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        <channel>
                <title>Petter Reinholdtsen</title>
                <description></description>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
                <atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
        
        <item>
                <title>Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 10 Jul 2013 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I wrote about
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html&quot;&gt;the
problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk&lt;/a&gt;, which
was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lenovo.com/&quot;&gt;Lenovo&lt;/a&gt;, and they wanted to send a
replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
lock up when I download a new
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; ISO or
other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
the next proposal from Lenovo.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5&quot; 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5&quot; 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
exist).&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 9 Jul 2013 10:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
party in Oslo.  It is organised by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;the
member assosiation NUUG&lt;/a&gt; and
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
project&lt;/a&gt; together with &lt;a href=&quot;http://bitraf.no/&quot;&gt;the hack space
Bitraf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
on &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo&quot;&gt;the event
wiki page&lt;/a&gt; if you plan to join us.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 5 Jul 2013 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html&quot;&gt;replacement
for my trusty old Thinkpad X41&lt;/a&gt;.  Unfortunately I did not have much
time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
ended up picking a
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230&quot;&gt;Thinkpad X230&lt;/a&gt;
with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
on that below.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
feature at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prisjakt.no/&quot;&gt;Prisjakt&lt;/a&gt;, which
allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
get their impression on keyboards and robustness.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
needed a new laptop now. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
reported to Debian as &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/691427&quot;&gt;BTS
report #691427 2012-10-25&lt;/a&gt; (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
kernel developers as
&lt;a href=&quot;https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861&quot;&gt;Kernel bugzilla
report #51861 2012-12-20&lt;/a&gt; (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
(SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
Lenovo forums, both for
&lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549&quot;&gt;T430
2012-11-10&lt;/a&gt; and for
&lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147&quot;&gt;X230
03-20-2013&lt;/a&gt;.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
There is even a
&lt;a href=&quot;https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git&quot;&gt;small C program
available&lt;/a&gt; that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
minutes by writing to a file.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
fixed. :)&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 4 Jul 2013 09:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
picking a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230&quot;&gt;Thinkpad
X230&lt;/a&gt; with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
with an expencive door stop.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
feature at &lt;ahref=&quot;http://www.prisjakt.no/&quot;&gt;Prisjakt&lt;/a&gt;, which
allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
to drop number of disks from my search parameters.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
new laptop now. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 3 Jul 2013 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
today.  This is the release announcement:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
2013-07-03&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename &quot;Wheezy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu, also known as
Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
desktop contains
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html&quot;&gt;more
than 60 educational software packages&lt;/a&gt; and more are available from
the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
and Xfce desktop environment.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
Squeeze release.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software updates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
    submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
    brings KDE in line with the others.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
    they don&#39;t have a desktop menu entry and thus won&#39;t show up in the
    menu now that menu-xdg was removed.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
    multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
    X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
    too.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
    are too few to make the package useful.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
  &lt;li&gt;Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
    up for some language options.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
    d-i is doing it.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
    debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
    script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
    Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Update system to install needed firmware packages during
    installation, to work properly in Wheezy.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
    and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
    work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Known issues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
    available yet (698840).&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Artwork not enabled for all desktops.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where to get it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
&lt;br&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
&lt;br&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 25 Jun 2013 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;Isenkram package&lt;/a&gt;
including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
# isenkram-autoinstall-firmware 
info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
firmware-ipw2x00
firmware-ipw2x00
Preconfiguring packages ...
Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
(Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
# 
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
printed instead:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
# isenkram-autoinstall-firmware 
info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
# 
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
me some time when setting up new machines. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
&lt;tt&gt;apt-get install&lt;/tt&gt;.  The end result is a slightly better working
machine.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
finally fix &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/655507&quot;&gt;BTS report
#655507&lt;/a&gt;.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
from the nearby Debian mirror.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>The value of a good distro wide test suite...</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 22 Jun 2013 07:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; project, we include a post-installation test suite,
which check that services are running, working, and return the
expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
configured, which is the topic of this post.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The last week I&#39;ve fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
working packages to get it working.  And ad the packages changed name
from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
right after we got the ISOs operational.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
test suite using &lt;tt&gt;/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install&lt;/tt&gt; and see if
any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
the problem.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
please join us on
&lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu&quot;&gt;#debian-edu on
irc.debian.org&lt;/a&gt; and the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/&quot;&gt;debian-edu@&lt;/a&gt; mailing
list.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and
Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; distribution have users and contributors all around the
globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
&lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu&quot;&gt;our IRC channel
#debian-edu&lt;/a&gt; and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
with him, to learn more about him.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year&#39;s Eve
party, I had a very nice &lt;strike&gt;beer&lt;/strike&gt; discussion with a
friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
field.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
of &lt;a href=&quot;http://ceata.org/&quot;&gt;Fundația Ceata&lt;/a&gt;, which is a free
software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
the only one we have in our country.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
ways to contribute.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
haven&#39;t fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
software in my country is pretty low, I&#39;ll be happy to be the first
one around here advocating for the project&#39;s adoption in educational
environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
from now on, time will tell what I&#39;ll be doing next, but I think I
have a pretty consistent starting point.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
it comes to managing a school&#39;s network, for example.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
scenarios is something I can&#39;t wait to experiment &quot;into the wild&quot; (I
only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
lot more I haven&#39;t discovered yet about it, being so new within the
project.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I&#39;d like to see
Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project&#39;s dynamics. Not
to mention it&#39;s a very fun blend to work on!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
to all blends and derivatives, but it&#39;s an issue we can all work
on.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
Enlightenment project a lot!),
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.claws-mail.org/‎&quot;&gt;Claws Mail&lt;/a&gt; due to its ease of
use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
&lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/redshift&quot;&gt;Redshift&lt;/a&gt;, which helps me
get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
stuff in this bag, but I&#39;ll need a blog on my own for doing this!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
that:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

&lt;li&gt;schools would like to get rid of proprietary software&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
    experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
    of teenagers more?&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;there is no &quot;right one&quot; when it comes to strategies, but it would
    be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
    other can get some inspiration from them (I know I&#39;d promote
    them!)&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
    lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
    person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
very hard to convert against their will.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;There is a certain cross-over between the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux
project&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edubuntu.org/&quot;&gt;the Edubuntu
project&lt;/a&gt;, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
days vary quite a bit since I&#39;m involved in too many things. As I&#39;m
getting older I&#39;m learning how to focus a bit more :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
each other.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
[Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
day I have a big todo list backlog that I&#39;m catching up with. I think
over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
been gradually improving, although I think there&#39;s a lot that we could
still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I&#39;m sure
we&#39;ll get there one day.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
it for pages, but in essence I love that it&#39;s a very honest project
that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
very high quality work.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
helps to standardise installations in schools so that it&#39;s easier for
community members and commercial suppliers to support.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I had to re-type this one a few times because I&#39;m trying to
separate &quot;disadvantages&quot; from &quot;areas that need improvement&quot; (which is
what I originally rambled on about)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
on. When you&#39;ve been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I&#39;d love to be one
myself but I&#39;m already so over-committed that it&#39;s just not possible
currently.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
their skills in-house. I&#39;m often saddened to see how much money
educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don&#39;t
have access to after the service has ended and they could&#39;ve gotten so
much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
autonomous.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
so I suppose I&#39;ll soon be able to regain that disk space :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I&#39;ve been torn on
which desktop environment I like and I&#39;m taking some refuge in Xfce
while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
X.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
using Norton Commander in the early 90&#39;s and it stuck (I think the
people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don&#39;t know how to use
it :p)

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
many cases it&#39;s appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
don&#39;t think that there&#39;s any particular moral or ethical problem with
that.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
problems in educational institutions and it&#39;s just a shame not taking
advantage of that.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
general concepts. I think that&#39;s very unproductive because firstly, MS
Office&#39;s interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
best solution for them.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
make a decision that would work for them.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 11 Jun 2013 11:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
or on first boot from the hard disk.  I&#39;ve seen it once in a while the
last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I&#39;ve seen it
on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
i915 driver used by the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Packard Bell
EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt;, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
/etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
can be done by running these commands as root:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
update-initramfs -u -k all
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Since March 2012 there is
&lt;a href=&quot;http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955&quot;&gt;a
mechanism in the Linux kernel&lt;/a&gt; to tell the i915 driver which
hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
&lt;a href=&quot;http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c&quot;&gt;the
intel_quirks array&lt;/a&gt; in the driver source
&lt;tt&gt;drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c&lt;/tt&gt; (look for &quot;&lt;tt&gt;static
struct intel_quirk intel_quirks&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;), specifying the PCI device
number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
number.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from &lt;tt&gt;lspci
-vvnn&lt;/tt&gt; for the video card in question:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
    3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
    (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
 Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
    ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast &gt;TAbort- \
    &lt;TAbort- &lt;MAbort-&gt;SERR- &lt;PERR- INTx-
 Latency: 0
 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
 Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
 Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
 Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
 Expansion ROM at &lt;unassigned&gt; [disabled]
 Capabilities: &lt;access denied&gt;
 Kernel driver in use: i915
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
       ...
        /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
        { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
       ...
}
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
&lt;tt&gt;modinfo i915&lt;/tt&gt;), information about hardware needing the
invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel&quot;&gt;dri-devel
(at) lists.freedesktop.org&lt;/a&gt; mailing list to reach the kernel
developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
yet shown up in
&lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html&quot;&gt;the
web archive for the mailing list&lt;/a&gt;, so I suspect they do not accept
emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
the Debian bug tracking system instead as
&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/710938&quot;&gt;BTS report #710938&lt;/a&gt;, to make
sure the patch is not lost.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
the screen during login.  I&#39;ve reported it to Debian as
&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/711237&quot;&gt;BTS report #711237&lt;/a&gt;, and
have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
you do not know how to update BTS).&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        </channel>
</rss>