 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
18090 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
18091 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
18092 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
18093 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
18094 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
18095 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
18096 operational.</p>
18097
18098 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
18099 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
18100 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
18101 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
18102 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
18103 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
18104 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
18105
18106       </div>
18107       <div class="tags">
18108
18109
18110         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>.
18111
18112
18113       </div>
18114     </div>
18115     <div class="padding"></div>
18116
18117     <div class="entry">
18118       <div class="title">
18119         <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>
18120       </div>
18121       <div class="date">
18122         29th November 2010
18123       </div>
18124       <div class="body">
18125         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
18126 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
18127 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
18128 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
18129 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
18130 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
18131
18132 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
18133 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
18134 will hold its
18135 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
18136 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
18137 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
18138 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
18139 vote this year.</p>
18140
18141       </div>
18142       <div class="tags">
18143
18144
18145         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>.
18146
18147
18148       </div>
18149     </div>
18150     <div class="padding"></div>
18151
18152     <div class="entry">
18153       <div class="title">
18154         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
18155       </div>
18156       <div class="date">
18157         27th November 2010
18158       </div>
18159       <div class="body">
18160         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
18161 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
18162 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
18163 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
18164 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
18165 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
18166 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
18167 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
18168
18169 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
18170 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
18171 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
18172 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
18173 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
18174 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
18175 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
18176 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
18177 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
18178 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
18179 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
18180
18181 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
18182 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
18183 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
18184 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
18185 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
18186 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
18187 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
18188 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
18189 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
18190 what is going on.</p>
18191
18192       </div>
18193       <div class="tags">
18194
18195
18196         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>.
18197
18198
18199       </div>
18200     </div>
18201     <div class="padding"></div>
18202
18203     <div class="entry">
18204       <div class="title">
18205         <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>
18206       </div>
18207       <div class="date">
18208         22nd November 2010
18209       </div>
18210       <div class="body">
18211         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
18212 upgrade testing of the
18213 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
18214 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
18215 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
18216 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
18217
18218 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
18219
18220 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18221
18222 <blockquote><p>
18223   apache2.2-bin
18224   aptdaemon
18225   baobab
18226   binfmt-support
18227   browser-plugin-gnash
18228   cheese-common
18229   cli-common
18230   cups-pk-helper
18231   dmz-cursor-theme
18232   empathy
18233   empathy-common
18234   freedesktop-sound-theme
18235   freeglut3
18236   gconf-defaults-service
18237   gdm-themes
18238   gedit-plugins
18239   geoclue
18240   geoclue-hostip
18241   geoclue-localnet
18242   geoclue-manual
18243   geoclue-yahoo
18244   gnash
18245   gnash-common
18246   gnome
18247   gnome-backgrounds
18248   gnome-cards-data
18249   gnome-codec-install
18250   gnome-core
18251   gnome-desktop-environment
18252   gnome-disk-utility
18253   gnome-screenshot
18254   gnome-search-tool
18255   gnome-session-canberra
18256   gnome-system-log
18257   gnome-themes-extras
18258   gnome-themes-more
18259   gnome-user-share
18260   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
18261   gstreamer0.10-tools
18262   gtk2-engines
18263   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
18264   gtk2-engines-smooth
18265   hamster-applet
18266   libapache2-mod-dnssd
18267   libapr1
18268   libaprutil1
18269   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
18270   libaprutil1-ldap
18271   libart2.0-cil
18272   libboost-date-time1.42.0
18273   libboost-python1.42.0
18274   libboost-thread1.42.0
18275   libchamplain-0.4-0
18276   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
18277   libcheese-gtk18
18278   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
18279   libcryptui0
18280   libdiscid0
18281   libelf1
18282   libepc-1.0-2
18283   libepc-common
18284   libepc-ui-1.0-2
18285   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
18286   libfreerdp0
18287   libgconf2.0-cil
18288   libgdata-common
18289   libgdata7
18290   libgdu-gtk0
18291   libgee2
18292   libgeoclue0
18293   libgexiv2-0
18294   libgif4
18295   libglade2.0-cil
18296   libglib2.0-cil
18297   libgmime2.4-cil
18298   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
18299   libgnome2.24-cil
18300   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
18301   libgpod-common
18302   libgpod4
18303   libgtk2.0-cil
18304   libgtkglext1
18305   libgtksourceview2.0-common
18306   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
18307   libmono-addins0.2-cil
18308   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
18309   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
18310   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
18311   libmono-posix2.0-cil
18312   libmono-security2.0-cil
18313   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
18314   libmono-system2.0-cil
18315   libmtp8
18316   libmusicbrainz3-6
18317   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
18318   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
18319   libopal3.6.8
18320   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
18321   libpt2.6.7
18322   libpython2.6
18323   librpm1
18324   librpmio1
18325   libsdl1.2debian
18326   libsrtp0
18327   libssh-4
18328   libtelepathy-farsight0
18329   libtelepathy-glib0
18330   libtidy-0.99-0
18331   media-player-info
18332   mesa-utils
18333   mono-2.0-gac
18334   mono-gac
18335   mono-runtime
18336   nautilus-sendto
18337   nautilus-sendto-empathy
18338   p7zip-full
18339   pkg-config
18340   python-aptdaemon
18341   python-aptdaemon-gtk
18342   python-axiom
18343   python-beautifulsoup
18344   python-bugbuddy
18345   python-clientform
18346   python-coherence
18347   python-configobj
18348   python-crypto
18349   python-cupshelpers
18350   python-elementtree
18351   python-epsilon
18352   python-evolution
18353   python-feedparser
18354   python-gdata
18355   python-gdbm
18356   python-gst0.10
18357   python-gtkglext1
18358   python-gtksourceview2
18359   python-httplib2
18360   python-louie
18361   python-mako
18362   python-markupsafe
18363   python-mechanize
18364   python-nevow
18365   python-notify
18366   python-opengl
18367   python-openssl
18368   python-pam
18369   python-pkg-resources
18370   python-pyasn1
18371   python-pysqlite2
18372   python-rdflib
18373   python-serial
18374   python-tagpy
18375   python-twisted-bin
18376   python-twisted-conch
18377   python-twisted-core
18378   python-twisted-web
18379   python-utidylib
18380   python-webkit
18381   python-xdg
18382   python-zope.interface
18383   remmina
18384   remmina-plugin-data
18385   remmina-plugin-rdp
18386   remmina-plugin-vnc
18387   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
18388   rhythmbox-plugins
18389   rpm-common
18390   rpm2cpio
18391   seahorse-plugins
18392   shotwell
18393   software-center
18394   system-config-printer-udev
18395   telepathy-gabble
18396   telepathy-mission-control-5
18397   telepathy-salut
18398   tomboy
18399   totem
18400   totem-coherence
18401   totem-mozilla
18402   totem-plugins
18403   transmission-common
18404   xdg-user-dirs
18405   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
18406   xserver-xephyr
18407 </p></blockquote>
18408
18409 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18410
18411 <blockquote><p>
18412   cheese
18413   ekiga
18414   eog
18415   epiphany-extensions
18416   evolution-exchange
18417   fast-user-switch-applet
18418   file-roller
18419   gcalctool
18420   gconf-editor
18421   gdm
18422   gedit
18423   gedit-common
18424   gnome-games
18425   gnome-games-data
18426   gnome-nettool
18427   gnome-system-tools
18428   gnome-themes
18429   gnuchess
18430   gucharmap
18431   guile-1.8-libs
18432   libavahi-ui0
18433   libdmx1
18434   libgalago3
18435   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
18436   libgtksourceview2.0-0
18437   liblircclient0
18438   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
18439   libspeexdsp1
18440   libsvga1
18441   rhythmbox
18442   seahorse
18443   sound-juicer
18444   system-config-printer
18445   totem-common
18446   transmission-gtk
18447   vinagre
18448   vino
18449 </p></blockquote>
18450
18451 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18452
18453 <blockquote><p>
18454   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
18455 </p></blockquote>
18456
18457 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18458
18459 <blockquote><p>
18460 [nothing]
18461 </p></blockquote>
18462
18463 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
18464
18465 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18466
18467 <blockquote><p>
18468   ksmserver
18469 </p></blockquote>
18470
18471 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18472
18473 <blockquote><p>
18474   kwin
18475   network-manager-kde
18476 </p></blockquote>
18477
18478 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18479
18480 <blockquote><p>
18481   arts
18482   dolphin
18483   freespacenotifier
18484   google-gadgets-gst
18485   google-gadgets-xul
18486   kappfinder
18487   kcalc
18488   kcharselect
18489   kde-core
18490   kde-plasma-desktop
18491   kde-standard
18492   kde-window-manager
18493   kdeartwork
18494   kdeartwork-emoticons
18495   kdeartwork-style
18496   kdeartwork-theme-icon
18497   kdebase
18498   kdebase-apps
18499   kdebase-workspace
18500   kdebase-workspace-bin
18501   kdebase-workspace-data
18502   kdeeject
18503   kdelibs
18504   kdeplasma-addons
18505   kdeutils
18506   kdewallpapers
18507   kdf
18508   kfloppy
18509   kgpg
18510   khelpcenter4
18511   kinfocenter
18512   konq-plugins-l10n
18513   konqueror-nsplugins
18514   kscreensaver
18515   kscreensaver-xsavers
18516   ktimer
18517   kwrite
18518   libgle3
18519   libkde4-ruby1.8
18520   libkonq5
18521   libkonq5-templates
18522   libnetpbm10
18523   libplasma-ruby
18524   libplasma-ruby1.8
18525   libqt4-ruby1.8
18526   marble-data
18527   marble-plugins
18528   netpbm
18529   nuvola-icon-theme
18530   plasma-dataengines-workspace
18531   plasma-desktop
18532   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
18533   plasma-runners-addons
18534   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
18535   plasma-scriptengine-python
18536   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
18537   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
18538   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
18539   plasma-scriptengines
18540   plasma-wallpapers-addons
18541   plasma-widget-folderview
18542   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
18543   ruby
18544   sweeper
18545   update-notifier-kde
18546   xscreensaver-data-extra
18547   xscreensaver-gl
18548   xscreensaver-gl-extra
18549   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
18550 </p></blockquote>
18551
18552 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18553
18554 <blockquote><p>
18555   ark
18556   google-gadgets-common
18557   google-gadgets-qt
18558   htdig
18559   kate
18560   kdebase-bin
18561   kdebase-data
18562   kdepasswd
18563   kfind
18564   klipper
18565   konq-plugins
18566   konqueror
18567   ksysguard
18568   ksysguardd
18569   libarchive1
18570   libcln6
18571   libeet1
18572   libeina-svn-06
18573   libggadget-1.0-0b
18574   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
18575   libgps19
18576   libkdecorations4
18577   libkephal4
18578   libkonq4
18579   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
18580   libkscreensaver5
18581   libksgrd4
18582   libksignalplotter4
18583   libkunitconversion4
18584   libkwineffects1a
18585   libmarblewidget4
18586   libntrack-qt4-1
18587   libntrack0
18588   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
18589   libplasmaclock4a
18590   libplasmagenericshell4
18591   libprocesscore4a
18592   libprocessui4a
18593   libqalculate5
18594   libqedje0a
18595   libqtruby4shared2
18596   libqzion0a
18597   libruby1.8
18598   libscim8c2a
18599   libsmokekdecore4-3
18600   libsmokekdeui4-3
18601   libsmokekfile3
18602   libsmokekhtml3
18603   libsmokekio3
18604   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
18605   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
18606   libsmokekparts3
18607   libsmokektexteditor3
18608   libsmokekutils3
18609   libsmokenepomuk3
18610   libsmokephonon3
18611   libsmokeplasma3
18612   libsmokeqtcore4-3
18613   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
18614   libsmokeqtgui4-3
18615   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
18616   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
18617   libsmokeqtscript4-3
18618   libsmokeqtsql4-3
18619   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
18620   libsmokeqttest4-3
18621   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
18622   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
18623   libsmokeqtxml4-3
18624   libsmokesolid3
18625   libsmokesoprano3
18626   libtaskmanager4a
18627   libtidy-0.99-0
18628   libweather-ion4a
18629   libxklavier16
18630   libxxf86misc1
18631   okteta
18632   oxygencursors
18633   plasma-dataengines-addons
18634   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
18635   plasma-widget-lancelot
18636   plasma-widgets-addons
18637   plasma-widgets-workspace
18638   polkit-kde-1
18639   ruby1.8
18640   systemsettings
18641   update-notifier-common
18642 </p></blockquote>
18643
18644 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
18645 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
18646 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
18647 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
18648
18649       </div>
18650       <div class="tags">
18651
18652
18653         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>.
18654
18655
18656       </div>
18657     </div>
18658     <div class="padding"></div>
18659
18660     <div class="entry">
18661       <div class="title">
18662         <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>
18663       </div>
18664       <div class="date">
18665         22nd November 2010
18666       </div>
18667       <div class="body">
18668         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
18669 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
18670 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
18671 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
18672 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
18673 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
18674 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
18675 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
18676 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
18677
18678 <p>I found
18679 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
18680 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
18681 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
18682 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
18683 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
18684 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
18685
18686 <pre>
18687 #!/bin/sh
18688
18689 # Based on
18690 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
18691
18692 set -e
18693 set -x
18694
18695 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
18696     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
18697     exit 1
18698 else
18699     host="$1"
18700 fi
18701
18702 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
18703     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
18704     exit 1
18705 fi
18706
18707 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
18708 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
18709 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
18710 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
18711
18712 img=$host.img
18713 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
18714 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
18715
18716 parted $img mklabel msdos
18717 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
18718 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
18719 parted $img set 1 boot on
18720
18721 modprobe dm-mod
18722 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
18723 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
18724
18725 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
18726 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
18727 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
18728
18729 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
18730 losetup -d /dev/loop0
18731 </pre>
18732
18733 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
18734 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
18735
18736 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
18737 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
18738 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
18739 seem to work just fine.</p>
18740
18741       </div>
18742       <div class="tags">
18743
18744
18745         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>.
18746
18747
18748       </div>
18749     </div>
18750     <div class="padding"></div>
18751
18752     <div class="entry">
18753       <div class="title">
18754         <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>
18755       </div>
18756       <div class="date">
18757         20th November 2010
18758       </div>
18759       <div class="body">
18760         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
18761 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
18762 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
18763 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
18764
18765 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
18766 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
18767 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
18768
18769 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
18770
18771 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18772
18773 <blockquote><p>
18774   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
18775   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
18776   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
18777   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
18778   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
18779   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
18780   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
18781   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
18782   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
18783   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
18784   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
18785   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
18786   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
18787   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
18788   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
18789   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
18790   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
18791   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
18792   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
18793   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
18794   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
18795   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
18796   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
18797   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
18798   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
18799   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
18800   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
18801   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
18802   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
18803   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
18804   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
18805   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
18806   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
18807   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
18808   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
18809   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
18810   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
18811   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
18812   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
18813   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
18814   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
18815   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
18816   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
18817   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
18818   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
18819   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
18820   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
18821   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
18822   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
18823   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
18824   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
18825   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
18826   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
18827   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
18828   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
18829   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
18830   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
18831   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
18832   zip
18833 </p></blockquote>
18834
18835 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
18836
18837 <blockquote><p>
18838   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
18839   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
18840   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
18841   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
18842   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
18843   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
18844   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
18845   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
18846   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
18847   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
18848   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
18849   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
18850   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
18851   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
18852   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
18853   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
18854   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
18855   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
18856   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
18857   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
18858   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
18859   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
18860   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
18861   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
18862   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
18863   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
18864   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
18865   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
18866   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
18867 </p></blockquote>
18868
18869 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18870
18871 <blockquote><p>
18872   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
18873 </p></blockquote>
18874
18875 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18876
18877 <blockquote><p>
18878 [nothing]
18879 </p></blockquote>
18880
18881 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
18882
18883 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18884
18885 <blockquote><p>
18886   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
18887   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
18888   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
18889   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
18890   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
18891   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
18892   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
18893   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
18894   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
18895   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
18896   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
18897   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
18898   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
18899   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
18900   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
18901   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
18902   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
18903   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
18904   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
18905   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
18906   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
18907   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
18908   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
18909   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
18910   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
18911   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
18912   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
18913   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
18914   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
18915   ttf-sazanami-gothic
18916 </p></blockquote>
18917
18918 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18919
18920 <blockquote><p>
18921   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
18922   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
18923   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
18924   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
18925   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
18926   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
18927   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
18928   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
18929   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
18930   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
18931   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
18932   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
18933   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
18934   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
18935   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
18936   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
18937   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
18938   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
18939   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
18940   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
18941   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
18942   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
18943   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
18944   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
18945   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
18946   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
18947   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
18948   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
18949   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
18950   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
18951   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
18952   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
18953   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
18954 </p></blockquote>
18955
18956 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18957
18958 <blockquote><p>
18959   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
18960   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
18961   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
18962   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
18963   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
18964   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
18965   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
18966 </p></blockquote>
18967
18968 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18969
18970 <blockquote><p>
18971   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
18972 </p></blockquote>
18973
18974       </div>
18975       <div class="tags">
18976
18977
18978         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>.
18979
18980
18981       </div>
18982     </div>
18983     <div class="padding"></div>
18984
18985     <div class="entry">
18986       <div class="title">
18987         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
18988       </div>
18989       <div class="date">
18990         20th November 2010
18991       </div>
18992       <div class="body">
18993         <p>Answering
18994 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
18995 call from the Gnash project</a> for
18996 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
18997 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
18998 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
18999 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
19000 releases out more often.</p>
19001
19002 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
19003 I have considered setting up a <a
19004 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
19005 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
19006 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
19007 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
19008 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
19009 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
19010 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
19011 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
19012 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
19013 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
19014 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
19015 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
19016
19017       </div>
19018       <div class="tags">
19019
19020
19021         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>.
19022
19023
19024       </div>
19025     </div>
19026     <div class="padding"></div>
19027
19028     <div class="entry">
19029       <div class="title">
19030         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
19031       </div>
19032       <div class="date">
19033          9th November 2010
19034       </div>
19035       <div class="body">
19036         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
19037
19038 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
19039 3D linked in from
19040 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
19041 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
19042
19043       </div>
19044       <div class="tags">
19045
19046
19047         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>.
19048
19049
19050       </div>
19051     </div>
19052     <div class="padding"></div>
19053
19054     <div class="entry">
19055       <div class="title">
19056         <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>
19057       </div>
19058       <div class="date">
19059          7th November 2010
19060       </div>
19061       <div class="body">
19062         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
19063 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
19064 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
19065 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
19066 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
19067 working using this DVD.</p>
19068
19069 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
19070 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
19071 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
19072 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
19073 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
19074 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
19075 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
19076
19077 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
19078 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
19079 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
19080 Debian archive.</p>
19081
19082 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
19083 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
19084 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
19085 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
19086 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
19087 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
19088 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
19089 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
19090 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
19091 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
19092 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
19093 free X driver should work.</p>
19094
19095 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
19096 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
19097 DVD more useful again.</p>
19098
19099       </div>
19100       <div class="tags">
19101
19102
19103         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>.
19104
19105
19106       </div>
19107     </div>
19108     <div class="padding"></div>
19109
19110     <div class="entry">
19111       <div class="title">
19112         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
19113       </div>
19114       <div class="date">
19115         24th October 2010
19116       </div>
19117       <div class="body">
19118         <p>Some updates.</p>
19119
19120 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
19121 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
19122 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
19123 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
19124 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
19125 :)</p>
19126
19127 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
19128 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
19129 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
19130 It is called
19131 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
19132 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
19133 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
19134 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
19135 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
19136 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
19137
19138 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
19139 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
19140 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
19141 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
19142 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
19143 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
19144 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
19145 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
19146 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
19147 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
19148
19149       </div>
19150       <div class="tags">
19151
19152
19153         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>.
19154
19155
19156       </div>
19157     </div>
19158     <div class="padding"></div>
19159
19160     <div class="entry">
19161       <div class="title">
19162         <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>
19163       </div>
19164       <div class="date">
19165         19th October 2010
19166       </div>
19167       <div class="body">
19168         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
19169 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
19170 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
19171 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
19172 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
19173 AVM2 flash files.</p>
19174
19175 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
19176 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
19177 following text:</P>
19178
19179 <p><blockquote>
19180
19181   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
19182   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
19183
19184   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
19185
19186   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
19187
19188   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
19189   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
19190   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
19191   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
19192   days. The project web page is available from
19193   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
19194   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
19195   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
19196
19197   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
19198   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
19199   to get this to happen.</p>
19200
19201   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
19202   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
19203
19204 </blockquote></p>
19205
19206 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
19207 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
19208 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
19209 :)</p>
19210
19211       </div>
19212       <div class="tags">
19213
19214
19215         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>.
19216
19217
19218       </div>
19219     </div>
19220     <div class="padding"></div>
19221
19222     <div class="entry">
19223       <div class="title">
19224         <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>
19225       </div>
19226       <div class="date">
19227          9th October 2010
19228       </div>
19229       <div class="body">
19230         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
19231 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
19232 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
19233 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
19234 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
19235 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
19236 robots.</p>
19237
19238 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
19239 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
19240 a few less important features too.</p>
19241
19242 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
19243 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
19244 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
19245 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
19246
19247 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
19248 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
19249 source or binary package:</p>
19250
19251 <p><ul>
19252 <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>
19253 <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>
19254 <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>
19255 </ul></p>
19256
19257 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
19258 please let me know.</p>
19259
19260       </div>
19261       <div class="tags">
19262
19263
19264         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>.
19265
19266
19267       </div>
19268     </div>
19269     <div class="padding"></div>
19270
19271     <div class="entry">
19272       <div class="title">
19273         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
19274       </div>
19275       <div class="date">
19276          3rd October 2010
19277       </div>
19278       <div class="body">
19279         <p><ul>
19280
19281 <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
19282 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
19283
19284 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
19285 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
19286 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
19287
19288 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
19289 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
19290 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
19291 simple setup.
19292
19293 </ul></p>
19294
19295       </div>
19296       <div class="tags">
19297
19298
19299         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>.
19300
19301
19302       </div>
19303     </div>
19304     <div class="padding"></div>
19305
19306     <div class="entry">
19307       <div class="title">
19308         <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>
19309       </div>
19310       <div class="date">
19311          9th September 2010
19312       </div>
19313       <div class="body">
19314         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
19315 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
19316 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
19317 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
19318 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
19319 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
19320 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
19321 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
19322 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
19323
19324 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
19325 written:</p>
19326
19327 <blockquote>
19328 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
19329 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
19330 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
19331 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
19332 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
19333
19334 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
19335 standard.</p>
19336 </blockquote>
19337
19338 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
19339 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
19340 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
19341 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
19342
19343 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
19344 read
19345 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
19346 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
19347 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
19348 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
19349 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
19350 the issue.  The solution is to support the
19351 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
19352 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
19353 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
19354
19355       </div>
19356       <div class="tags">
19357
19358
19359         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/h264">h264</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>.
19360
19361
19362       </div>
19363     </div>
19364     <div class="padding"></div>
19365
19366     <div class="entry">
19367       <div class="title">
19368         <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>
19369       </div>
19370       <div class="date">
19371          4th September 2010
19372       </div>
19373       <div class="body">
19374         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
19375 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
19376 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
19377 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
19378 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
19379 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
19380 installed.</p>
19381
19382 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
19383 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
19384 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
19385 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
19386 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
19387 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
19388 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
19389 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
19390 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
19391
19392 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
19393 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
19394 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
19395 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
19396 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
19397 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
19398 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
19399 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
19400 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
19401 pages they want to visit.</p>
19402
19403 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
19404 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
19405 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
19406 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
19407 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
19408 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
19409 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
19410 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
19411 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
19412 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
19413 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
19414
19415       </div>
19416       <div class="tags">
19417
19418
19419         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>.
19420
19421
19422       </div>
19423     </div>
19424     <div class="padding"></div>
19425
19426     <div class="entry">
19427       <div class="title">
19428         <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>
19429       </div>
19430       <div class="date">
19431          1st September 2010
19432       </div>
19433       <div class="body">
19434         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
19435 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
19436 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
19437 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
19438 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
19439 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
19440 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
19441 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
19442 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
19443 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
19444 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
19445 drive around.</p>
19446
19447 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
19448 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
19449
19450 <p><pre>
19451 use Spykee;
19452 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
19453 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
19454 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
19455 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
19456 $spykee->left();
19457 sleep 2;
19458 $spykee->right();
19459 sleep 2;
19460 $spykee->forward();
19461 sleep 2;
19462 $spykee->back();
19463 sleep 2;
19464 $spykee->stop();
19465 </pre></p>
19466
19467 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
19468 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
19469 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
19470 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
19471 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
19472 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
19473 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
19474 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
19475 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
19476 going. :).</p>
19477
19478 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
19479 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
19480 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
19481 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
19482
19483       </div>
19484       <div class="tags">
19485
19486
19487         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>.
19488
19489
19490       </div>
19491     </div>
19492     <div class="padding"></div>
19493
19494     <div class="entry">
19495       <div class="title">
19496         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
19497       </div>
19498       <div class="date">
19499         30th August 2010
19500       </div>
19501       <div class="body">
19502         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
19503 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
19504 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
19505 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
19506 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
19507 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
19508 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
19509
19510 <pre>
19511 % ln foo bar
19512 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
19513 %
19514 </pre>
19515
19516 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
19517 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
19518 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
19519 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
19520 nevertheless. :)</p>
19521
19522 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
19523 git from
19524 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
19525
19526       </div>
19527       <div class="tags">
19528
19529
19530         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>.
19531
19532
19533       </div>
19534     </div>
19535     <div class="padding"></div>
19536
19537     <div class="entry">
19538       <div class="title">
19539         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
19540       </div>
19541       <div class="date">
19542         26th August 2010
19543       </div>
19544       <div class="body">
19545         <p>My file system sematics program
19546 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
19547 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
19548 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
19549 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
19550 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
19551 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
19552 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
19553 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
19554 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
19555 script:</p>
19556
19557 <pre>
19558 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
19559   mode_t retval = 0;
19560   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
19561   if (-1 != fd) {
19562     unlink(name);
19563     struct stat statbuf;
19564     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
19565       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
19566     }
19567     close(fd);
19568   }
19569   return retval;
19570 }
19571
19572 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
19573 int test_umask(void) {
19574   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
19575
19576   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
19577   mode_t newmode;
19578   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
19579     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
19580            newmode);
19581   }
19582   umask(007);
19583   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
19584     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
19585            newmode);
19586   }
19587
19588   umask (orig_umask);
19589   return 0;
19590 }
19591
19592 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
19593   [...]
19594   test_umask();
19595   return 0;
19596 }
19597 </pre>
19598
19599 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
19600
19601 <pre>
19602 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
19603 info: testing symlink creation
19604 info: testing subdirectory creation
19605 info: testing fcntl locking
19606   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19607   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19608   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
19609   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19610   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19611   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
19612 info: testing umask effect on file creation
19613 </pre>
19614
19615 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
19616 result:</p>
19617
19618 <pre>
19619 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
19620 info: testing symlink creation
19621 info: testing subdirectory creation
19622 info: testing fcntl locking
19623   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19624   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19625   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
19626   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19627   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19628   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
19629 info: testing umask effect on file creation
19630   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
19631   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
19632 </pre>
19633
19634 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
19635 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
19636 directory.</p>
19637
19638 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
19639 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
19640
19641 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
19642 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
19643 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
19644
19645       </div>
19646       <div class="tags">
19647
19648
19649         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>.
19650
19651
19652       </div>
19653     </div>
19654     <div class="padding"></div>
19655
19656     <div class="entry">
19657       <div class="title">
19658         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
19659       </div>
19660       <div class="date">
19661         15th August 2010
19662       </div>
19663       <div class="body">
19664         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
19665 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
19666 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
19667 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
19668 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
19669 long time.</p>
19670
19671       </div>
19672       <div class="tags">
19673
19674
19675         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>.
19676
19677
19678       </div>
19679     </div>
19680     <div class="padding"></div>
19681
19682     <div class="entry">
19683       <div class="title">
19684         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
19685       </div>
19686       <div class="date">
19687          9th August 2010
19688       </div>
19689       <div class="body">
19690         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
19691 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
19692 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
19693 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
19694 generated configuration.</p>
19695
19696 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
19697 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
19698 without any manual configuration.</p>
19699
19700 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
19701 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
19702 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
19703 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
19704 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
19705 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
19706 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
19707 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
19708 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
19709 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
19710 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
19711 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
19712 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
19713 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
19714 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
19715 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
19716 use.</p>
19717
19718 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
19719 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
19720 working properly out of the box:</p>
19721
19722 <ul>
19723 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
19724 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
19725 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
19726 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
19727 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
19728 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
19729 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
19730 </ul>
19731
19732 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
19733
19734 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
19735 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
19736 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
19737 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
19738 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
19739
19740 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
19741 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
19742 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
19743 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
19744 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
19745 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
19746 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
19747 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
19748
19749 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
19750 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
19751 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
19752 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
19753 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
19754 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
19755 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
19756 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
19757 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
19758 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
19759 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
19760 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
19761 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
19762 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
19763 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
19764 current DNS domain is used.</p>
19765
19766 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
19767 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
19768 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
19769 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
19770 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
19771 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
19772 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
19773 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
19774 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
19775 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
19776 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
19777 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
19778 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
19779
19780 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
19781 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
19782 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
19783 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
19784 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
19785 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
19786 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
19787 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
19788 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
19789 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
19790 do for now. :)</p>
19791
19792 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
19793 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
19794 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
19795 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
19796 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
19797 yet.</p>
19798
19799 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
19800 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19801
19802 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
19803 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
19804 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
19805 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
19806
19807       </div>
19808       <div class="tags">
19809
19810
19811         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>.
19812
19813
19814       </div>
19815     </div>
19816     <div class="padding"></div>
19817
19818     <div class="entry">
19819       <div class="title">
19820         <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>
19821       </div>
19822       <div class="date">
19823          8th August 2010
19824       </div>
19825       <div class="body">
19826         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
19827 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
19828 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
19829 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
19830 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
19831 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
19832 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
19833
19834 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
19835 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
19836 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
19837 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
19838 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
19839 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
19840 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
19841
19842 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
19843 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
19844 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
19845 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
19846 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
19847
19848 <pre>
19849 /*
19850  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
19851  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
19852  * directory.
19853  * License: GPL v2 or later
19854  *
19855  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
19856  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
19857 */
19858
19859 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
19860 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
19861 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
19862
19863 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
19864
19865 #include &lt;errno.h>
19866 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
19867 #include &lt;stdio.h>
19868 #include &lt;string.h>
19869 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
19870 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
19871 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
19872 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
19873 #include &lt;unistd.h>
19874
19875 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
19876 /*
19877  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
19878  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
19879  * below.
19880  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
19881  */
19882 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
19883 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
19884   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
19885 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
19886   char *zErrMsg;
19887   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
19888   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
19889   unlink(name);
19890   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
19891   if( rc ){
19892     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
19893     sqlite3_close(db);
19894     return -1;
19895   }
19896
19897   /* create tables */
19898   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
19899   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
19900     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
19901     sqlite3_close(db);
19902     return -1;
19903   }
19904   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
19905   sqlite3_close(db);
19906   return 0;
19907 }
19908 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
19909
19910 /*
19911  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
19912  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
19913  * done in the sqlite3 library.
19914  * See also
19915  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
19916  * POSIX specification
19917  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
19918  */
19919 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
19920   struct flock fl;
19921   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
19922   unlink(name);
19923   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
19924   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
19925
19926   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
19927   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
19928   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
19929   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19930   fl.l_len    = 1;
19931   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
19932   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19933
19934   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
19935   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
19936   fl.l_len    = 510;
19937   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
19938   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19939
19940   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
19941   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19942   fl.l_len    = 1;
19943   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
19944   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19945
19946   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
19947   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19948   fl.l_len    = 1;
19949   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
19950   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19951
19952   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
19953   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
19954   fl.l_len    = 510;
19955   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19956
19957   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
19958   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19959   fl.l_len    = 2;
19960   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
19961   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19962
19963   close(fd);
19964   return 0;
19965 }
19966
19967 /*
19968  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
19969  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
19970  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
19971  * slowing down file operations.
19972  */
19973 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
19974 #define LEVELS 5
19975   char *path = strdup("test");
19976   char *dirs[LEVELS];
19977   int level;
19978   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
19979   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
19980     char *newpath = NULL;
19981     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
19982       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
19983              path, strerror(errno));
19984       break;
19985     }
19986     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
19987     free(path);
19988     path = newpath;
19989   }
19990   return 0;
19991 }
19992
19993 /*
19994  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
19995  * KDE.
19996  */
19997 int test_symlinks(void) {
19998   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
19999   unlink("symlink");
20000   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
20001     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
20002   return 0;
20003 }
20004
20005 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
20006   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
20007   test_symlinks();
20008   test_subdirectory_creation();
20009 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
20010   test_sqlite_open();
20011 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
20012   test_gcompris_locking();
20013   return 0;
20014 }
20015 </pre>
20016
20017 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
20018 this:</p>
20019
20020 <pre>
20021 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
20022 info: testing symlink creation
20023 info: testing subdirectory creation
20024 info: sqlite worked
20025 info: testing fcntl locking
20026   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
20027   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
20028   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
20029   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
20030   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
20031   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
20032 </pre>
20033
20034 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
20035 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
20036 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
20037 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
20038 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
20039 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
20040 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
20041 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
20042
20043 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
20044 it. :)</p>
20045
20046 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
20047 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
20048 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
20049
20050       </div>
20051       <div class="tags">
20052
20053
20054         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>.
20055
20056
20057       </div>
20058     </div>
20059     <div class="padding"></div>
20060
20061     <div class="entry">
20062       <div class="title">
20063         <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>
20064       </div>
20065       <div class="date">
20066          7th August 2010
20067       </div>
20068       <div class="body">
20069         <p>A few days ago, I
20070 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
20071 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
20072 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
20073 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
20074 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
20075 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
20076 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
20077 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
20078 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
20079
20080 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
20081 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
20082 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
20083 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
20084 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
20085 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
20086 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
20087 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
20088 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
20089 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
20090 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
20091 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
20092 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
20093 gave it a IP address.</p>
20094
20095 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
20096 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
20097 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
20098 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
20099 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
20100 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
20101 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
20102 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
20103
20104 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
20105 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
20106 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
20107 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
20108 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
20109 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
20110
20111 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
20112 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
20113 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
20114 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
20115 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
20116 with UID and GID values.</p>
20117
20118 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
20119 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20120
20121       </div>
20122       <div class="tags">
20123
20124
20125         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>.
20126
20127
20128       </div>
20129     </div>
20130     <div class="padding"></div>
20131
20132     <div class="entry">
20133       <div class="title">
20134         <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>
20135       </div>
20136       <div class="date">
20137          3rd August 2010
20138       </div>
20139       <div class="body">
20140         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
20141 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
20142 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
20143 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
20144 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
20145 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
20146 servers.</p>
20147
20148 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
20149 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
20150 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
20151 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
20152 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
20153 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
20154 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
20155 .uio.no.</p>
20156
20157 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
20158 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
20159 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
20160 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
20161 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
20162 university servers.</p>
20163
20164 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
20165 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
20166 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
20167 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
20168 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
20169 uses.</p>
20170
20171       </div>
20172       <div class="tags">
20173
20174
20175         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>.
20176
20177
20178       </div>
20179     </div>
20180     <div class="padding"></div>
20181
20182     <div class="entry">
20183       <div class="title">
20184         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
20185       </div>
20186       <div class="date">
20187         27th July 2010
20188       </div>
20189       <div class="body">
20190         <p>I discovered this while doing
20191 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
20192 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
20193 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
20194 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
20195 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
20196
20197 <p>An example is from todays
20198 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
20199 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
20200 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
20201 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
20202 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
20203 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
20204 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
20205
20206 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
20207
20208 <blockquote><pre>
20209 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
20210  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
20211   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
20212 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
20213  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
20214 </pre></blockquote>
20215
20216 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
20217 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
20218 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
20219 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
20220 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
20221 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
20222 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
20223 of dependency loops.</p>
20224
20225 <p>Thanks to
20226 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
20227 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
20228 dependencies
20229 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
20230 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
20231
20232 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
20233 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
20234 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
20235 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
20236 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
20237 it.</p>
20238
20239       </div>
20240       <div class="tags">
20241
20242
20243         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>.
20244
20245
20246       </div>
20247     </div>
20248     <div class="padding"></div>
20249
20250     <div class="entry">
20251       <div class="title">
20252         <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>
20253       </div>
20254       <div class="date">
20255         27th July 2010
20256       </div>
20257       <div class="body">
20258         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
20259 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
20260 completed.</p>
20261
20262 <blockquote>
20263 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
20264 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
20265 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
20266 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
20267 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
20268 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
20269 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
20270 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
20271
20272 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
20273 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
20274 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
20275
20276 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
20277 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
20278 much.</p>
20279
20280 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
20281
20282 <ul>
20283 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
20284 <ul>
20285   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
20286          combination with some new artwork
20287   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
20288   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
20289   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
20290   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
20291   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
20292   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
20293   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
20294   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
20295   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
20296 </ul></li>
20297 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
20298     Enabled for:
20299 <ul>
20300   <li>PAM
20301   <li>LDAP
20302   <li>IMAP
20303   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
20304 </ul>
20305 </li>
20306 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
20307 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
20308     fetched from LDAP.</li>
20309 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
20310 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
20311 </ul>
20312 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
20313
20314 <ul>
20315 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
20316     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
20317     for testing.</li>
20318 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
20319     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
20320     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
20321 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
20322 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
20323 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
20324 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
20325     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
20326 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
20327     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
20328     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
20329 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
20330     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
20331     and help out with translations.</li>
20332 </ul>
20333
20334 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
20335
20336 <ul>
20337 <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>
20338 <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>
20339 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
20340 </ul>
20341 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
20342
20343 <ul>
20344 <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>
20345 <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>
20346 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
20347 </ul>
20348
20349 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
20350 get closer to the final release.</p>
20351
20352 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
20353
20354 <ul>
20355 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
20356 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
20357 </ul>
20358
20359 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
20360 <ul>
20361 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
20362 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
20363 </ul>
20364 <p>How to report bugs:
20365 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
20366
20367 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
20368 </blockquote>
20369
20370       </div>
20371       <div class="tags">
20372
20373
20374         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>.
20375
20376
20377       </div>
20378     </div>
20379     <div class="padding"></div>
20380
20381     <div class="entry">
20382       <div class="title">
20383         <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>
20384       </div>
20385       <div class="date">
20386         25th July 2010
20387       </div>
20388       <div class="body">
20389         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
20390 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
20391 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
20392 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
20393 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
20394
20395 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
20396 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
20397 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
20398 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
20399 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
20400 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
20401 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
20402
20403 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
20404 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
20405 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
20406 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
20407 up. :)</p>
20408
20409 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
20410 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
20411 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
20412
20413 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
20414 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
20415 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
20416 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
20417 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
20418 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
20419 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
20420 release another day.</p>
20421
20422 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
20423 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20424
20425       </div>
20426       <div class="tags">
20427
20428
20429         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>.
20430
20431
20432       </div>
20433     </div>
20434     <div class="padding"></div>
20435
20436     <div class="entry">
20437       <div class="title">
20438         <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>
20439       </div>
20440       <div class="date">
20441         18th July 2010
20442       </div>
20443       <div class="body">
20444         <p>Thanks to
20445 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
20446 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
20447 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
20448 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
20449 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
20450 only available from the development server, until more experience is
20451 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
20452
20453 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
20454 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
20455 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
20456 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
20457 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
20458 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
20459 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
20460
20461       </div>
20462       <div class="tags">
20463
20464
20465         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>.
20466
20467
20468       </div>
20469     </div>
20470     <div class="padding"></div>
20471
20472     <div class="entry">
20473       <div class="title">
20474         <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>
20475       </div>
20476       <div class="date">
20477         17th July 2010
20478       </div>
20479       <div class="body">
20480         <p>This is a
20481 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
20482 on my
20483 <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
20484 work</a> on
20485 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
20486 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
20487
20488 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
20489 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
20490 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
20491 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
20492
20493 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
20494 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
20495 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
20496
20497 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
20498
20499 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
20500 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
20501 the web.
20502
20503 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
20504 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
20505 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
20506 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
20507 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
20508 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
20509
20510 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
20511 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
20512 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
20513 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
20514 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
20515 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
20516 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
20517 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
20518 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
20519 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
20520 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
20521 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
20522 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
20523 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
20524 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
20525 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
20526
20527 <blockquote><pre>
20528 ldapsearch -h ldap \
20529   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
20530   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
20531   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
20532   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
20533   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
20534   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
20535
20536 ldapsearch -h ldap \
20537   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
20538   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
20539   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
20540   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
20541   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
20542 </pre></blockquote>
20543
20544 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
20545 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
20546 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
20547 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20548 also exist.</p>
20549
20550 <blockquote><pre>
20551 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20552 objectclass: top
20553 objectclass: dnsdomain
20554 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20555 dc: tjener
20556 arecord: 10.0.2.2
20557 associateddomain: tjener.intern
20558
20559 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20560 objectclass: top
20561 objectclass: dnsdomain2
20562 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20563 dc: 2
20564 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
20565 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
20566 </pre></blockquote>
20567
20568 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
20569 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
20570 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
20571 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
20572 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
20573 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
20574 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
20575 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
20576 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
20577 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
20578 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
20579 instead.</p>
20580
20581 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
20582 like this:</p>
20583
20584 <blockquote><pre>
20585 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
20586   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
20587   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
20588   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
20589   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
20590   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
20591
20592 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
20593   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
20594 </pre></blockquote>
20595
20596 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
20597 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
20598 reverse lookups.</p>
20599
20600 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
20601 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
20602 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
20603 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
20604
20605 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
20606 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
20607 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
20608
20609 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
20610 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
20611 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
20612 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
20613 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
20614
20615 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
20616 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
20617 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
20618 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
20619 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
20620
20621 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
20622 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
20623 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
20624 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
20625 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
20626 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
20627
20628 <blockquote><pre>
20629 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
20630     SUP top
20631     AUXILIARY
20632     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
20633           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
20634           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
20635           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
20636           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
20637     ))
20638 </pre></blockquote>
20639
20640 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
20641 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
20642 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
20643 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
20644 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
20645 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
20646
20647 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
20648
20649 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
20650 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
20651 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
20652 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
20653 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
20654
20655 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
20656 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
20657 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
20658 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
20659
20660 <blockquote><pre>
20661 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
20662 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
20663 </pre></blockquote>
20664
20665 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
20666 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
20667 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
20668 search result is this entry:</p>
20669
20670 <blockquote><pre>
20671 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20672 cn: dhcp
20673 objectClass: top
20674 objectClass: dhcpServer
20675 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20676 </pre></blockquote>
20677
20678 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
20679 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
20680 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
20681 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
20682 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
20683 The search result is this entry:</p>
20684
20685 <blockquote><pre>
20686 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20687 cn: DHCP Config
20688 objectClass: top
20689 objectClass: dhcpService
20690 objectClass: dhcpOptions
20691 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20692 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
20693 dhcpStatements: authoritative
20694 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
20695 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
20696 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
20697 </pre></blockquote>
20698
20699 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
20700 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
20701 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
20702 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
20703 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
20704 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
20705 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
20706 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
20707 related computer objects.</p>
20708
20709 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
20710 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
20711 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
20712 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
20713 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
20714 like:</p>
20715
20716 <blockquote><pre>
20717 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20718 cn: hostname
20719 objectClass: top
20720 objectClass: dhcpHost
20721 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
20722 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
20723 </pre></blockquote>
20724
20725 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
20726 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
20727 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
20728 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
20729 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
20730 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
20731 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
20732 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
20733 structural object class.
20734
20735 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
20736
20737 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
20738 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
20739 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
20740 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
20741 in the configuration.</p>
20742
20743 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
20744 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
20745 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
20746 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
20747 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
20748 structure.</p>
20749
20750 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
20751 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
20752
20753 <blockquote><pre>
20754 ou=services
20755   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
20756     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
20757     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
20758       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
20759         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
20760     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
20761       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
20762         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
20763     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
20764       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
20765 </pre></blockquote>
20766
20767 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
20768 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
20769 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
20770 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
20771
20772 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
20773 like this:</p>
20774
20775 <blockquote><pre>
20776 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20777 dc: hostname
20778 objectClass: top
20779 objectClass: dhcpHost
20780 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20781 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
20782 associateddomain: hostname.intern
20783 arecord: 10.11.12.13
20784 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
20785 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
20786 </pre></blockquote>
20787
20788 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
20789 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
20790 auxiliary object class.</p>
20791
20792       </div>
20793       <div class="tags">
20794
20795
20796         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>.
20797
20798
20799       </div>
20800     </div>
20801     <div class="padding"></div>
20802
20803     <div class="entry">
20804       <div class="title">
20805         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
20806       </div>
20807       <div class="date">
20808         14th July 2010
20809       </div>
20810       <div class="body">
20811         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
20812 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
20813 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
20814 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
20815 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
20816
20817 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
20818 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
20819
20820 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
20821 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
20822 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
20823 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
20824 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
20825 to a slave DNS server.</p>
20826
20827 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
20828 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
20829 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
20830 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
20831 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
20832 seem to work.</p>
20833
20834 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
20835 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
20836 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
20837 this:</p>
20838
20839 <blockquote><pre>
20840   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20841   cn: hostname
20842   objectClass: dhcphost
20843   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20844   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
20845   associateddomain: hostname.intern
20846   arecord: 10.11.12.13
20847   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
20848   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
20849   ldapconfigsound: Y
20850 </pre></blockquote>
20851
20852 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
20853 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
20854 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
20855 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
20856
20857 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
20858 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
20859 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
20860 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
20861 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
20862 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
20863 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
20864 might be a good place to put it.</p>
20865
20866 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20867 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20868
20869       </div>
20870       <div class="tags">
20871
20872
20873         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>.
20874
20875
20876       </div>
20877     </div>
20878     <div class="padding"></div>
20879
20880     <div class="entry">
20881       <div class="title">
20882         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
20883       </div>
20884       <div class="date">
20885         11th July 2010
20886       </div>
20887       <div class="body">
20888         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
20889 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
20890 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
20891 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
20892
20893 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
20894 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
20895 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
20896 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
20897 LTSP clients.</p>
20898
20899 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
20900 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
20901 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
20902
20903 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
20904 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
20905 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
20906
20907 <blockquote><pre>
20908 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
20909 #
20910 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
20911 #
20912 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
20913 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
20914 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
20915 #
20916 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
20917 # existence of attribute names.
20918 #
20919 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
20920 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
20921 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
20922 #
20923 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
20924 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
20925 #
20926 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
20927 #     SUP top
20928 #     AUXILIARY
20929 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
20930
20931 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
20932 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
20933     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
20934     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
20935         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
20936         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
20937             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
20938             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
20939             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
20940             # bass value on to clients
20941             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
20942         done
20943     done
20944 fi
20945 </pre></blockquote>
20946
20947 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
20948 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
20949 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
20950 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
20951 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
20952
20953 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20954 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20955
20956 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
20957 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
20958 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
20959 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
20960 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
20961 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
20962
20963       </div>
20964       <div class="tags">
20965
20966
20967         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>.
20968
20969
20970       </div>
20971     </div>
20972     <div class="padding"></div>
20973
20974     <div class="entry">
20975       <div class="title">
20976         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
20977       </div>
20978       <div class="date">
20979          9th July 2010
20980       </div>
20981       <div class="body">
20982         <p>Since
20983 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
20984 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
20985 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
20986 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
20987 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
20988 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
20989 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
20990 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
20991 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
20992 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
20993 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
20994 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
20995 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
20996
20997       </div>
20998       <div class="tags">
20999
21000
21001         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>.
21002
21003
21004       </div>
21005     </div>
21006     <div class="padding"></div>
21007
21008     <div class="entry">
21009       <div class="title">
21010         <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>
21011       </div>
21012       <div class="date">
21013          3rd July 2010
21014       </div>
21015       <div class="body">
21016         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
21017 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
21018 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
21019 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
21020 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
21021 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
21022 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
21023 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
21024
21025 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
21026 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
21027 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
21028 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
21029 publish the difference.</p>
21030
21031 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
21032
21033 <blockquote><p>
21034   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
21035   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
21036   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
21037   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
21038   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
21039   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
21040   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
21041   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
21042 </p></blockquote>
21043
21044 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
21045
21046 <blockquote><p>
21047   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
21048   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
21049   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
21050   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
21051   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
21052   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
21053   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
21054   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
21055   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
21056   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
21057   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
21058   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
21059   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
21060   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
21061   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
21062   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
21063   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
21064   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
21065   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
21066   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
21067 </p></blockquote>
21068
21069 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
21070
21071 <blockquote><p>
21072   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
21073   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
21074   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
21075   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
21076   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
21077   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
21078   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
21079   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
21080   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
21081   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
21082   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
21083   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
21084   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
21085   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
21086   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
21087   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
21088   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
21089   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
21090   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
21091   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
21092   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
21093 </p></blockquote>
21094
21095 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
21096
21097 <blockquote><p>
21098   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
21099   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
21100   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
21101 </p></blockquote>
21102
21103 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
21104 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
21105 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
21106 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
21107 the difference somewhat.
21108
21109       </div>
21110       <div class="tags">
21111
21112
21113         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>.
21114
21115
21116       </div>
21117     </div>
21118     <div class="padding"></div>
21119
21120     <div class="entry">
21121       <div class="title">
21122         <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>
21123       </div>
21124       <div class="date">
21125          1st July 2010
21126       </div>
21127       <div class="body">
21128         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
21129 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
21130 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
21131 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
21132 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
21133 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
21134 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
21135 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
21136 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
21137
21138 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
21139
21140 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
21141 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
21142 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
21143 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
21144 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
21145 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
21146 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
21147 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
21148 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
21149 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
21150 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
21151 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
21152 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
21153 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
21154 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
21155
21156 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
21157
21158 <blockquote><pre>
21159 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
21160 </pre></blockquote>
21161
21162 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
21163 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
21164 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
21165 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
21166 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
21167 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
21168 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
21169 on how to get this working.</p>
21170
21171 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
21172 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
21173 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
21174 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
21175 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
21176 instructions I found in the
21177 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
21178 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
21179
21180 <blockquote><pre>
21181         debug-level             0
21182         reload-count            unlimited
21183         paranoia                no
21184
21185         enable-cache            passwd          yes
21186         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
21187         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
21188         suggested-size          passwd          211
21189         check-files             passwd          yes
21190         persistent              passwd          yes
21191         shared                  passwd          yes
21192         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
21193         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
21194
21195         enable-cache            group           yes
21196         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
21197         negative-time-to-live   group           20
21198         suggested-size          group           211
21199         check-files             group           yes
21200         persistent              group           yes
21201         shared                  group           yes
21202         max-db-size             group           33554432
21203         auto-propagate          group           yes
21204
21205         enable-cache            hosts           no
21206         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
21207         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
21208         suggested-size          hosts           211
21209         check-files             hosts           yes
21210         persistent              hosts           yes
21211         shared                  hosts           yes
21212         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
21213
21214         enable-cache            services        yes
21215         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
21216         negative-time-to-live   services        20
21217         suggested-size          services        211
21218         check-files             services        yes
21219         persistent              services        yes
21220         shared                  services        yes
21221         max-db-size             services        33554432
21222 </pre></blockquote>
21223
21224 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
21225 automatically like the one provided in
21226 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
21227 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
21228 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
21229 look like this:</p>
21230
21231 <blockquote><pre>
21232 passwd:         files ldap
21233 group:          files ldap
21234 shadow:         files ldap
21235 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
21236 networks:       files
21237 protocols:      files
21238 services:       files
21239 ethers:         files
21240 rpc:            files
21241 netgroup:       files ldap
21242 </pre></blockquote>
21243
21244 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
21245 shadow and netgroup.</p>
21246
21247 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
21248 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
21249 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
21250 attributes cached.
21251
21252 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
21253   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
21254
21255 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
21256 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
21257 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
21258 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
21259 discovered sssd.</p>
21260
21261 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
21262
21263 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
21264 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
21265 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
21266 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
21267 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
21268 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
21269 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
21270 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
21271 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
21272 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
21273 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
21274 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
21275 version 1.2 is now in testing.
21276
21277 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
21278 roaming setup I want</p>
21279
21280 <blockquote><pre>
21281 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
21282 </pre></blockquote>
21283
21284 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
21285 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
21286
21287 <blockquote><pre>
21288 [sssd]
21289 config_file_version = 2
21290 reconnection_retries = 3
21291 sbus_timeout = 30
21292 services = nss, pam
21293 domains = INTERN
21294
21295 [nss]
21296 filter_groups = root
21297 filter_users = root
21298 reconnection_retries = 3
21299
21300 [pam]
21301 reconnection_retries = 3
21302
21303 [domain/INTERN]
21304 enumerate = false
21305 cache_credentials = true
21306
21307 id_provider = ldap
21308 auth_provider = ldap
21309 chpass_provider = ldap
21310
21311 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
21312 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21313 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
21314 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
21315 </pre></blockquote>
21316
21317 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
21318 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
21319
21320 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
21321 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
21322 modify it manually.</p>
21323
21324 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21325 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21326
21327       </div>
21328       <div class="tags">
21329
21330
21331         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>.
21332
21333
21334       </div>
21335     </div>
21336     <div class="padding"></div>
21337
21338     <div class="entry">
21339       <div class="title">
21340         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
21341       </div>
21342       <div class="date">
21343         28th June 2010
21344       </div>
21345       <div class="body">
21346         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
21347 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
21348 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
21349 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
21350 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
21351 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
21352 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
21353 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
21354 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
21355 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
21356
21357 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
21358 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
21359 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
21360 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
21361 released.</p>
21362
21363 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
21364 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
21365 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
21366 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
21367
21368 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
21369 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21370
21371 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
21372 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
21373 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
21374 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
21375 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
21376
21377       </div>
21378       <div class="tags">
21379
21380
21381         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>.
21382
21383
21384       </div>
21385     </div>
21386     <div class="padding"></div>
21387
21388     <div class="entry">
21389       <div class="title">
21390         <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>
21391       </div>
21392       <div class="date">
21393         24th June 2010
21394       </div>
21395       <div class="body">
21396         <p>A while back, I
21397 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
21398 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
21399 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
21400 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
21401
21402 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
21403 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
21404 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
21405 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
21406
21407 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
21408 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
21409 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
21410 Debian Edu.</p>
21411
21412 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
21413 the
21414 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
21415 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
21416 available today from IETF.</p>
21417
21418 <pre>
21419 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
21420 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
21421 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
21422  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
21423         NAME 'dhcpHost'
21424         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
21425 -       SUP top
21426 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
21427         MUST cn
21428         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
21429         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
21430 </pre>
21431
21432 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
21433 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
21434 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
21435
21436 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21437 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21438
21439       </div>
21440       <div class="tags">
21441
21442
21443         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>.
21444
21445
21446       </div>
21447     </div>
21448     <div class="padding"></div>
21449
21450     <div class="entry">
21451       <div class="title">
21452         <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>
21453       </div>
21454       <div class="date">
21455         16th June 2010
21456       </div>
21457       <div class="body">
21458         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
21459 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
21460 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
21461 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
21462 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
21463 this:
21464
21465 <blockquote><pre>
21466 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
21467 tasksel --new-install
21468 </pre></blockquote>
21469
21470 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
21471 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
21472 any output what so ever.
21473
21474 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
21475 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
21476 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
21477 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
21478 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
21479 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
21480 code like this:
21481
21482 <blockquote><pre>
21483 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
21484 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
21485 $cmd
21486 </pre></blockquote>
21487
21488 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
21489 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
21490 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
21491 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
21492 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
21493 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
21494 installation.</p>
21495
21496 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
21497 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
21498 like this.</p>
21499
21500       </div>
21501       <div class="tags">
21502
21503
21504         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>.
21505
21506
21507       </div>
21508     </div>
21509     <div class="padding"></div>
21510
21511     <div class="entry">
21512       <div class="title">
21513         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
21514       </div>
21515       <div class="date">
21516         13th June 2010
21517       </div>
21518       <div class="body">
21519         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
21520 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
21521 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
21522 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
21523 pages.</p>
21524
21525 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
21526 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
21527 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
21528 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
21529 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
21530 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
21531 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
21532 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
21533 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
21534 see how the project is doing.</p>
21535
21536 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
21537 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
21538 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
21539 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
21540 Windows.  This is great.</p>
21541
21542       </div>
21543       <div class="tags">
21544
21545
21546         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>.
21547
21548
21549       </div>
21550     </div>
21551     <div class="padding"></div>
21552
21553     <div class="entry">
21554       <div class="title">
21555         <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>
21556       </div>
21557       <div class="date">
21558         13th June 2010
21559       </div>
21560       <div class="body">
21561         <p>My
21562 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
21563 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
21564 finally made the upgrade logs available from
21565 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
21566 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
21567 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
21568 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
21569
21570 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
21571 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
21572 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
21573 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
21574 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
21575 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
21576 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
21577 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
21578
21579 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
21580 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
21581 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
21582 too surprising.</p>
21583
21584 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
21585 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
21586 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
21587 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
21588 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
21589 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
21590 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
21591 continue.</p>
21592
21593 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
21594 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
21595   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
21596   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
21597   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
21598   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
21599   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
21600   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
21601   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
21602   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
21603   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
21604   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
21605   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
21606   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
21607   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
21608   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21609   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
21610   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
21611   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
21612   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
21613   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
21614   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
21615   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
21616   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
21617   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
21618   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
21619   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
21620   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
21621   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
21622   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
21623
21624 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
21625
21626 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
21627   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
21628   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
21629   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
21630   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
21631   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
21632   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
21633   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
21634   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
21635   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
21636   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
21637   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
21638   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
21639   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
21640   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
21641   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
21642   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
21643   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
21644   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
21645   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
21646   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
21647   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
21648   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
21649   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
21650   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
21651   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
21652   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
21653   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
21654   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
21655   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21656   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
21657   zip</p>
21658
21659 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
21660
21661 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
21662   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
21663   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
21664   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
21665   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
21666   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
21667   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
21668   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
21669   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
21670   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
21671   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
21672   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
21673   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
21674   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
21675   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21676   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
21677   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
21678   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
21679   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
21680   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
21681   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
21682   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
21683   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
21684   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
21685   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
21686   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
21687   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
21688   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
21689
21690 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
21691 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
21692   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
21693   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
21694   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
21695   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
21696   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
21697   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
21698   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
21699   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
21700   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
21701   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
21702   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
21703   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
21704   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
21705   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
21706   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
21707   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
21708   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
21709   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
21710   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
21711   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
21712   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
21713   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
21714   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
21715   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
21716   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
21717   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
21718   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
21719   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
21720   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
21721   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
21722   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
21723   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
21724   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
21725   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21726   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
21727   xulrunner-1.9</p>
21728
21729
21730       </div>
21731       <div class="tags">
21732
21733
21734         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>.
21735
21736
21737       </div>
21738     </div>
21739     <div class="padding"></div>
21740
21741     <div class="entry">
21742       <div class="title">
21743         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
21744       </div>
21745       <div class="date">
21746         11th June 2010
21747       </div>
21748       <div class="body">
21749         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
21750 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
21751 have been discovered and reported in the process
21752 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
21753 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
21754 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
21755 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
21756 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
21757
21758 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
21759 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
21760 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
21761 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
21762 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
21763 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
21764
21765 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
21766 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
21767 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
21768 is created.  The bug report
21769 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
21770 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
21771 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
21772 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
21773 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
21774 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
21775 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
21776 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
21777 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
21778 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
21779 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
21780 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
21781 Debian Squeeze.</p>
21782
21783 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
21784 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
21785 trick:</p>
21786
21787 <blockquote><pre>
21788 #!/bin/sh
21789 set -ex
21790
21791 if [ "$1" ] ; then
21792     desktop=$1
21793 else
21794     desktop=gnome
21795 fi
21796
21797 from=lenny
21798 to=squeeze
21799
21800 exec &lt; /dev/null
21801 unset LANG
21802 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
21803 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
21804 fuser -mv .
21805 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
21806 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
21807 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
21808 #!/bin/sh
21809 exit 101
21810 EOF
21811 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
21812 exit_cleanup() {
21813     umount $tmpdir/proc
21814 }
21815 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
21816 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
21817 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
21818
21819 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
21820
21821 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
21822 # to return the correct answers.
21823 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
21824     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
21825
21826 # Include the desktop and laptop task
21827 for test in desktop laptop ; do
21828     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
21829 #!/bin/sh
21830 exit 2
21831 EOF
21832     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
21833 done
21834
21835 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
21836 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
21837 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
21838 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
21839
21840 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
21841 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
21842 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
21843 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
21844 fuser -mv
21845 </pre></blockquote>
21846
21847 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
21848 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
21849 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
21850 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
21851 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
21852 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
21853
21854 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
21855 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
21856 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
21857 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
21858 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
21859 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
21860 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
21861
21862 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
21863 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
21864 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
21865 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
21866 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
21867 packages.</p>
21868
21869       </div>
21870       <div class="tags">
21871
21872
21873         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>.
21874
21875
21876       </div>
21877     </div>
21878     <div class="padding"></div>
21879
21880     <div class="entry">
21881       <div class="title">
21882         <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>
21883       </div>
21884       <div class="date">
21885          6th June 2010
21886       </div>
21887       <div class="body">
21888         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
21889 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
21890 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
21891 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
21892 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
21893 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
21894 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
21895
21896 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
21897 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
21898 COLUMNS):</p>
21899
21900 <blockquote><pre>
21901 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
21902 previous=N
21903 PREVLEVEL=
21904 RUNLEVEL=
21905 runlevel=S
21906 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
21907 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
21908 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
21909 </pre></blockquote>
21910
21911 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
21912 script.</p>
21913
21914 <blockquote><pre>
21915 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
21916 previous=N
21917 PREVLEVEL=N
21918 RUNLEVEL=S
21919 runlevel=S
21920 </pre></blockquote>
21921
21922 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
21923 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
21924 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
21925
21926 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
21927 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
21928 choice.</p>
21929
21930       </div>
21931       <div class="tags">
21932
21933
21934         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>.
21935
21936
21937       </div>
21938     </div>
21939     <div class="padding"></div>
21940
21941     <div class="entry">
21942       <div class="title">
21943         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
21944       </div>
21945       <div class="date">
21946          6th June 2010
21947       </div>
21948       <div class="body">
21949         <p>Via the
21950 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
21951 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
21952 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
21953 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
21954 following the standards wars of today.</p>
21955
21956       </div>
21957       <div class="tags">
21958
21959
21960         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>.
21961
21962
21963       </div>
21964     </div>
21965     <div class="padding"></div>
21966
21967     <div class="entry">
21968       <div class="title">
21969         <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>
21970       </div>
21971       <div class="date">
21972          3rd June 2010
21973       </div>
21974       <div class="body">
21975         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
21976 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
21977 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
21978 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
21979 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
21980
21981 <blockquote><pre>
21982 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
21983   vendor                    count
21984   Dell Computer Corporation     1
21985     PowerEdge 1750              1
21986   IBM                           1
21987     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
21988   Intel                         2
21989   [no-dmi-info]                 3
21990 maintainer:~#
21991 </pre></blockquote>
21992
21993 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
21994 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
21995 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
21996 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
21997 option to list the individual machines.</p>
21998
21999 <p>A larger list is
22000 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
22001 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
22002 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
22003 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
22004 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
22005 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
22006 collector.</p>
22007
22008       </div>
22009       <div class="tags">
22010
22011
22012         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>.
22013
22014
22015       </div>
22016     </div>
22017     <div class="padding"></div>
22018
22019     <div class="entry">
22020       <div class="title">
22021         <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>
22022       </div>
22023       <div class="date">
22024          1st June 2010
22025       </div>
22026       <div class="body">
22027         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
22028 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
22029 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
22030 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
22031 wait.</p>
22032
22033 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
22034 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
22035 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
22036 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
22037 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
22038 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
22039
22040 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
22041 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
22042 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
22043 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
22044 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
22045 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
22046 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
22047 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
22048
22049 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
22050
22051       </div>
22052       <div class="tags">
22053
22054
22055         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>.
22056
22057
22058       </div>
22059     </div>
22060     <div class="padding"></div>
22061
22062     <div class="entry">
22063       <div class="title">
22064         <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>
22065       </div>
22066       <div class="date">
22067         27th May 2010
22068       </div>
22069       <div class="body">
22070         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
22071 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
22072 issues are known and should be solved:
22073
22074 <p><ul>
22075
22076 <li>The wicd package seen to
22077 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
22078 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
22079 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
22080 seem to be on the case.</li>
22081
22082 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
22083 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
22084 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
22085 maintainer is on the case.</li>
22086
22087 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
22088 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
22089 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
22090 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
22091 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
22092 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
22093 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
22094 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
22095
22096 </ul></p>
22097
22098 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
22099 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
22100 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
22101 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
22102
22103 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
22104 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
22105 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
22106 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
22107
22108 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
22109
22110       </div>
22111       <div class="tags">
22112
22113
22114         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>.
22115
22116
22117       </div>
22118     </div>
22119     <div class="padding"></div>
22120
22121     <div class="entry">
22122       <div class="title">
22123         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
22124       </div>
22125       <div class="date">
22126         22nd May 2010
22127       </div>
22128       <div class="body">
22129         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
22130 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
22131 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
22132 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
22133
22134 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
22135 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
22136 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
22137 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
22138 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
22139 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
22140 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
22141 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
22142 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
22143 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
22144 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
22145 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
22146 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
22147 going to work.</p>
22148
22149 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
22150 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
22151 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
22152 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
22153 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
22154 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
22155 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
22156 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
22157 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
22158 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
22159 Edu.</p>
22160
22161 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
22162 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
22163 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
22164 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
22165 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
22166 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
22167
22168 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
22169 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
22170
22171       </div>
22172       <div class="tags">
22173
22174
22175         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>.
22176
22177
22178       </div>
22179     </div>
22180     <div class="padding"></div>
22181
22182     <div class="entry">
22183       <div class="title">
22184         <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>
22185       </div>
22186       <div class="date">
22187         19th May 2010
22188       </div>
22189       <div class="body">
22190         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
22191 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
22192 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
22193 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
22194 into unstable.  The
22195 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
22196 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
22197 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
22198 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
22199 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
22200 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
22201 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
22202
22203 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
22204 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
22205 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
22206 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
22207 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
22208 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
22209 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
22210 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
22211
22212 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
22213 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
22214 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
22215 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
22216 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
22217 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
22218 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
22219
22220 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
22221 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
22222 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
22223 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
22224 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
22225 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
22226 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
22227 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
22228 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
22229 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
22230 on the home directory servers.</p>
22231
22232 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
22233 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
22234 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
22235 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
22236 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
22237 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
22238
22239 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
22240 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22241
22242       </div>
22243       <div class="tags">
22244
22245
22246         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>.
22247
22248
22249       </div>
22250     </div>
22251     <div class="padding"></div>
22252
22253     <div class="entry">
22254       <div class="title">
22255         <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>
22256       </div>
22257       <div class="date">
22258         14th May 2010
22259       </div>
22260       <div class="body">
22261         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
22262 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
22263 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
22264 expected, if I am to believe the
22265 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
22266 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
22267 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
22268 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
22269 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
22270 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
22271 version.</p>
22272
22273 More information about
22274 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
22275 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
22276 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
22277 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
22278
22279 <blockquote><pre>
22280 CONCURRENCY=none
22281 </pre></blockquote>
22282
22283 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
22284 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
22285 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
22286 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
22287
22288       </div>
22289       <div class="tags">
22290
22291
22292         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>.
22293
22294
22295       </div>
22296     </div>
22297     <div class="padding"></div>
22298
22299     <div class="entry">
22300       <div class="title">
22301         <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>
22302       </div>
22303       <div class="date">
22304         14th May 2010
22305       </div>
22306       <div class="body">
22307         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
22308 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
22309 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
22310 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
22311 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
22312 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
22313 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
22314 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
22315
22316 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
22317 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
22318 this on the collector host:</p>
22319
22320 <blockquote><pre>
22321 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
22322 </pre></blockquote>
22323
22324 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
22325 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
22326
22327 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
22328 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
22329 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
22330 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
22331 written yet.</p>
22332
22333       </div>
22334       <div class="tags">
22335
22336
22337         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>.
22338
22339
22340       </div>
22341     </div>
22342     <div class="padding"></div>
22343
22344     <div class="entry">
22345       <div class="title">
22346         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
22347       </div>
22348       <div class="date">
22349         13th May 2010
22350       </div>
22351       <div class="body">
22352         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
22353 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
22354 has been
22355 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
22356
22357 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
22358 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
22359 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
22360 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
22361 based boot system.  Tollef is
22362 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
22363 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
22364 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
22365 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
22366 at the moment do not.</p>
22367
22368 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
22369 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
22370 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
22371 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
22372 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
22373 way forward.</p>
22374
22375 <p>In the mean time, based on the
22376 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
22377 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
22378 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
22379 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
22380 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
22381 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
22382 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
22383 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
22384
22385       </div>
22386       <div class="tags">
22387
22388
22389         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>.
22390
22391
22392       </div>
22393     </div>
22394     <div class="padding"></div>
22395
22396     <div class="entry">
22397       <div class="title">
22398         <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>
22399       </div>
22400       <div class="date">
22401          6th May 2010
22402       </div>
22403       <div class="body">
22404         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
22405 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
22406 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
22407 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
22408 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
22409 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
22410 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
22411
22412 <blockquote><pre>
22413 CONCURRENCY=makefile
22414 </pre></blockquote>
22415
22416 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
22417 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
22418 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
22419 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
22420 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
22421 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
22422 make this happen.</p>
22423
22424 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
22425 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
22426 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
22427 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
22428 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
22429
22430 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
22431 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
22432 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
22433 fix the remaining issues.</p>
22434
22435 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
22436 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
22437 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
22438 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
22439
22440       </div>
22441       <div class="tags">
22442
22443
22444         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>.
22445
22446
22447       </div>
22448     </div>
22449     <div class="padding"></div>
22450
22451     <div class="entry">
22452       <div class="title">
22453         <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>
22454       </div>
22455       <div class="date">
22456          2nd May 2010
22457       </div>
22458       <div class="body">
22459         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
22460 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
22461 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
22462
22463 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
22464 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
22465 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
22466 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
22467 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
22468
22469 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
22470 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
22471
22472 <blockquote><pre>
22473 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
22474 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
22475 Password expires                                        : never
22476 Password inactive                                       : never
22477 Account expires                                         : never
22478 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
22479 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
22480 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
22481 root@tjener:~#
22482 </pre></blockquote>
22483
22484 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
22485 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
22486 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
22487 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
22488 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
22489 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
22490
22491 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
22492 intended:</p>
22493
22494 <blockquote><pre>
22495 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
22496 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
22497 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
22498 Password expires                                        : never
22499 Password inactive                                       : never
22500 Account expires                                         : never
22501 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
22502 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
22503 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
22504 root@tjener:~#
22505 </pre></blockquote>
22506
22507 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
22508 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
22509 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
22510
22511 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
22512 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
22513
22514 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
22515 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22516
22517 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
22518 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
22519 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
22520 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
22521 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
22522 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
22523 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
22524
22525 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
22526 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
22527 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
22528 change.</p>
22529
22530       </div>
22531       <div class="tags">
22532
22533
22534         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>.
22535
22536
22537       </div>
22538     </div>
22539     <div class="padding"></div>
22540
22541     <div class="entry">
22542       <div class="title">
22543         <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>
22544       </div>
22545       <div class="date">
22546         28th April 2010
22547       </div>
22548       <div class="body">
22549         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
22550 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
22551 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
22552 and go.</p>
22553
22554 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
22555 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
22556 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
22557 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
22558
22559 <ul>
22560
22561  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
22562    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
22563    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
22564    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
22565    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
22566    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
22567    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
22568    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
22569    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
22570    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
22571    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
22572    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
22573
22574  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
22575    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
22576    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
22577    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
22578    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
22579    or the Fedora developed
22580    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
22581    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
22582
22583  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
22584    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
22585    directory, using unison.</li>
22586
22587  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
22588    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
22589    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
22590    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
22591    implemented.</li>
22592
22593  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
22594    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
22595
22596  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
22597    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
22598    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
22599
22600 </ul>
22601
22602 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
22603 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
22604 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
22605 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
22606 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
22607 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
22608 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
22609 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
22610 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
22611
22612 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
22613 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22614
22615       </div>
22616       <div class="tags">
22617
22618
22619         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>.
22620
22621
22622       </div>
22623     </div>
22624     <div class="padding"></div>
22625
22626     <div class="entry">
22627       <div class="title">
22628         <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>
22629       </div>
22630       <div class="date">
22631         19th April 2010
22632       </div>
22633       <div class="body">
22634         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
22635 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
22636 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
22637 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
22638 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
22639 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
22640 restrictions on the web, for example from
22641 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
22642 epub-version from
22643 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
22644 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
22645 strongly recommend this book.</p>
22646
22647       </div>
22648       <div class="tags">
22649
22650
22651         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>.
22652
22653
22654       </div>
22655     </div>
22656     <div class="padding"></div>
22657
22658     <div class="entry">
22659       <div class="title">
22660         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
22661       </div>
22662       <div class="date">
22663         14th April 2010
22664       </div>
22665       <div class="body">
22666         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
22667 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
22668 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
22669 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
22670 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
22671 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
22672 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
22673 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
22674 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
22675
22676 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
22677 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
22678 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
22679 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
22680 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
22681
22682 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
22683 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
22684
22685 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
22686 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
22687 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
22688 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
22689 to work properly.</p>
22690
22691 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
22692 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
22693 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
22694 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
22695 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
22696 time.</p>
22697
22698 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
22699 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
22700 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
22701 up in a few days.</p>
22702
22703       </div>
22704       <div class="tags">
22705
22706
22707         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>.
22708
22709
22710       </div>
22711     </div>
22712     <div class="padding"></div>
22713
22714     <div class="entry">
22715       <div class="title">
22716         <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>
22717       </div>
22718       <div class="date">
22719          6th March 2010
22720       </div>
22721       <div class="body">
22722         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
22723 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
22724 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
22725 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
22726 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
22727 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
22728
22729 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
22730 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
22731 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
22732 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
22733
22734 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
22735 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
22736 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
22737 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
22738 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
22739 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
22740
22741       </div>
22742       <div class="tags">
22743
22744
22745         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>.
22746
22747
22748       </div>
22749     </div>
22750     <div class="padding"></div>
22751
22752     <div class="entry">
22753       <div class="title">
22754         <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>
22755       </div>
22756       <div class="date">
22757         11th February 2010
22758       </div>
22759       <div class="body">
22760         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
22761 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
22762 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
22763 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
22764 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
22765 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
22766 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
22767
22768 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
22769
22770 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
22771 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
22772 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
22773 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
22774
22775       </div>
22776       <div class="tags">
22777
22778
22779         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>.
22780
22781
22782       </div>
22783     </div>
22784     <div class="padding"></div>
22785
22786     <div class="entry">
22787       <div class="title">
22788         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
22789       </div>
22790       <div class="date">
22791         27th January 2010
22792       </div>
22793       <div class="body">
22794         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
22795 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
22796 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
22797 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
22798 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
22799 further.</p>
22800
22801 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
22802 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
22803 configured to be a server for the
22804 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
22805 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
22806 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
22807 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
22808 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
22809 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
22810 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
22811 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
22812 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
22813 and Nagios configuration.</p>
22814
22815 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
22816 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
22817 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
22818 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
22819
22820 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
22821 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
22822 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
22823 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
22824 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
22825 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
22826 the machine.</p>
22827
22828 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
22829 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
22830 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
22831 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
22832
22833 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
22834 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
22835 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
22836 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
22837 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
22838 everything is taken care of.</p>
22839
22840       </div>
22841       <div class="tags">
22842
22843
22844         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>.
22845
22846
22847       </div>
22848     </div>
22849     <div class="padding"></div>
22850
22851     <div class="entry">
22852       <div class="title">
22853         <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>
22854       </div>
22855       <div class="date">
22856         12th August 2009
22857       </div>
22858       <div class="body">
22859         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
22860 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
22861 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
22862 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
22863
22864 <table>
22865 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22866 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
22867 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
22868 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
22869 </table>
22870
22871 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
22872 got these numbers:</p>
22873
22874 <table>
22875 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22876 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
22877 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
22878 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
22879 </table>
22880
22881 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
22882
22883 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
22884 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
22885 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
22886 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
22887 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
22888
22889
22890 <table>
22891 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22892 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
22893 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
22894 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
22895 </table>
22896
22897 <p>And with 'site:no':
22898
22899 <table>
22900 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22901 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
22902 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
22903 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
22904 </table>
22905
22906 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
22907 numbers.</p>
22908
22909       </div>
22910       <div class="tags">
22911
22912
22913         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>.
22914
22915
22916       </div>
22917     </div>
22918     <div class="padding"></div>
22919
22920     <div class="entry">
22921       <div class="title">
22922         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
22923       </div>
22924       <div class="date">
22925          8th August 2009
22926       </div>
22927       <div class="body">
22928         <p>According to <a
22929 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
22930 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
22931 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
22932 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
22933 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
22934 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
22935 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
22936 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
22937 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
22938 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
22939
22940 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
22941 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
22942 seminar this autumn.</p>
22943
22944       </div>
22945       <div class="tags">
22946
22947
22948         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>.
22949
22950
22951       </div>
22952     </div>
22953     <div class="padding"></div>
22954
22955     <div class="entry">
22956       <div class="title">
22957         <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>
22958       </div>
22959       <div class="date">
22960         27th July 2009
22961       </div>
22962       <div class="body">
22963         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
22964 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
22965 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
22966 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
22967 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
22968 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
22969 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
22970
22971 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
22972 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
22973 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
22974
22975       </div>
22976       <div class="tags">
22977
22978
22979         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>.
22980
22981
22982       </div>
22983     </div>
22984     <div class="padding"></div>
22985
22986     <div class="entry">
22987       <div class="title">
22988         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
22989       </div>
22990       <div class="date">
22991         22nd July 2009
22992       </div>
22993       <div class="body">
22994         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
22995 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
22996 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
22997 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
22998 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
22999 the package up to date.</p>
23000
23001 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
23002 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
23003 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
23004 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
23005 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
23006 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
23007 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
23008 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
23009 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
23010 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
23011 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
23012 working on the future release.</p>
23013
23014 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
23015 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
23016
23017       </div>
23018       <div class="tags">
23019
23020
23021         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>.
23022
23023
23024       </div>
23025     </div>
23026     <div class="padding"></div>
23027
23028     <div class="entry">
23029       <div class="title">
23030         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
23031       </div>
23032       <div class="date">
23033         24th June 2009
23034       </div>
23035       <div class="body">
23036         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
23037 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
23038 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
23039 funded
23040 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
23041 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
23042 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
23043 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
23044 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
23045 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
23046
23047 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
23048 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
23049 boot:</p>
23050
23051 <ul>
23052
23053 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
23054
23055 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
23056    clock is in UTC.</li>
23057
23058 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
23059    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
23060    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
23061
23062 </ul>
23063
23064 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
23065 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
23066 Villegas</a>.
23067
23068 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
23069 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
23070 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
23071 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
23072 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
23073 using this.</p>
23074
23075 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
23076 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
23077 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
23078 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
23079 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
23080 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
23081 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
23082
23083       </div>
23084       <div class="tags">
23085
23086
23087         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>.
23088
23089
23090       </div>
23091     </div>
23092     <div class="padding"></div>
23093
23094     <div class="entry">
23095       <div class="title">
23096         <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>
23097       </div>
23098       <div class="date">
23099          2nd May 2009
23100       </div>
23101       <div class="body">
23102         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
23103 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
23104 do not yet know them.</p>
23105
23106 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
23107 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
23108 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
23109 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
23110 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
23111 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
23112 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
23113 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
23114 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
23115 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
23116 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
23117
23118 <p>The second one is
23119 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
23120 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
23121 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
23122 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
23123 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
23124 and the company behind it is running
23125 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
23126 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
23127 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
23128 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
23129 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
23130 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
23131 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
23132 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
23133
23134 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
23135 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
23136 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
23137 surrounded by today.</p>
23138
23139       </div>
23140       <div class="tags">
23141
23142
23143         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>.
23144
23145
23146       </div>
23147     </div>
23148     <div class="padding"></div>
23149
23150     <div class="entry">
23151       <div class="title">
23152         <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>
23153       </div>
23154       <div class="date">
23155         28th April 2009
23156       </div>
23157       <div class="body">
23158         <p>Julien Blache
23159 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
23160 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
23161 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
23162 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
23163 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
23164 properties.</p>
23165
23166       </div>
23167       <div class="tags">
23168
23169
23170         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>.
23171
23172
23173       </div>
23174     </div>
23175     <div class="padding"></div>
23176
23177     <div class="entry">
23178       <div class="title">
23179         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
23180       </div>
23181       <div class="date">
23182          5th April 2009
23183       </div>
23184       <div class="body">
23185         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
23186 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
23187 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
23188 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
23189 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
23190 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
23191 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
23192 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
23193
23194 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
23195 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
23196 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
23197   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
23198   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
23199
23200 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
23201 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
23202 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
23203 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
23204
23205 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
23206 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
23207 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
23208 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
23209
23210 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
23211 set -e
23212 URL="$1"
23213 SAVEFILE="$2"
23214 DURATION="$3"
23215 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
23216   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
23217   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
23218 pid=$!
23219 sleep $DURATION
23220 kill $pid
23221 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
23222
23223       </div>
23224       <div class="tags">
23225
23226
23227         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>.
23228
23229
23230       </div>
23231     </div>
23232     <div class="padding"></div>
23233
23234     <div class="entry">
23235       <div class="title">
23236         <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>
23237       </div>
23238       <div class="date">
23239         30th March 2009
23240       </div>
23241       <div class="body">
23242         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
23243 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
23244 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
23245 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
23246 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
23247 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
23248 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
23249 application.</p>
23250
23251 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
23252 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
23253 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
23254 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
23255 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
23256 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
23257 blocked from doing so.</p>
23258
23259 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
23260 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
23261 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
23262 requirements change.</p>
23263
23264 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
23265 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
23266 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
23267
23268       </div>
23269       <div class="tags">
23270
23271
23272         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>.
23273
23274
23275       </div>
23276     </div>
23277     <div class="padding"></div>
23278
23279     <div class="entry">
23280       <div class="title">
23281         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
23282       </div>
23283       <div class="date">
23284         29th March 2009
23285       </div>
23286       <div class="body">
23287         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
23288 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
23289 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
23290 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
23291 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
23292 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
23293 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
23294 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
23295 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
23296 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
23297 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
23298 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
23299 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
23300 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
23301 now. :)</p>
23302
23303       </div>
23304       <div class="tags">
23305
23306
23307         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>.
23308
23309
23310       </div>
23311     </div>
23312     <div class="padding"></div>
23313
23314     <div class="entry">
23315       <div class="title">
23316         <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>
23317       </div>
23318       <div class="date">
23319         29th March 2009
23320       </div>
23321       <div class="body">
23322         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
23323 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
23324 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
23325 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
23326 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
23327 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
23328
23329 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
23330 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
23331 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
23332 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
23333 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
23334 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
23335 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
23336 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
23337 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
23338 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
23339 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
23340 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
23341 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
23342
23343 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
23344 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
23345 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
23346 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
23347
23348 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
23349 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
23350
23351 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
23352 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
23353 new IETF work group?</p>
23354
23355       </div>
23356       <div class="tags">
23357
23358
23359         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>.
23360
23361
23362       </div>
23363     </div>
23364     <div class="padding"></div>
23365
23366     <div class="entry">
23367       <div class="title">
23368         <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>
23369       </div>
23370       <div class="date">
23371         28th February 2009
23372       </div>
23373       <div class="body">
23374         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
23375 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
23376 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
23377 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
23378 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
23379 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
23380 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
23381 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
23382 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
23383 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
23384 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
23385 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
23386 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
23387 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
23388 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
23389 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
23390 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
23391 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
23392 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
23393 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
23394 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
23395 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
23396 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
23397 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
23398 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
23399 machine.</p>
23400
23401 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
23402 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
23403 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
23404 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
23405 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
23406 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
23407 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
23408
23409 <pre>
23410 use LWP::Simple;
23411 use POSIX;
23412 use WWW::Mechanize;
23413 use Date::Parse;
23414 [...]
23415 sub get_support_info {
23416     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
23417     my $str;
23418
23419     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
23420         # fetch website from Dell support
23421         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";
23422         my $webpage = get($url);
23423         return undef unless ($webpage);
23424
23425         my $daysleft = -1;
23426         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
23427         foreach my $line (@lines) {
23428             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
23429             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23430             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
23431
23432             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
23433             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
23434             my $lastend = "";
23435             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
23436                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
23437
23438                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23439                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
23440                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23441                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
23442                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
23443                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
23444                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
23445             }
23446             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23447             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23448                 if ($lastend lt $today);
23449         }
23450     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
23451         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
23452         my $url =
23453             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
23454         $mech->get($url);
23455         my $fields = {
23456             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
23457             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
23458             'country' => 'NO',
23459             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
23460             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
23461         };
23462         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
23463                             fields      => $fields );
23464         # Next step is screen scraping
23465         my $content = $mech->content();
23466
23467         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23468         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
23469         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
23470         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
23471
23472         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23473
23474         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
23475             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
23476                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
23477             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
23478             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23479                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
23480             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23481                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
23482
23483             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
23484
23485             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23486                 if ($end lt $today);
23487         }
23488     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
23489         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
23490         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
23491         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
23492             my $content =
23493                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
23494             if ($content) {
23495                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23496                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
23497                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
23498                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
23499
23500                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
23501                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
23502
23503                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
23504
23505                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23506                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23507                     if ($end lt $today);
23508             }
23509         }
23510     }
23511     return $str;
23512 }
23513 </pre>
23514
23515 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
23516 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
23517 from dmidecode.</p>
23518
23519 <pre>
23520 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
23521                        "447707-B21");
23522 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
23523 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
23524                        "1234567");
23525 </pre>
23526
23527 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
23528 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
23529
23530 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
23531 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
23532 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
23533 do so.</p>
23534
23535       </div>
23536       <div class="tags">
23537
23538
23539         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>.
23540
23541
23542       </div>
23543     </div>
23544     <div class="padding"></div>
23545
23546     <div class="entry">
23547       <div class="title">
23548         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
23549       </div>
23550       <div class="date">
23551         20th February 2009
23552       </div>
23553       <div class="body">
23554         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
23555 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
23556 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
23557 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
23558 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
23559 the "missing" computer.</p>
23560
23561 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
23562 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
23563 code blocks as defined in the
23564 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
23565 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
23566 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
23567 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
23568 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
23569 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
23570 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
23571 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
23572 codes.</p>
23573
23574 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
23575 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
23576 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
23577 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
23578 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
23579 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
23580
23581 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
23582 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
23583 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
23584 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
23585 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
23586 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
23587 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
23588 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
23589 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
23590 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
23591
23592 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
23593 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
23594 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
23595
23596       </div>
23597       <div class="tags">
23598
23599
23600         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>.
23601
23602
23603       </div>
23604     </div>
23605     <div class="padding"></div>
23606
23607     <div class="entry">
23608       <div class="title">
23609         <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>
23610       </div>
23611       <div class="date">
23612         17th January 2009
23613       </div>
23614       <div class="body">
23615         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
23616 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
23617 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
23618 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
23619 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
23620 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
23621 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
23622 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
23623 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
23624 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
23625 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
23626 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
23627 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
23628 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
23629
23630 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
23631 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
23632 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
23633 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
23634 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
23635 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
23636 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
23637 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
23638 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
23639 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
23640 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
23641 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
23642 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
23643 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
23644 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
23645 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
23646 playing when the download is done.</p>
23647
23648 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
23649 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
23650 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
23651 too.</p>
23652
23653 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
23654 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
23655 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
23656 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
23657
23658       </div>
23659       <div class="tags">
23660
23661
23662         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</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>.
23663
23664
23665       </div>
23666     </div>
23667     <div class="padding"></div>
23668
23669     <div class="entry">
23670       <div class="title">
23671         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
23672       </div>
23673       <div class="date">
23674         28th December 2008
23675       </div>
23676       <div class="body">
23677         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
23678 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
23679 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
23680 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
23681 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
23682 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
23683 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
23684 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
23685 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
23686 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
23687 source, sink and mixer applications and
23688 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
23689 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
23690 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
23691 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
23692 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
23693 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
23694 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
23695 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
23696 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
23697
23698 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
23699 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
23700 larger stick as well.</p>
23701
23702       </div>
23703       <div class="tags">
23704
23705
23706         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>.
23707
23708
23709       </div>
23710     </div>
23711     <div class="padding"></div>
23712
23713     <div class="entry">
23714       <div class="title">
23715         <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>
23716       </div>
23717       <div class="date">
23718          7th December 2008
23719       </div>
23720       <div class="body">
23721         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
23722 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
23723 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
23724 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
23725 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
23726 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
23727 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
23728 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
23729
23730 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
23731 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
23732 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
23733 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
23734 of these cards.</p>
23735
23736       </div>
23737       <div class="tags">
23738
23739
23740         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>.
23741
23742
23743       </div>
23744     </div>
23745     <div class="padding"></div>
23746
23747     <div class="entry">
23748       <div class="title">
23749         <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>
23750       </div>
23751       <div class="date">
23752         25th November 2008
23753       </div>
23754       <div class="body">
23755         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
23756 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
23757 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
23758 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
23759 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
23760 notes are available on
23761 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
23762 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
23763 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
23764 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
23765 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
23766 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
23767 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
23768 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
23769 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
23770
23771 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
23772 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
23773
23774       </div>
23775       <div class="tags">
23776
23777
23778         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>.
23779
23780
23781       </div>
23782     </div>
23783     <div class="padding"></div>
23784
23785     <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>
23786     <div id="sidebar">
23787
23788
23789
23790 <h2>Archive</h2>
23791 <ul>
23792
23793 <li>2015
23794 <ul>
23795
23796 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
23797
23798 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
23799
23800 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
23801
23802 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
23803
23804 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
23805
23806 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
23807
23808 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
23809
23810 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
23811
23812 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
23813
23814 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (7)</a></li>
23815
23816 </ul></li>
23817
23818 <li>2014
23819 <ul>
23820
23821 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
23822
23823 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
23824
23825 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
23826
23827 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
23828
23829 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
23830
23831 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
23832
23833 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
23834
23835 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
23836
23837 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
23838
23839 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
23840
23841 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
23842
23843 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
23844
23845 </ul></li>
23846
23847 <li>2013
23848 <ul>
23849
23850 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
23851
23852 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
23853
23854 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
23855
23856 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
23857
23858 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
23859
23860 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
23861
23862 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
23863
23864 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
23865
23866 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
23867
23868 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
23869
23870 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
23871
23872 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
23873
23874 </ul></li>
23875
23876 <li>2012
23877 <ul>
23878
23879 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
23880
23881 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
23882
23883 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
23884
23885 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
23886
23887 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
23888
23889 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
23890
23891 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
23892
23893 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
23894
23895 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
23896
23897 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
23898
23899 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
23900
23901 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
23902
23903 </ul></li>
23904
23905 <li>2011
23906 <ul>
23907
23908 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
23909
23910 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
23911
23912 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
23913
23914 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
23915
23916 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
23917
23918 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
23919
23920 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
23921
23922 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
23923
23924 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
23925
23926 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
23927
23928 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
23929
23930 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
23931
23932 </ul></li>
23933
23934 <li>2010
23935 <ul>
23936
23937 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
23938
23939 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
23940
23941 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
23942
23943 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
23944
23945 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
23946
23947 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
23948
23949 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
23950
23951 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
23952
23953 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
23954
23955 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
23956
23957 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
23958
23959 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
23960
23961 </ul></li>
23962
23963 <li>2009
23964 <ul>
23965
23966 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
23967
23968 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
23969
23970 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
23971
23972 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
23973
23974 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
23975
23976 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
23977
23978 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
23979
23980 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
23981
23982 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
23983
23984 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
23985
23986 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
23987
23988 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
23989
23990 </ul></li>
23991
23992 <li>2008
23993 <ul>
23994
23995 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
23996
23997 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
23998
23999 </ul></li>
24000
24001 </ul>
24002
24003
24004
24005 <h2>Tags</h2>
24006 <ul>
24007
24008  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
24009
24010  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
24011
24012  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
24013
24014  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
24015
24016  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
24017
24018  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
24019
24020  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
24021
24022  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
24023
24024  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (112)</a></li>
24025
24026  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (153)</a></li>
24027
24028  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
24029
24030  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
24031
24032  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (20)</a></li>
24033
24034  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
24035
24036  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (292)</a></li>
24037
24038  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
24039
24040  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
24041
24042  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (22)</a></li>
24043
24044  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
24045
24046  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (16)</a></li>
24047
24048  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
24049
24050  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
24051
24052  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (10)</a></li>
24053
24054  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
24055
24056  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
24057
24058  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
24059
24060  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
24061
24062  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
24063
24064  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
24065
24066  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (36)</a></li>
24067
24068  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (267)</a></li>
24069
24070  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (177)</a></li>
24071
24072  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (20)</a></li>
24073
24074  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
24075
24076  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (54)</a></li>
24077
24078  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (88)</a></li>
24079
24080  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
24081
24082  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
24083
24084  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
24085
24086  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
24087
24088  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
24089
24090  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
24091
24092  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
24093
24094  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
24095
24096  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (43)</a></li>
24097
24098  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
24099
24100  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
24101
24102  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (48)</a></li>
24103
24104  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
24105
24106  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (10)</a></li>
24107
24108  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (35)</a></li>
24109
24110  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
24111
24112  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
24113
24114  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
24115
24116  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (54)</a></li>
24117
24118  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
24119
24120  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (37)</a></li>
24121
24122 </ul>
24123
24124
24125     </div>
24126     <p style="text-align: right">
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