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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/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
26 </div>
27 <div class="date">
28 1st June 2013
29 </div>
30 <div class="body">
31 <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
32 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
33 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn. We have tried to
34 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
35 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
36 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
37 debtag field. Here it is. Click on a image to learn more about the
38 program.</p>
39
40 <!-- 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 -->
41
42 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
43 <p>
44 <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>
45 <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>
46 <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>
47 <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>
48 <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>
49 <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>
50 <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>
51 <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>
52 <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>
53 <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>
54 <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>
55 <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>
56 <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>
57 <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>
58 </p>
59
60 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
61 <p>
62 <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>
63 <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>
64 <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>
65 <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>
66 <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>
67 <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>
68 </p>
69
70 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
71 <p>
72 <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>
73 </p>
74
75 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
76 <p>
77 <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>
78 <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>
79 <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>
80 <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>
81 <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>
82 <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>
83 <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>
84 <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>
85 <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>
86 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
87 <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>
88 </p>
89
90 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
91 <p>
92 <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>
93 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
94 </p>
95
96 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
97 <p>
98 <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>
99 <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>
100 <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>
101 </p>
102
103 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
104 <p>
105 <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>
106 <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>
107 <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>
108 <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>
109 <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>
110 </p>
111
112 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
113 <p>
114 <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>
115 <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>
116 <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>
117 <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>
118 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
119 <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>
120 <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>
121 <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>
122 <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>
123 <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>
124 <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>
125 <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>
126 <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>
127 <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>
128 <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>
129 <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>
130 <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>
131 </p>
132
133 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
134 <p>
135 <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>
136 <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>
137 </p>
138
139 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
140 <p>
141 <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>
142 <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>
143 <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>
144 <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>
145 <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>
146 <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>
147 <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>
148 <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>
149 <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>
150 <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>
151 </p>
152
153 <p>In total, 61 applications. 3 of them lacked screen shots on
154 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>. If
155 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
156 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
157 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
158 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
159 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
160
161 </div>
162 <div class="tags">
163
164
165 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>.
166
167
168 </div>
169 </div>
170 <div class="padding"></div>
171
172 <div class="entry">
173 <div class="title">
174 <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>
175 </div>
176 <div class="date">
177 27th May 2013
178 </div>
179 <div class="body">
180 <p>Two days ago, I asked
181 <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
182 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
183 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>. I found a solution, but am horrified
184 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
185 and Windows 8.</p>
186
187 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
188 secure booting or fast boot. I suspect fast boot was the problem,
189 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
190 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
191 enough to tell.</p>
192
193 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
194 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive! This is as far as I
195 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
196 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement. I am told (and
197 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
198 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8. But as I believe the terms
199 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
200 was never an alternative. I do not enter agreements I do not intend
201 to follow.</p>
202
203 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
204 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
205 work. But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
206 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops. Is
207 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
208 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
209 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms? Or at least not
210 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
211
212 <p>I've updated the
213 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
214 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
215 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
216 machine.</p>
217
218 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
219 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
220
221 </div>
222 <div class="tags">
223
224
225 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
226
227
228 </div>
229 </div>
230 <div class="padding"></div>
231
232 <div class="entry">
233 <div class="title">
234 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_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>
235 </div>
236 <div class="date">
237 25th May 2013
238 </div>
239 <div class="body">
240 <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days. I bought three
241 new laptops for my parents and a few others. I bought Packard Bell
242 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer. But I
243 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it. The
244 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
245 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
246
247 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
248 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick. I have yet
249 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work. when I turn on
250 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
251 the normal boot menu. I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
252 USB stick booting. When booting, it first ask for the language to
253 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
254 Windows 8 terms of use. As these terms are completely unacceptable to
255 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
256 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
257
258 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
259 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
260 EasyNote LV</a> model. If you have any idea how to get Linux
261 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
262 page. If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
263 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
264
265 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
266 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
267 on new Laptops?</p>
268
269 </div>
270 <div class="tags">
271
272
273 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>.
274
275
276 </div>
277 </div>
278 <div class="padding"></div>
279
280 <div class="entry">
281 <div class="title">
282 <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>
283 </div>
284 <div class="date">
285 17th May 2013
286 </div>
287 <div class="body">
288 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
289 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools. It
290 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
291 pupils in the primary schools. It provide both the central server,
292 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
293 educational software. The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
294 2001-07-02. If you want to support the project, which is in need for
295 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
296 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
297 donate some money</a>.
298
299 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
300 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
301 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation. It isn't very
302 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
303 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
304
305 <p>The script,
306 <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/>
307 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
308 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
309 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
310
311 <ol>
312
313 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
314 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
315 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
316 our configuration.</li>
317 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
318 /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
319 according to the profile specified in the config above,
320 overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
321 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
322 that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
323 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
324
325 </ol>
326
327 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
328 replicated like this. Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
329 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
330 the needed packages.</p>
331
332 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
333 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
334 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
335 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
336 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
337 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
338
339 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
340 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
341 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
342
343 <p><pre>
344 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
345 DESKTOP="lxde"
346 </pre></p>
347
348 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
349 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
350 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
351 boot.</p>
352
353 </div>
354 <div class="tags">
355
356
357 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>.
358
359
360 </div>
361 </div>
362 <div class="padding"></div>
363
364 <div class="entry">
365 <div class="title">
366 <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>
367 </div>
368 <div class="date">
369 14th May 2013
370 </div>
371 <div class="body">
372 <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
373 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
374 release today. This is the release announcement:</p>
375
376 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
377 2013-05-14</strong></p>
378
379 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
380 alpha1, based on <ahref="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
381 codename "Wheezy".</p>
382
383 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
384
385 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
386 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
387 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
388 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
389 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
390 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
391 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
392 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
393
394 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
395 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
396 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
397
398 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
399 <ul>
400 <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
401 default.</li>
402 <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
403 <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
404 <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
405 ibus-anthy.</li>
406 </ul>
407
408 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
409 <ul>
410
411 <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
412 reliability improvements.</li>
413 <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
414 of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
415 <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
416 problems.</li>
417 <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
418 direct:// URL.</li>
419 <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
420 <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
421 <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
422 <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
423 servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
424 <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
425 log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
426 </ul>
427
428 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
429 <ul>
430
431 <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
432 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>). Only install
433 libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
434 <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
435 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
436 available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
437 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
438 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
439 <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
440 (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
441 <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
442 password submission problem
443 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
444
445 </ul>
446
447 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
448
449 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
450 <ul>
451
452 <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>
453 <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>
454 <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>
455
456 </ul>
457
458 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
459
460 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
461
462 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
463
464 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
465
466 </div>
467 <div class="tags">
468
469
470 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>.
471
472
473 </div>
474 </div>
475 <div class="padding"></div>
476
477 <div class="entry">
478 <div class="title">
479 <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>
480 </div>
481 <div class="date">
482 11th May 2013
483 </div>
484 <div class="body">
485 <P>In January,
486 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
487 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
488 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
489 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
490 marvellous construction system from Denmark. We also created
491 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
492 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes. And several
493 people showed up to help. I was very happy to see the effect of my
494 call. Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
495 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
496 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
497 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
498
499 <p><table>
500 <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>
501 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
502 <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>
503 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
504 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
505 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
506 <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>
507 <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>
508 <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>
509 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
510 </table></p>
511
512 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
513 currently available in Jessie/testing. leocad is so far only
514 available in experimental.</p>
515
516 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
517 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
518 for LEGO designers.</p>
519
520 </div>
521 <div class="tags">
522
523
524 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>.
525
526
527 </div>
528 </div>
529 <div class="padding"></div>
530
531 <div class="entry">
532 <div class="title">
533 <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>
534 </div>
535 <div class="date">
536 5th May 2013
537 </div>
538 <div class="body">
539 <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
540 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
541 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box. This is a great
542 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
543 soon.</p>
544
545 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
546 in particular make me very happy to see included. The
547 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
548 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
549 included for the first time. Alongside similar programs like
550 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
551 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
552 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
553 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
554 computer. Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
555 Edu.</a>
556
557 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
558 Edu/Skolelinux release too. The
559 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
560 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
561 follow.<p>
562
563 </div>
564 <div class="tags">
565
566
567 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>.
568
569
570 </div>
571 </div>
572 <div class="padding"></div>
573
574 <div class="entry">
575 <div class="title">
576 <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>
577 </div>
578 <div class="date">
579 26th April 2013
580 </div>
581 <div class="body">
582 <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
583 its first Wheezy based release today. This is the release
584 announcement:</p>
585
586 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
587 2013-04-26</strong></p>
588
589 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
590 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
591
592 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
593
594 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
595 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
596 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
597 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
598 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
599 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
600 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
601 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
602 installed via the network.</p>
603
604 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
605 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
606 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
607
608 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
609
610 <ul>
611 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
612 <ul>
613 <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
614 <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
615 (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
616 manual.)</li>
617 <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
618 <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
619 <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
620 <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
621 <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
622 <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
623 <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
624 <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
625 <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
626 <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
627 <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
628 <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
629 <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
630 manual</a> for more details.</li>
631 <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
632 installation.</li>
633 <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
634 <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>
635 </ul></li>
636 </ul>
637
638 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
639 <ul>
640 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
641 German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
642 for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
643 </ul>
644
645 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
646 <ul>
647 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
648 choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
649 server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
650 </ul>
651
652 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
653 <ul>
654 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
655 configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
656 entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
657 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
658 functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
659 completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
660 </ul>
661
662 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
663 <ul>
664 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
665 yet.</li>
666 </ul>
667
668 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
669
670 <ul>
671 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
672 screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
673 had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
674 </ul>
675
676 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
677
678 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
679 <ul>
680 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
681 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
682 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
683 </ul>
684
685 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
686
687 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
688
689 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
690
691 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
692
693 </div>
694 <div class="tags">
695
696
697 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>.
698
699
700 </div>
701 </div>
702 <div class="padding"></div>
703
704 <div class="entry">
705 <div class="title">
706 <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>
707 </div>
708 <div class="date">
709 16th April 2013
710 </div>
711 <div class="body">
712 <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
713 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
714 Details about the gathering can be found
715 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
716 the FRiSK wiki</a>. The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
717 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
718 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
719 weekend.</p>
720
721 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
722 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
723 Edu release.</p>
724
725 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
726
727 </div>
728 <div class="tags">
729
730
731 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>.
732
733
734 </div>
735 </div>
736 <div class="padding"></div>
737
738 <div class="entry">
739 <div class="title">
740 <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>
741 </div>
742 <div class="date">
743 3rd April 2013
744 </div>
745 <div class="body">
746 <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
747 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
748 for many months. I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
749 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
750
751 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
752 install to work with a pluggable hardware device. The suggestion pop
753 up when the device is plugged in. For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
754 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
755 the NXT controller. Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
756 BTS. :)</p>
757
758 </div>
759 <div class="tags">
760
761
762 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>.
763
764
765 </div>
766 </div>
767 <div class="padding"></div>
768
769 <div class="entry">
770 <div class="title">
771 <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>
772 </div>
773 <div class="date">
774 26th March 2013
775 </div>
776 <div class="body">
777 <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
778 time, without much sacrifice? A small step could be to change the
779 font you use when printing.</p>
780
781 <p>Three years ago,
782 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
783 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
784 changed their default front from
785 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
786 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
787 Gothic</a> to save money. The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
788 than Arial to print the same text. In other word, you could cut your
789 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
790 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
791 prints.</p>
792
793 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
794 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
795 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
796 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
797 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
798 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font. Not
799 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
800 sources will most likely still use a different font. Also, the
801 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
802 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
803 depend on the documents printed.</p>
804
805 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
806 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
807 and save some money in the process.</p>
808
809 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
810 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
811 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
812 difference between font pairs</a>. They also
813 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
814 which fonts to use</a> to save ink. Check it out. :) While updating
815 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
816 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
817 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
818
819 </div>
820 <div class="tags">
821
822
823 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
824
825
826 </div>
827 </div>
828 <div class="padding"></div>
829
830 <div class="entry">
831 <div class="title">
832 <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>
833 </div>
834 <div class="date">
835 24th March 2013
836 </div>
837 <div class="body">
838 <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
839 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
840 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
841 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
842 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
843 came up. The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
844 easily available for current and future generations. Some of the
845 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
846 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
847 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
848 Commons</a> license. The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
849 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
850
851 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
852 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
853 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
854 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
855 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story. The tools to
856 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
857 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
858 all I had to do was to use the
859 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
860 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
861 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
862 conversion. After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
863 xsltproc/fop (aka
864 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
865 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
866 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
867 technical detail.</p>
868
869 <p>There were a few challenges, of course. We want to typeset the
870 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
871 control over the layout. The original short story have three
872 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
873 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
874 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
875
876 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
877 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
878 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted. This did not look too
879 good without the centring. The next approach was to create a new
880 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
881 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
882 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
883 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
884 switched at this time). The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
885
886 <p><blockquote><pre>
887 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
888 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
889 &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
890 &lt;hr/&gt;
891 &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
892 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
893 </pre></blockquote></p>
894
895 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
896
897 <p><blockquote><pre>
898 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
899 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
900 &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
901 &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
902 &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
903 &lt;/fo:block&gt;
904 &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
905 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
906 </pre></blockquote></p>
907
908 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
909 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
910 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;. It isn't centred, but we
911 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
912 enough.</p>
913
914 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
915 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
916 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
917 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF. I suspect there are better ways to do
918 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github. The HTML XSL file now
919 look like this:</p>
920
921 <p><blockquote><pre>
922 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
923 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
924 &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
925 &lt;br/&gt;
926 &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
927 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
928 </pre></blockquote></p>
929
930 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
931
932 <p><blockquote><pre>
933 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
934 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
935 xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
936 &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
937 &lt;fo:block/&gt;
938 &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
939 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
940 </pre></blockquote></p>
941
942 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
943 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
944 structure in the DocBook source. No idea how to do this, so we ended
945 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
946 page.</p>
947
948 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
949 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
950 github</a>
951 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
952 repository</a>). We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
953 days.</p>
954
955 </div>
956 <div class="tags">
957
958
959 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>.
960
961
962 </div>
963 </div>
964 <div class="padding"></div>
965
966 <div class="entry">
967 <div class="title">
968 <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>
969 </div>
970 <div class="date">
971 17th March 2013
972 </div>
973 <div class="body">
974 <p>Via
975 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
976 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
977 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
978 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
979 / Debian Edu</a> version 6. He installed the standalone profile and
980 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
981 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
982
983 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
984 have heard wrong). While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
985
986 <blockquote>
987 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
988 </blockquote>
989
990 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
991
992 <blockquote>
993 "So, yeah, a bit bloated. It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
994 to keep it nice and GNU. So, I do not want to go on about it, but
995 lets give it 7 out of 10. I am not going to use it. That is because
996 I am not deploying a school network. There may be some mythical
997 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
998 </blockquote>
999
1000 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
1001 installation option. It make it possible to install only the main
1002 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
1003 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
1004
1005 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
1006 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
1007
1008 <blockquote>
1009 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
1010 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
1011 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
1012 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
1013 </blockquote>
1014
1015 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
1016 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
1017 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
1018 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
1019 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
1020
1021 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
1022 embedding:</p>
1023
1024 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
1025
1026 </div>
1027 <div class="tags">
1028
1029
1030 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>.
1031
1032
1033 </div>
1034 </div>
1035 <div class="padding"></div>
1036
1037 <div class="entry">
1038 <div class="title">
1039 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
1040 </div>
1041 <div class="date">
1042 8th March 2013
1043 </div>
1044 <div class="body">
1045 <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
1046 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
1047 based on Debian Squeeze. This is the first update since
1048 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
1049 initial release 2012-03-11</a>. This is the
1050 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
1051 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
1052
1053 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
1054
1055 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
1056 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
1057
1058 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
1059 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
1060 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
1061 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes. Please see
1062 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
1063 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
1064
1065 <p>Images are available for download at
1066 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
1067
1068 <p>md5sums:
1069 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
1070 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
1071 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
1072
1073 <p>sha1sums:
1074 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3 debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
1075 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
1076 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
1077
1078 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
1079
1080 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
1081 2013-03-03:</p>
1082
1083 <ul>
1084 <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
1085 <ul>
1086 <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
1087 <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
1088 </ul></li>
1089 <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
1090 <ul>
1091 <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
1092 <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
1093 </ul></li>
1094 <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
1095 <ul>
1096 <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
1097 <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
1098 <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
1099 Closes: #664596</li>
1100 <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
1101 Closes: #664976</li>
1102 <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
1103 <ul>
1104 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
1105 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
1106 </ul></li>
1107 <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
1108 <ul>
1109 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
1110 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
1111 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
1112 "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
1113 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
1114 </ul></li>
1115 <li>Add Danish web page</li>
1116 </ul>
1117 <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
1118 <ul>
1119 <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
1120 </ul></li>
1121 </ul>
1122
1123 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
1124 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
1125 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
1126 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
1127
1128 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
1129 mailinglist
1130 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
1131 </p></blockquote>
1132
1133 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
1134
1135 </div>
1136 <div class="tags">
1137
1138
1139 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>.
1140
1141
1142 </div>
1143 </div>
1144 <div class="padding"></div>
1145
1146 <div class="entry">
1147 <div class="title">
1148 <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>
1149 </div>
1150 <div class="date">
1151 3rd March 2013
1152 </div>
1153 <div class="body">
1154 <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
1155 broadcast them on the air? Using free software? With video on demand
1156 support using
1157 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
1158 open standards</a>? Included a web based video stream as well? And
1159 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world? A
1160 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
1161 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
1162 system to do just this. The source code for the solution is licensed
1163 using the GNU LGPL, and
1164 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
1165
1166 <p>The idea is simple. You upload a video file over the web, and
1167 attach meta information to the file. You select a time slot in the
1168 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
1169 in the web stream. It is also made available in a video on demand
1170 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time. All
1171 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
1172
1173 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution. I'll mention
1174 the three most important ones. The first part is the database of
1175 videos and the schedule. This is written in Django and include a REST
1176 API. The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
1177 PostgreSQL. At the moment this system can be tested on
1178 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>. The
1179 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
1180 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast. This is done
1181 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
1182 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>. Video
1183 signal distribution is handled using
1184 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>. The
1185 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
1186 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
1187 on demand. It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
1188 decided what it will end up using. Note that the source of the latter
1189 two parts are not yet pushed to github. The lead author want to clean
1190 them up a bit more first.</p>
1191
1192 <p>The development is coordinated on the
1193 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
1194 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
1195 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
1196 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
1197 (phed on IRC). Anyone is welcome to participate in the
1198 development.</p>
1199
1200 </div>
1201 <div class="tags">
1202
1203
1204 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>.
1205
1206
1207 </div>
1208 </div>
1209 <div class="padding"></div>
1210
1211 <div class="entry">
1212 <div class="title">
1213 <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>
1214 </div>
1215 <div class="date">
1216 27th February 2013
1217 </div>
1218 <div class="body">
1219 <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
1220 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
1221 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
1222 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>. The event is public
1223 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
1224 (where I am the chair of the board) and
1225 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
1226 Center</a>. The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
1227 GNU», with this description:
1228
1229 <p><blockquote>
1230 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
1231 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
1232 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
1233 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
1234 </blockquote></p>
1235
1236 <p>The meeting is open for everyone. Due to space limitations, the
1237 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45. I
1238 am really curious how many will show up. See
1239 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
1240 page</a> for the location details.</p>
1241
1242 </div>
1243 <div class="tags">
1244
1245
1246 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>.
1247
1248
1249 </div>
1250 </div>
1251 <div class="padding"></div>
1252
1253 <div class="entry">
1254 <div class="title">
1255 <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>
1256 </div>
1257 <div class="date">
1258 15th February 2013
1259 </div>
1260 <div class="body">
1261 <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
1262 now a great source of free maps available from
1263 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>. To
1264 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
1265 download the map type you want. There are 8 different maps available,
1266 using different colours and data selection. Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
1267 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
1268 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
1269 page for descriptions).</p>
1270
1271 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
1272 map you can just edit the
1273 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
1274 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
1275
1276 </div>
1277 <div class="tags">
1278
1279
1280 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>.
1281
1282
1283 </div>
1284 </div>
1285 <div class="padding"></div>
1286
1287 <div class="entry">
1288 <div class="title">
1289 <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>
1290 </div>
1291 <div class="date">
1292 12th February 2013
1293 </div>
1294 <div class="body">
1295 <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
1296 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
1297 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
1298 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
1299 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
1300 facilitators. This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
1301 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers. My preferred
1302 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
1303 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
1304 protocol like REST or SOAP. But this might also be overkill, as the
1305 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
1306 using a simple bar code. My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
1307 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there. The
1308 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
1309 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
1310 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
1311
1312 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
1313 information can be included using such extentions. For example an
1314 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
1315 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
1316 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
1317 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
1318 fields:</p>
1319
1320 <p><pre>
1321 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
1322 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
1323 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
1324 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
1325 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
1326 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
1327 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
1328 </pre></p>
1329
1330 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
1331 answer regarding
1332 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
1333 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>. For payments in
1334 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
1335 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
1336
1337 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
1338
1339 <p><pre>
1340 BEGIN:VCARD
1341 VERSION:2.1
1342 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
1343 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
1344 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
1345 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
1346 REV:20130212T095000Z
1347 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
1348 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
1349 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
1350 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
1351 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
1352 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
1353 END:VCARD
1354 </pre></p>
1355
1356 <p>The resulting QR code created using
1357 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
1358 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
1359 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
1360 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
1361 system.</p>
1362
1363 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
1364
1365 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
1366 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
1367 handling invoices. I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
1368 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
1369
1370 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
1371 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
1372
1373 </div>
1374 <div class="tags">
1375
1376
1377 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>.
1378
1379
1380 </div>
1381 </div>
1382 <div class="padding"></div>
1383
1384 <div class="entry">
1385 <div class="title">
1386 <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>
1387 </div>
1388 <div class="date">
1389 10th February 2013
1390 </div>
1391 <div class="body">
1392 <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
1393
1394 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
1395 during the night and wake up when it is morning. I mean, when I
1396 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier. In our household we
1397 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
1398 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day. They have adapted
1399 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
1400 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
1401 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
1402 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
1403 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
1404 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
1405
1406 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem. It
1407 involve home automation. A few years ago I bought a
1408 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
1409 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
1410 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
1411 gadgets using my Linux server. When I moved from the old flat to a
1412 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
1413 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
1414 the gadgets I had. But recently I bought a
1415 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
1416 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
1417 sockets. I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
1418 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding. The default
1419 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
1420 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
1421 ones own
1422 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
1423 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
1424 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
1425 code. I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
1426 important. But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
1427 the kids came to me yesterday. We can set up a night light controlled
1428 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00. The kids can
1429 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
1430 get up or not. They joined me in setting everything up, and I
1431 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
1432 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
1433
1434 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
1435 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
1436 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
1437 arrived. So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
1438 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
1439 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
1440
1441 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
1442 to tell the kids to get up. We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
1443 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
1444
1445 </div>
1446 <div class="tags">
1447
1448
1449 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1450
1451
1452 </div>
1453 </div>
1454 <div class="padding"></div>
1455
1456 <div class="entry">
1457 <div class="title">
1458 <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>
1459 </div>
1460 <div class="date">
1461 2nd February 2013
1462 </div>
1463 <div class="body">
1464 <p>My
1465 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
1466 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
1467 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
1468 Debian was waiting in NEW. It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
1469 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then. It was
1470 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
1471 version too.</p>
1472
1473 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
1474 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
1475 architectures. For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
1476 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
1477 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
1478 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
1479 no-one have been able to propose a fix. If you got an idea what is
1480 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
1481
1482 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
1483 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
1484 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
1485 #696715</a>). So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
1486 it. :)</p>
1487
1488 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1489 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1490 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1491
1492 </div>
1493 <div class="tags">
1494
1495
1496 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>.
1497
1498
1499 </div>
1500 </div>
1501 <div class="padding"></div>
1502
1503 <div class="entry">
1504 <div class="title">
1505 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
1506 </div>
1507 <div class="date">
1508 22nd January 2013
1509 </div>
1510 <div class="body">
1511 <p>Yesterday, I
1512 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
1513 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
1514 pluggable hardware devices, which I
1515 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
1516 out to create</a> earlier this month. Several valuable testers showed
1517 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
1518 people. But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
1519 for this project. Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
1520 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name. In the
1521 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
1522 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
1523 repository in Debian. The new name? It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
1524 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
1525
1526 <pre>
1527 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
1528 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
1529 </pre>
1530
1531 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet. If you
1532 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
1533 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
1534 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
1535
1536 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
1537 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc. Typical hardware
1538 stuff, in other words. I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
1539 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
1540 word.</p>
1541
1542 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
1543 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
1544 process.</p>
1545
1546 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
1547 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
1548
1549 </div>
1550 <div class="tags">
1551
1552
1553 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>.
1554
1555
1556 </div>
1557 </div>
1558 <div class="padding"></div>
1559
1560 <div class="entry">
1561 <div class="title">
1562 <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>
1563 </div>
1564 <div class="date">
1565 21st January 2013
1566 </div>
1567 <div class="body">
1568 <p>Early this month I set out to try to
1569 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
1570 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>. Now my
1571 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience. To test
1572 it, fetch the
1573 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
1574 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
1575 package. You might have to log out and in again activate the
1576 autostart script.</p>
1577
1578 <p>The design is simple:</p>
1579
1580 <ul>
1581
1582 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
1583 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
1584
1585 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
1586 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
1587 initially did.</li>
1588
1589 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
1590 the APT database, a database
1591 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
1592 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
1593
1594 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
1595 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
1596 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
1597 package or packages.</li>
1598
1599 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
1600 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
1601
1602 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
1603 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
1604
1605 </ul>
1606
1607 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system. Here
1608 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action. First the
1609 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
1610 approve all the dependencies. Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
1611
1612 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
1613 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
1614 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
1615 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
1616 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
1617
1618 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
1619 is already useful. The database of hardware to package mappings also
1620 need more work. It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
1621 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
1622 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
1623 method. I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
1624 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
1625 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
1626
1627 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
1628 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
1629 '<tt>svn checkout
1630 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
1631 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'. If you lack debuild, install the
1632 devscripts package.</p>
1633
1634 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
1635 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
1636 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository. See
1637 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
1638 instructions</a> for details.</p>
1639
1640 </div>
1641 <div class="tags">
1642
1643
1644 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>.
1645
1646
1647 </div>
1648 </div>
1649 <div class="padding"></div>
1650
1651 <div class="entry">
1652 <div class="title">
1653 <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>
1654 </div>
1655 <div class="date">
1656 19th January 2013
1657 </div>
1658 <div class="body">
1659 <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died. It died quietly and
1660 suddenly in bed. With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
1661 black. The power button was no longer able to turn it on. It was a
1662 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had. Better than both
1663 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S. Far better than the
1664 Compaq I had before that. Now I need to find a replacement. To keep
1665 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
1666 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
1667 not a durable solution.
1668
1669 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest. This is my wishlist from when I
1670 got a new one more than 10 years ago. It still holds true.:)</p>
1671
1672 <ul>
1673
1674 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
1675 than A4).</li>
1676 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
1677 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
1678 <li>Long battery life time. Preferable a week.</li>
1679 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
1680 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
1681 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
1682 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
1683 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
1684 size).</li>
1685 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
1686 X.org packages.</li>
1687 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
1688 the time).
1689
1690 </ul>
1691
1692 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
1693 list. The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
1694 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
1695 at other features to choose my laptop. But are there still made as
1696 robust laptops as my X41? The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
1697 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
1698 Lenovo took over. But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
1699 still be useful.</p>
1700
1701 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
1702 external keyboard? I'll have to check the
1703 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
1704 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
1705 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
1706 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
1707
1708 </div>
1709 <div class="tags">
1710
1711
1712 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>.
1713
1714
1715 </div>
1716 </div>
1717 <div class="padding"></div>
1718
1719 <div class="entry">
1720 <div class="title">
1721 <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>
1722 </div>
1723 <div class="date">
1724 18th January 2013
1725 </div>
1726 <div class="body">
1727 <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
1728 install to get support for a given MIME type. Thanks to
1729 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
1730 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
1731 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
1732 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
1733 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
1734
1735 <pre>
1736 #!/usr/bin/python
1737 import sys
1738 import apt
1739 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
1740 cache = apt.Cache()
1741 cache.open(None)
1742 thepkgs = []
1743 for pkg in cache:
1744 version = pkg.candidate
1745 if version is None:
1746 version = pkg.installed
1747 if version is None:
1748 continue
1749 record = version.record
1750 if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
1751 continue
1752 mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
1753 for t in mime_types:
1754 t = t.rstrip().strip()
1755 if t == mimetype:
1756 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
1757 return thepkgs
1758 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
1759 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
1760 mimetype = sys.argv[1]
1761 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
1762 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
1763 print " %s" %pkg
1764 </pre>
1765
1766 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
1767
1768 <pre>
1769 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
1770 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
1771 gecko-mediaplayer
1772 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
1773 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
1774 browser-plugin-gnash
1775 %
1776 </pre>
1777
1778 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
1779 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
1780 packages. It would be great if Debian supported such feature too. Is
1781 anyone working on adding it?</p>
1782
1783 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
1784 request for icweasel support for this feature is
1785 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
1786 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today). Lack
1787 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
1788 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
1789
1790 </div>
1791 <div class="tags">
1792
1793
1794 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>.
1795
1796
1797 </div>
1798 </div>
1799 <div class="padding"></div>
1800
1801 <div class="entry">
1802 <div class="title">
1803 <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>
1804 </div>
1805 <div class="date">
1806 16th January 2013
1807 </div>
1808 <div class="body">
1809 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
1810 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
1811 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
1812 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
1813 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing. With such
1814 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
1815 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
1816 downloaded by the browser.</p>
1817
1818 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
1819 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
1820 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there. The result
1821 can be found on the
1822 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
1823 site</a>. Using the collected information, it become possible to
1824 answer the question in the title. Here are the 20 most supported MIME
1825 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
1826 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
1827
1828 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
1829
1830 <pre>
1831 count MIME type
1832 ----- -----------------------
1833 32 text/plain
1834 30 audio/mpeg
1835 29 image/png
1836 28 image/jpeg
1837 27 application/ogg
1838 26 audio/x-mp3
1839 25 image/tiff
1840 25 image/gif
1841 22 image/bmp
1842 22 audio/x-wav
1843 20 audio/x-flac
1844 19 audio/x-mpegurl
1845 18 video/x-ms-asf
1846 18 audio/x-musepack
1847 18 audio/x-mpeg
1848 18 application/x-ogg
1849 17 video/mpeg
1850 17 audio/x-scpls
1851 17 audio/ogg
1852 16 video/x-ms-wmv
1853 </pre>
1854
1855 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
1856
1857 <pre>
1858 count MIME type
1859 ----- -----------------------
1860 33 text/plain
1861 32 image/png
1862 32 image/jpeg
1863 29 audio/mpeg
1864 27 image/gif
1865 26 image/tiff
1866 26 application/ogg
1867 25 audio/x-mp3
1868 22 image/bmp
1869 21 audio/x-wav
1870 19 audio/x-mpegurl
1871 19 audio/x-mpeg
1872 18 video/mpeg
1873 18 audio/x-scpls
1874 18 audio/x-flac
1875 18 application/x-ogg
1876 17 video/x-ms-asf
1877 17 text/html
1878 17 audio/x-musepack
1879 16 image/x-xbitmap
1880 </pre>
1881
1882 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
1883
1884 <pre>
1885 count MIME type
1886 ----- -----------------------
1887 31 text/plain
1888 31 image/png
1889 31 image/jpeg
1890 29 audio/mpeg
1891 28 application/ogg
1892 27 image/gif
1893 26 image/tiff
1894 26 audio/x-mp3
1895 23 audio/x-wav
1896 22 image/bmp
1897 21 audio/x-flac
1898 20 audio/x-mpegurl
1899 19 audio/x-mpeg
1900 18 video/x-ms-asf
1901 18 video/mpeg
1902 18 audio/x-scpls
1903 18 application/x-ogg
1904 17 audio/x-musepack
1905 16 video/x-ms-wmv
1906 16 video/x-msvideo
1907 </pre>
1908
1909 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
1910 information mentioned in DEP-11. I have not yet had time to look at
1911 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
1912 issues.</p>
1913
1914 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
1915 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
1916
1917 </div>
1918 <div class="tags">
1919
1920
1921 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>.
1922
1923
1924 </div>
1925 </div>
1926 <div class="padding"></div>
1927
1928 <div class="entry">
1929 <div class="title">
1930 <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>
1931 </div>
1932 <div class="date">
1933 15th January 2013
1934 </div>
1935 <div class="body">
1936 <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
1937 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
1938 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
1939 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
1940 dongle support in Debian</a>. Using this knowledge, I have tested how
1941 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
1942 to hardware. This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
1943 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
1944 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
1945 packages.</p>
1946
1947 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
1948 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
1949 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
1950 modalias.</p>
1951
1952 <p><blockquote>
1953 Package: package-name
1954 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
1955 </blockquote></p>
1956
1957 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
1958 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
1959
1960 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
1961 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
1962
1963 <p><blockquote>
1964 Package: cheese
1965 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
1966 </blockquote></p>
1967
1968 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
1969 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
1970
1971 <p><blockquote>
1972 Package: pcmciautils
1973 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
1974 </blockquote></p>
1975
1976 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
1977 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
1978
1979 <p><blockquote>
1980 Package: colorhug-client
1981 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
1982 </blockquote></p>
1983
1984 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
1985 file in the Debian archive. Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
1986 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
1987
1988 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
1989 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
1990 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
1991 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
1992 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information. I've
1993 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
1994 is working as it should with my prototype. It even made it to Ubuntu
1995 Raring.</p>
1996
1997 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
1998 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
1999 implementation of the lookup code. The idea is to create files for
2000 each modalias and let the shell do the matching. Please check out and
2001 try the
2002 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
2003 shell script. It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
2004 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
2005 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
2006
2007 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
2008 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
2009
2010 <p><blockquote>
2011 % ./hw-support-lookup
2012 <br>yubikey-personalization
2013 <br>%
2014 </blockquote></p>
2015
2016 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
2017 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
2018
2019 <p><blockquote>
2020 % ./hw-support-lookup
2021 <br>pcmciautils
2022 <br>%
2023 </blockquote></p>
2024
2025 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
2026 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
2027 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
2028
2029 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
2030 packages and hardware. One source would be to look at packages with
2031 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
2032 extract their modalias information. Another would be to look at
2033 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
2034 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
2035 generate a modalias matching rule. I have not tested any of these to
2036 see if it work.</p>
2037
2038 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
2039 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
2040 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
2041 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
2042
2043 </div>
2044 <div class="tags">
2045
2046
2047 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>.
2048
2049
2050 </div>
2051 </div>
2052 <div class="padding"></div>
2053
2054 <div class="entry">
2055 <div class="title">
2056 <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>
2057 </div>
2058 <div class="date">
2059 14th January 2013
2060 </div>
2061 <div class="body">
2062 <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
2063 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
2064 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
2065 to document the details. Here are my findings so far, also available
2066 in
2067 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
2068 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
2069
2070 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
2071
2072 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
2073 values stands for. It is in part based on information from
2074 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
2075 &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;,
2076 &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
2077 &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;.
2078
2079 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
2080 this shell script:</p>
2081
2082 <pre>
2083 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
2084 </pre>
2085
2086 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
2087 using modinfo:</p>
2088
2089 <pre>
2090 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
2091 alias: serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
2092 alias: serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
2093 %
2094 </pre>
2095
2096 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
2097
2098 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this. This is an Intel Host
2099 Bridge memory controller:</p>
2100
2101 <p><blockquote>
2102 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
2103 </blockquote></p>
2104
2105 <p>This represent these values:</p>
2106
2107 <pre>
2108 v 00008086 (vendor)
2109 d 00002770 (device)
2110 sv 00001028 (subvendor)
2111 sd 000001AD (subdevice)
2112 bc 06 (bus class)
2113 sc 00 (bus subclass)
2114 i 00 (interface)
2115 </pre>
2116
2117 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
2118 -n' as 8086:2770. The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
2119 0600. The 0600 class is a host bridge. Other useful bus values are
2120 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
2121
2122 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
2123 means.</p>
2124
2125 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
2126
2127 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this. This is an internal
2128 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
2129
2130 <p><blockquote>
2131 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
2132 </blockquote></p>
2133
2134 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
2135
2136 <pre>
2137 v 1D6B (device vendor)
2138 p 0001 (device product)
2139 d 0206 (bcddevice)
2140 dc 09 (device class)
2141 dsc 00 (device subclass)
2142 dp 00 (device protocol)
2143 ic 09 (interface class)
2144 isc 00 (interface subclass)
2145 ip 00 (interface protocol)
2146 </pre>
2147
2148 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub. Some times the relevant
2149 class is in the interface class section. For a simple USB web camera,
2150 these alias entries show up:</p>
2151
2152 <p><blockquote>
2153 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
2154 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
2155 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
2156 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
2157 </blockquote></p>
2158
2159 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
2160 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
2161 microphone). Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
2162
2163 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
2164
2165 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff. This is an IR
2166 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
2167
2168 <p><blockquote>
2169 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
2170 </blockquote></p>
2171
2172 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
2173
2174 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
2175
2176 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
2177 and model. This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
2178 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
2179
2180 <p><blockquote>
2181 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
2182 </blockquote></p>
2183
2184 <p>The values present are</p>
2185
2186 <pre>
2187 bvn IBM (BIOS vendor)
2188 bvr 1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
2189 bd 06/15/2005 (BIOS date)
2190 svn IBM (system vendor)
2191 pn 2371H4G (product name)
2192 pvr ThinkPadX40 (product version)
2193 rvn IBM (board vendor)
2194 rn 2371H4G (board name)
2195 rvr NotAvailable (board version)
2196 cvn IBM (chassis vendor)
2197 ct 10 (chassis type)
2198 cvr NotAvailable (chassis version)
2199 </pre>
2200
2201 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook. Other interesting values can be
2202 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
2203
2204 <pre>
2205 3 Desktop
2206 4 Low Profile Desktop
2207 5 Pizza Box
2208 6 Mini Tower
2209 7 Tower
2210 8 Portable
2211 9 Laptop
2212 10 Notebook
2213 11 Hand Held
2214 12 Docking Station
2215 13 All In One
2216 14 Sub Notebook
2217 15 Space-saving
2218 16 Lunch Box
2219 17 Main Server Chassis
2220 18 Expansion Chassis
2221 19 Sub Chassis
2222 20 Bus Expansion Chassis
2223 21 Peripheral Chassis
2224 22 RAID Chassis
2225 23 Rack Mount Chassis
2226 24 Sealed-case PC
2227 25 Multi-system
2228 26 CompactPCI
2229 27 AdvancedTCA
2230 28 Blade
2231 29 Blade Enclosing
2232 </pre>
2233
2234 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
2235 table. For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
2236 claim it is a desktop.</p>
2237
2238 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
2239
2240 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs. One example is from my
2241 test machine:</p>
2242
2243 <p><blockquote>
2244 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
2245 </blockquote></p>
2246
2247 <p>The values present are</p>
2248
2249 <pre>
2250 ty 01 (type)
2251 pr 00 (prototype)
2252 id 00 (id)
2253 ex 00 (extra)
2254 </pre>
2255
2256 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver. I am not sure what
2257 the valid values are.</p>
2258
2259 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
2260
2261 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
2262 file2alias.c. There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
2263 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
2264 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
2265 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro. I did not spend time documenting all of
2266 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
2267 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
2268
2269 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
2270
2271 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
2272 one can use the following shell script:</p>
2273
2274 <pre>
2275 for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
2276 echo "$id" ; \
2277 /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/ /' ; \
2278 done
2279 </pre>
2280
2281 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
2282 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
2283
2284 <pre>
2285 acpi:ACPI0003:
2286 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
2287 acpi:device:
2288 FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
2289 acpi:IBM0068:
2290 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
2291 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
2292 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
2293 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
2294 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
2295 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
2296 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
2297 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
2298 [...]
2299 </pre>
2300
2301 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
2302 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
2303 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
2304 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
2305
2306 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
2307 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
2308 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
2309
2310 </div>
2311 <div class="tags">
2312
2313
2314 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>.
2315
2316
2317 </div>
2318 </div>
2319 <div class="padding"></div>
2320
2321 <div class="entry">
2322 <div class="title">
2323 <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>
2324 </div>
2325 <div class="date">
2326 10th January 2013
2327 </div>
2328 <div class="body">
2329 <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
2330 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
2331 Launcher and updated the Debian package
2332 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
2333 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in. I
2334 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
2335 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
2336 plug in his rocket launcher. In the process I moved the source to a
2337 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
2338 contribute. <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
2339 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
2340 years of relative silence. The new git repository is not listed in
2341 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
2342 bit more before I upload the new version. If you want to check out
2343 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
2344 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
2345 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
2346 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
2347
2348 </div>
2349 <div class="tags">
2350
2351
2352 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>.
2353
2354
2355 </div>
2356 </div>
2357 <div class="padding"></div>
2358
2359 <div class="entry">
2360 <div class="title">
2361 <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>
2362 </div>
2363 <div class="date">
2364 9th January 2013
2365 </div>
2366 <div class="body">
2367 <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
2368 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
2369 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
2370 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
2371 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
2372 machine. Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
2373 Linux distribution. When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
2374 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
2375 I need to talk to it. When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
2376 yubikey-personalization package. The information required to do this
2377 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
2378
2379 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
2380 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
2381 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>. The idea is fairly
2382 simple:
2383
2384 <ul>
2385
2386 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
2387 starting when a user log in.</li>
2388
2389 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
2390 hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
2391
2392 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
2393 database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
2394 packages.</li>
2395
2396 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
2397 package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
2398
2399 </ul>
2400
2401 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
2402 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
2403 discover database to find packages and
2404 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
2405 packages.</p>
2406
2407 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
2408 draft package is now checked into
2409 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
2410 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>. In the process, I updated the
2411 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
2412 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
2413 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
2414 2.2013.01.09 to unstable. I also discovered that the current
2415 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
2416 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
2417 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present. I ported it to use
2418 libusb as a fall back option to get it working. The fixed package
2419 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
2420 because of the freeze).</p>
2421
2422 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
2423 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
2424 inserted):</p>
2425
2426 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
2427
2428 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
2429 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
2430 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
2431
2432 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
2433 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
2434 from hardware to Debian packages. Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
2435 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
2436 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
2437 reportbug if it isn't. Or, if you know of a better way to provide
2438 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
2439
2440 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
2441 should be considered before it is ready for production use. Is dbus
2442 the correct way to detect new hardware? At the moment I look for HAL
2443 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
2444 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop. Are there better events to use?
2445 How should the user be notified? Is the desktop notification
2446 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
2447 popup instead? How should packages be installed? When should they
2448 not be installed?</p>
2449
2450 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
2451 please send me an email. :)</p>
2452
2453 </div>
2454 <div class="tags">
2455
2456
2457 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>.
2458
2459
2460 </div>
2461 </div>
2462 <div class="padding"></div>
2463
2464 <div class="entry">
2465 <div class="title">
2466 <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>
2467 </div>
2468 <div class="date">
2469 2nd January 2013
2470 </div>
2471 <div class="body">
2472 <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
2473 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
2474 NXT</a>. My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
2475 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
2476 already in Debian Squeeze. If Debian support for LEGO is something
2477 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
2478 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
2479 irc.debian.org). There is a lot that could be done to improve the
2480 Debian support for LEGO designers. For example both CAD software
2481 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
2482
2483 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
2484 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
2485 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
2486
2487 </div>
2488 <div class="tags">
2489
2490
2491 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>.
2492
2493
2494 </div>
2495 </div>
2496 <div class="padding"></div>
2497
2498 <div class="entry">
2499 <div class="title">
2500 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
2501 </div>
2502 <div class="date">
2503 28th December 2012
2504 </div>
2505 <div class="body">
2506 <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
2507 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
2508 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
2509 Agency in Trondheim. NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
2510 December 24th. I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
2511 present. As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
2512 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
2513 gatherings, this donation was most welcome. One developer gathering
2514 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
2515 development pace we want. Thus, I hope their example this year is
2516 followed by many others. :)</p>
2517
2518 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
2519 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
2520 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
2521 you want to donate to the project.</p>
2522
2523 </div>
2524 <div class="tags">
2525
2526
2527 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>.
2528
2529
2530 </div>
2531 </div>
2532 <div class="padding"></div>
2533
2534 <div class="entry">
2535 <div class="title">
2536 <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>
2537 </div>
2538 <div class="date">
2539 25th December 2012
2540 </div>
2541 <div class="body">
2542 <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
2543 year! I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
2544
2545 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
2546 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
2547 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
2548 experiment. And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
2549 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
2550 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
2551 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
2552 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
2553 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
2554 name.</p>
2555
2556 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
2557 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
2558 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
2559
2560 <blockquote><pre>
2561 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
2562 cd bitcoin
2563 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
2564 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
2565 </pre></blockquote>
2566
2567 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well. The
2568 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
2569 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment. Note that the
2570 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
2571 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment. Make sure your
2572 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
2573 all the blocks. The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
2574 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
2575 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
2576
2577 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2578 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2579 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2580
2581 </div>
2582 <div class="tags">
2583
2584
2585 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>.
2586
2587
2588 </div>
2589 </div>
2590 <div class="padding"></div>
2591
2592 <div class="entry">
2593 <div class="title">
2594 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
2595 </div>
2596 <div class="date">
2597 21st December 2012
2598 </div>
2599 <div class="body">
2600 <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
2601 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
2602 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
2603 have been busy elsewhere. But two days ago, I started looking at the
2604 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
2605 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet. The package
2606 is now maintained by a
2607 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
2608 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team. We
2609 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
2610 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
2611 Wheezy. It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
2612 backports). The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
2613 it from entering testing. To try to help the team and improve the
2614 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
2615 reports. I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
2616 Corallo in a
2617 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
2618 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
2619 Debian package.</p>
2620
2621 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
2622 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
2623 improve the package. It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
2624 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
2625 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
2626 setup. As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
2627 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
2628 patch to backport</a> the latest version. Jonas is going to look at
2629 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
2630 new version to unstable.
2631
2632 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
2633 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system. I
2634 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
2635 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
2636 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
2637 transactions to Wikileaks. But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
2638 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
2639 they sell products and services. Improving the bitcoin support in
2640 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
2641 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
2642 pay with bitcoin is still not very good. The bitcoin: URI is a step
2643 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
2644 use. Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
2645 quick transaction. I believe there are other clients available, but
2646 have not tested them.</p>
2647
2648 <p>My
2649 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
2650 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
2651 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
2652 years ago, as can be
2653 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
2654 on the blockexplorer service</a>. Thank you everyone for your
2655 donation. The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
2656 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
2657 number of users have gone up since then. If you use bitcoin and want
2658 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
2659 the same address as last time,
2660 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2661
2662 </div>
2663 <div class="tags">
2664
2665
2666 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>.
2667
2668
2669 </div>
2670 </div>
2671 <div class="padding"></div>
2672
2673 <div class="entry">
2674 <div class="title">
2675 <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>
2676 </div>
2677 <div class="date">
2678 18th December 2012
2679 </div>
2680 <div class="body">
2681 <p>A few days ago I came across
2682 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
2683 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
2684 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting. I found it
2685 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
2686 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
2687 the different web based systems we use. I find it hard to find what I
2688 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
2689 the systems. Ledger seem different. The accounting data is kept in
2690 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
2691
2692 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
2693 different implementations</a> able to read the format. An example
2694 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
2695 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
2696
2697 <blockquote><pre>
2698 2004-05-27 Book Store
2699 Expenses:Books $20.00
2700 Liabilities:Visa
2701 </pre></blockquote>
2702
2703 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
2704 look for others using it. I found blog posts from
2705 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
2706 Spang</a>,
2707 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
2708 Keen</a>,
2709 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
2710 Cantino</a> and
2711 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
2712 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
2713 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
2714 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy. All seemed like good
2715 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
2716
2717 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
2718 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
2719 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
2720 package only is available in Debian Sid. As I use Squeeze, ledger
2721 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
2722
2723 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
2724 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
2725 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
2726 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
2727 play with the data set. I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
2728 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
2729 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command. But I will have to
2730 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
2731 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
2732
2733 </div>
2734 <div class="tags">
2735
2736
2737 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>.
2738
2739
2740 </div>
2741 </div>
2742 <div class="padding"></div>
2743
2744 <div class="entry">
2745 <div class="title">
2746 <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>
2747 </div>
2748 <div class="date">
2749 6th December 2012
2750 </div>
2751 <div class="body">
2752 <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
2753 Oslo</a>, we use the
2754 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
2755 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
2756 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
2757 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
2758 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
2759 always use the bofh command line client at work. Until today. I want
2760 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
2761 virtual machines. Here are a few notes on how to use it with
2762 Python.</p>
2763
2764 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
2765 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
2766 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server. I also
2767 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
2768 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
2769 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
2770
2771 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
2772 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
2773 user currently logged in:</p>
2774
2775 <blockquote><pre>
2776 #!/usr/bin/env python
2777 import getpass
2778 import xmlrpclib
2779 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
2780 username = getpass.getuser()
2781 password = getpass.getpass()
2782 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
2783 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
2784 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
2785 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
2786 result = server.logout(sessionid)
2787 print result
2788 </pre></blockquote>
2789
2790 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
2791 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
2792
2793 </div>
2794 <div class="tags">
2795
2796
2797 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>.
2798
2799
2800 </div>
2801 </div>
2802 <div class="padding"></div>
2803
2804 <div class="entry">
2805 <div class="title">
2806 <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>
2807 </div>
2808 <div class="date">
2809 17th November 2012
2810 </div>
2811 <div class="body">
2812 <p>While working on a
2813 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
2814 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
2815 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
2816 creativity, one idea occurred to me. The idea is to get the tax
2817 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
2818 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
2819
2820 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
2821 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
2822 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
2823 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
2824 in writing for a wider audience. The idea is not really based on the
2825 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
2826 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
2827 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
2828 controlled by the citizens in a country. I'm sharing the idea here to
2829 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
2830 arguments.</p>
2831
2832 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government. At least here in
2833 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
2834 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
2835 stocks and other valuables are all added together. If the tax value
2836 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
2837 taxes for these values. And copyrighted work have value. It have
2838 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
2839 work. But it is not included in the tax calculations? Why not?</p>
2840
2841 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
2842 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
2843 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
2844 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes. If such
2845 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
2846 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
2847 hard operation with todays copyright law. To ensure that copyright
2848 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
2849 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
2850 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
2851 correct right holder.</p>
2852
2853 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
2854 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
2855 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
2856 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
2857 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
2858 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
2859 work. Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
2860 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
2861 tax calculation. I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
2862 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
2863 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain. The
2864 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
2865 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
2866 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
2867
2868 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
2869 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
2870 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
2871
2872 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet? I am sure the tax office
2873 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
2874
2875 </div>
2876 <div class="tags">
2877
2878
2879 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>.
2880
2881
2882 </div>
2883 </div>
2884 <div class="padding"></div>
2885
2886 <div class="entry">
2887 <div class="title">
2888 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
2889 </div>
2890 <div class="date">
2891 14th November 2012
2892 </div>
2893 <div class="body">
2894 <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
2895 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
2896 community. I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
2897 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
2898 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
2899 the people behind the German
2900 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
2901 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview. Give a warm
2902 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
2903
2904 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2905
2906 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
2907 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
2908 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
2909
2910 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
2911 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
2912 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
2913 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
2914 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-). We are also
2915 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
2916
2917 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
2918 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there. Besides
2919 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
2920 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
2921 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
2922 relationship management and the communication processes in the
2923 project.</p>
2924
2925 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
2926 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
2927 and a yoga teacher.</p>
2928
2929 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2930 project?</strong></p>
2931
2932 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
2933
2934 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
2935 Free Software. At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
2936 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
2937 their IT environment. Often when Mike came home from working at the
2938 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
2939 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
2940 teachers did not work. So we were clear that he would not work for
2941 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
2942 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
2943 parents.</p>
2944
2945 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
2946 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
2947 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
2948 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
2949 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
2950 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
2951 Germany.</p>
2952
2953 <p>For information about our school project you can read
2954 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
2955 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
2956
2957 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2958 Edu?</strong></p>
2959
2960 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
2961 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
2962
2963 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
2964 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
2965 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
2966 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
2967 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
2968 ;-). This is of course a user experience. What I also get as a big
2969 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
2970 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
2971 teachers, parents...</p>
2972
2973 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2974 Edu?</strong></p>
2975
2976 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
2977 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
2978
2979 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
2980 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
2981 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
2982 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
2983 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
2984
2985 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
2986 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
2987 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
2988 and helpful. I am also missing some kind of contact between the
2989 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
2990 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
2991 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
2992
2993 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2994
2995 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
2996 on. As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
2997 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
2998 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
2999
3000 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3001 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3002
3003 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
3004 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
3005 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
3006 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
3007 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
3008
3009 <ul>
3010
3011 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
3012 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
3013 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
3014
3015 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
3016 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
3017 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
3018 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
3019 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
3020 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
3021 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
3022
3023 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
3024 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
3025 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
3026 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
3027
3028 </ul>
3029
3030 </div>
3031 <div class="tags">
3032
3033
3034 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>.
3035
3036
3037 </div>
3038 </div>
3039 <div class="padding"></div>
3040
3041 <div class="entry">
3042 <div class="title">
3043 <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>
3044 </div>
3045 <div class="date">
3046 4th November 2012
3047 </div>
3048 <div class="body">
3049 <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
3050 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
3051 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
3052 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>. It is interesting to
3053 see how a member of the bitcoin community
3054 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
3055 the report</a>. As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
3056 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
3057 competition. My thoughts go to the
3058 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
3059 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
3060 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933. A successful
3061 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
3062 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
3063
3064 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
3065 that the community already seem to have
3066 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
3067 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>. Not very surprising, given
3068 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other. I guess
3069 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
3070 wealth is available.</p>
3071
3072 </div>
3073 <div class="tags">
3074
3075
3076 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>.
3077
3078
3079 </div>
3080 </div>
3081 <div class="padding"></div>
3082
3083 <div class="entry">
3084 <div class="title">
3085 <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>
3086 </div>
3087 <div class="date">
3088 26th October 2012
3089 </div>
3090 <div class="body">
3091 <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
3092 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
3093 all over the place. I am also a member (and currently leader) of
3094 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
3095 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>. NUUG
3096 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
3097 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
3098 is a US based member organisation with similar targets. And thanks to
3099 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
3100 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
3101 mail several times a year. The magazine is great, and I read most of
3102 it every time.</p>
3103
3104 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
3105 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
3106 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
3107 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
3108 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
3109 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
3110 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
3111 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
3112 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
3113 etc etc. The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
3114 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
3115 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
3116
3117 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
3118 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
3119 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
3120 assumtions on scope and user impact. Here is the two example from the
3121 article: First the unplanned outage:
3122
3123 <blockquote><pre>
3124 Subject: Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
3125 Severity: Critical (Unplanned)
3126 Start: Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
3127 End: Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
3128 Duration: 40 minutes
3129 Scope: Exchange 2003
3130 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
3131 a cluster failover.
3132
3133 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
3134 access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
3135 Technician: [xxx]
3136 </pre></blockquote>
3137
3138 Next the planned outage:
3139
3140 <blockquote><pre>
3141 Subject: H Building Switch Upgrades
3142 Severity: Major (Planned)
3143 Start: Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
3144 End: Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
3145 Duration: 10 hours
3146 Scope: H2 Transport
3147 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
3148 stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
3149 4510s.
3150 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
3151 this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
3152 connectivity.
3153 Technician: [xxx]
3154 </pre></blockquote>
3155
3156 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
3157 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
3158 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
3159 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
3160 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
3161 format listed above). There are also other issues with the format
3162 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
3163
3164 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
3165 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
3166 university too. We do register
3167 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
3168 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
3169 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
3170 report to the same location for unplanned outages. Perhaps something
3171 for other sites to consider too?</p>
3172
3173 </div>
3174 <div class="tags">
3175
3176
3177 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>.
3178
3179
3180 </div>
3181 </div>
3182 <div class="padding"></div>
3183
3184 <div class="entry">
3185 <div class="title">
3186 <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>
3187 </div>
3188 <div class="date">
3189 22nd October 2012
3190 </div>
3191 <div class="body">
3192 <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
3193 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
3194 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
3195 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>. If a real book store did
3196 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
3197 and theft. The story has spread around the net today. A bit more
3198 background information is available in Norwegian from
3199 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
3200 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
3201 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
3202 introduced many years back. And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
3203 willing to
3204 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
3205 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
3206 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
3207 customers who had bought it. From the official comments, it even
3208 sounded like
3209 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
3210 would never do that again</a>. And here we are, three years
3211 later.</p>
3212
3213 <p>And thought this action is
3214 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
3215 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
3216 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
3217 Norwegian laws. It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
3218 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
3219 rights.</p>
3220
3221 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
3222 unacceptable terms. For example
3223 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
3224 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
3225 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
3226 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
3227 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
3228
3229 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
3230 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
3231 restored the account of the user, as reported by
3232 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
3233 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
3234 Apparently public pressure work. The story from Martin have seen
3235 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
3236 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention. But even when the
3237 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist. I recommend
3238 reading two opinions from
3239 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
3240 Phipps</a> and
3241 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
3242 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
3243 details about the original story.</p>
3244
3245 </div>
3246 <div class="tags">
3247
3248
3249 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>.
3250
3251
3252 </div>
3253 </div>
3254 <div class="padding"></div>
3255
3256 <div class="entry">
3257 <div class="title">
3258 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
3259 </div>
3260 <div class="date">
3261 18th October 2012
3262 </div>
3263 <div class="body">
3264 <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
3265 drain, and it is hard to fight against it. I try to do my best, but
3266 time is limited. I hope you do your best too. A few years ago I came
3267 across a marvellous drawing by
3268 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
3269 visualising some of what is going on.
3270
3271 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
3272 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
3273
3274 <blockquote>
3275 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
3276 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
3277 </blockquote>
3278
3279 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport? I do not. Do you feel safe when
3280 you see a surveillance camera? I do not. Do you feel safe when you
3281 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions? I do not. I
3282 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
3283 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
3284 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
3285
3286 </div>
3287 <div class="tags">
3288
3289
3290 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>.
3291
3292
3293 </div>
3294 </div>
3295 <div class="padding"></div>
3296
3297 <div class="entry">
3298 <div class="title">
3299 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
3300 </div>
3301 <div class="date">
3302 12th October 2012
3303 </div>
3304 <div class="body">
3305 <p>Thanks to a blog post by
3306 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
3307 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
3308 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
3309 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
3310 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
3311 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
3312 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information. To check if
3313 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
3314 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
3315 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic. However, we
3316 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
3317 matter".</p>
3318
3319 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
3320 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
3321 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
3322 health of its users. This caused the company behind the product,
3323 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
3324 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
3325 to argue its side.</p>
3326
3327 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
3328 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly. Lets hope the
3329 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
3330 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
3331
3332 <p>What is the harm, you might think. I suggest you take a look at
3333 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
3334 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
3335
3336 </div>
3337 <div class="tags">
3338
3339
3340 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>.
3341
3342
3343 </div>
3344 </div>
3345 <div class="padding"></div>
3346
3347 <div class="entry">
3348 <div class="title">
3349 <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>
3350 </div>
3351 <div class="date">
3352 3rd October 2012
3353 </div>
3354 <div class="body">
3355 <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
3356 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
3357 the computer science book collection available in his local
3358 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
3359 computer books becoming obsolete so soon. That is part of the reason
3360 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
3361 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
3362 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
3363 computer classic from trash. And they need to know which one will
3364 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
3365 recently published books.</p>
3366
3367 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
3368 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
3369 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
3370 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess. Once, just
3371 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
3372 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
3373 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection. I
3374 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
3375 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
3376 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
3377 collection</a>). I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
3378 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
3379 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
3380 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
3381 for the library that evening.</p>
3382
3383 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
3384 going to know that for example
3385 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
3386 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
3387 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
3388 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
3389 the suggestions for books to get? I know they would love to hear from
3390 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
3391 book right away.</p>
3392
3393 </div>
3394 <div class="tags">
3395
3396
3397 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3398
3399
3400 </div>
3401 </div>
3402 <div class="padding"></div>
3403
3404 <div class="entry">
3405 <div class="title">
3406 <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>
3407 </div>
3408 <div class="date">
3409 23rd September 2012
3410 </div>
3411 <div class="body">
3412 <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
3413 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
3414 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
3415 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
3416 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
3417 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
3418
3419 When I started, I
3420 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
3421 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
3422 and progress is a bit slow. Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
3423 mark for the first rough translation. At the moment, less than 700
3424 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate. With
3425 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
3426 complete the translation. This graph show the updated progress:</p>
3427
3428 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
3429
3430 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
3431 commitments. If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
3432 the project files currently available from
3433 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
3434
3435 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
3436 the updated
3437 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
3438 and
3439 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
3440 are published on github. The HTML version is published as well, but
3441 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
3442 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
3443
3444 </div>
3445 <div class="tags">
3446
3447
3448 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>.
3449
3450
3451 </div>
3452 </div>
3453 <div class="padding"></div>
3454
3455 <div class="entry">
3456 <div class="title">
3457 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
3458 </div>
3459 <div class="date">
3460 17th September 2012
3461 </div>
3462 <div class="body">
3463 <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
3464 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
3465 community, I finally found time to wrap up another. This time it is
3466 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
3467 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
3468 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
3469 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
3470
3471 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3472
3473 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
3474 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
3475 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
3476 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
3477 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
3478 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
3479 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
3480 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
3481 training is anyway very important</p>
3482
3483 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
3484 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
3485 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
3486 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
3487 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
3488
3489 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3490 project?</strong></p>
3491
3492 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
3493 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
3494 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
3495 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
3496 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
3497 hole.</p>
3498
3499 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3500 Edu?</strong></p>
3501
3502 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
3503 very generous for help and hints. Chat help is crucial, together with
3504 the mailing list. Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
3505 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
3506 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
3507 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
3508 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
3509 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
3510 hassle.</p>
3511
3512 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3513 Edu?</strong></p>
3514
3515 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
3516 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
3517 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
3518 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
3519 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
3520 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
3521 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
3522 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
3523
3524 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3525
3526 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
3527 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
3528 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
3529 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
3530 has the same...</p>
3531
3532 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
3533 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
3534 something breaks. Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
3535 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
3536
3537 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3538 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3539
3540 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
3541 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
3542 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
3543
3544 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
3545 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
3546 don't.</p>
3547
3548 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
3549 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
3550 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
3551 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
3552 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
3553 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
3554 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
3555
3556 </div>
3557 <div class="tags">
3558
3559
3560 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>.
3561
3562
3563 </div>
3564 </div>
3565 <div class="padding"></div>
3566
3567 <div class="entry">
3568 <div class="title">
3569 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
3570 </div>
3571 <div class="date">
3572 15th September 2012
3573 </div>
3574 <div class="body">
3575 <p>After the
3576 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
3577 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
3578 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
3579 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
3580 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
3581 area. A non-"working group" mailing list
3582 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
3583 was
3584 <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
3585 formal working group should be formed.</p>
3586
3587 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out. There is already
3588 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
3589 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
3590 participate in the ISO group. Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
3591 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
3592 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
3593 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
3594 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
3595
3596 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
3597 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
3598 IETF.</p>
3599
3600 </div>
3601 <div class="tags">
3602
3603
3604 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>.
3605
3606
3607 </div>
3608 </div>
3609 <div class="padding"></div>
3610
3611 <div class="entry">
3612 <div class="title">
3613 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
3614 </div>
3615 <div class="date">
3616 12th September 2012
3617 </div>
3618 <div class="body">
3619 <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
3620 publication of of
3621 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
3622 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
3623 intended for both VoIP, film and music. This is the first time, as
3624 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec. In
3625 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
3626 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
3627 royalty free container for audio, video and movies. I hope IETF will
3628 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
3629 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
3630 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
3631
3632 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
3633 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
3634 free specifications. Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
3635 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
3636
3637 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
3638 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
3639
3640 </div>
3641 <div class="tags">
3642
3643
3644 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>.
3645
3646
3647 </div>
3648 </div>
3649 <div class="padding"></div>
3650
3651 <div class="entry">
3652 <div class="title">
3653 <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>
3654 </div>
3655 <div class="date">
3656 7th September 2012
3657 </div>
3658 <div class="body">
3659 <p>As I
3660 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
3661 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
3662 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
3663 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
3664 repository for the project</a>.</p>
3665
3666 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
3667 to the HTML version. To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
3668 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
3669 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
3670
3671 <p>Want to sing? You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
3672 PostScript formats at
3673 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
3674 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
3675
3676 </div>
3677 <div class="tags">
3678
3679
3680 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>.
3681
3682
3683 </div>
3684 </div>
3685 <div class="padding"></div>
3686
3687 <div class="entry">
3688 <div class="title">
3689 <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>
3690 </div>
3691 <div class="date">
3692 23rd August 2012
3693 </div>
3694 <div class="body">
3695 <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
3696 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
3697 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
3698 revisit the great site
3699 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
3700 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format. I
3701 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
3702
3703 </div>
3704 <div class="tags">
3705
3706
3707 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>.
3708
3709
3710 </div>
3711 </div>
3712 <div class="padding"></div>
3713
3714 <div class="entry">
3715 <div class="title">
3716 <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>
3717 </div>
3718 <div class="date">
3719 17th August 2012
3720 </div>
3721 <div class="body">
3722 <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
3723 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
3724 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
3725 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
3726 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
3727 English book. It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
3728 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society. When the
3729 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
3730 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
3731 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law. This
3732 summer I
3733 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
3734 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
3735 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
3736
3737 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark. Then more than 50% of
3738 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
3739 titles and index entries are also counted). All parts from the
3740 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated. So is
3741 chapters six, seven and the conclusion. I created a graph to show the
3742 progress:</p>
3743
3744 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
3745
3746 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
3747 entries into the docbook. They were missing with the docbook version
3748 I initially started with. There are still quite a few index entries
3749 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done. I
3750 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
3751 english version of the docbook source.</p>
3752
3753 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
3754 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
3755 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
3756 translation and proof reading. And I would like the figures to be
3757 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them. Any SVG master
3758 around? I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
3759 me. If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
3760 project files currently available from <a
3761 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
3762
3763 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
3764 the updated
3765 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
3766 and
3767 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
3768 are published on github. The HTML version is published as well, but
3769 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
3770 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
3771
3772 </div>
3773 <div class="tags">
3774
3775
3776 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>.
3777
3778
3779 </div>
3780 </div>
3781 <div class="padding"></div>
3782
3783 <div class="entry">
3784 <div class="title">
3785 <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>
3786 </div>
3787 <div class="date">
3788 10th August 2012
3789 </div>
3790 <div class="body">
3791 <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
3792 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
3793 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
3794 also', 'index' etc. And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
3795 this work just fine. For example a German user can start the document
3796 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
3797 correct content with any of the docbook processors. This is not the
3798 case for the language
3799 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
3800 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
3801
3802 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
3803 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
3804 all tools. I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
3805 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way. Some
3806 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
3807
3808 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
3809 this mess. Norwegian is not one, but two written variants. The
3810 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål. There are three
3811 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
3812 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
3813 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
3814 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
3815 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
3816 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
3817 alias for 'nb'.</p>
3818
3819 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian. The dblatex tool only
3820 understand 'nn'. There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
3821 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
3822 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
3823 language code is not recognised. The docbook-xsl tool chain only
3824 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'. The xmlto tool only recognise
3825 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'. The end result that there is no language
3826 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
3827 at the same time. :(</p>
3828
3829 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
3830 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
3831 processors. :(</p>
3832
3833 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
3834
3835 </div>
3836 <div class="tags">
3837
3838
3839 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>.
3840
3841
3842 </div>
3843 </div>
3844 <div class="padding"></div>
3845
3846 <div class="entry">
3847 <div class="title">
3848 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
3849 </div>
3850 <div class="date">
3851 31st July 2012
3852 </div>
3853 <div class="body">
3854 <p>I tried to send this text to the
3855 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
3856 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
3857 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
3858 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
3859 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
3860 out.</p>
3861
3862 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
3863 learning curve at the moment.</p>
3864
3865 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
3866 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
3867 docbook to handle the process. The files to build the book are
3868 available from
3869 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
3870 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
3871 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
3872 software docbook processors. My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
3873 Squeeze.</p>
3874
3875 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
3876 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
3877 formats. I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
3878 problems.</p>
3879
3880 <ul>
3881
3882 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
3883 as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
3884 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
3885 xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
3886 index references spanning several pages (See
3887 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
3888 I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
3889 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
3890
3891 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
3892 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
3893 #683163</a>).</li>
3894
3895 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
3896 show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
3897 footnote and text body, see
3898 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
3899 fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
3900 refs listed are not right).</li>
3901
3902 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
3903
3904 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
3905 index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
3906
3907 </ul>
3908
3909 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
3910 of this book? Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
3911 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
3912
3913 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
3914
3915 </div>
3916 <div class="tags">
3917
3918
3919 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>.
3920
3921
3922 </div>
3923 </div>
3924 <div class="padding"></div>
3925
3926 <div class="entry">
3927 <div class="title">
3928 <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>
3929 </div>
3930 <div class="date">
3931 21st July 2012
3932 </div>
3933 <div class="body">
3934 <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
3935 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
3936 norwegian version</a> of the book
3937 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
3938 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
3939 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six. The source files as well as a
3940 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
3941 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
3942
3943 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
3944 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
3945 completely translated. This completes 26 percent of the number of
3946 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
3947 percent left to translate. A graph of the progress is present at the
3948 bottom of the github project page. There is still room for more
3949 contributors. Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
3950 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
3951 print. :)</p>
3952
3953 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
3954 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
3955 language.</p>
3956
3957 </div>
3958 <div class="tags">
3959
3960
3961 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>.
3962
3963
3964 </div>
3965 </div>
3966 <div class="padding"></div>
3967
3968 <div class="entry">
3969 <div class="title">
3970 <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>
3971 </div>
3972 <div class="date">
3973 16th July 2012
3974 </div>
3975 <div class="body">
3976 <p>I am currently working on a
3977 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
3978 to translate</a> the book
3979 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
3980 to Norwegian. And the source we base our translation on is the
3981 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
3982 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
3983 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
3984 tagged. The source files of this project is available from
3985 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
3986
3987 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
3988 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert. Is there a
3989 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
3990 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
3991 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book? This will provide a
3992 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
3993 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version. If you can and want
3994 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
3995 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
3996
3997 </div>
3998 <div class="tags">
3999
4000
4001 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>.
4002
4003
4004 </div>
4005 </div>
4006 <div class="padding"></div>
4007
4008 <div class="entry">
4009 <div class="title">
4010 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
4011 </div>
4012 <div class="date">
4013 9th July 2012
4014 </div>
4015 <div class="body">
4016 <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4017 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
4018 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
4019 country Sweden. This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
4020 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
4021 to adjust and scale the just released
4022 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
4023 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking. He granted me an interview, and I am
4024 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
4025
4026 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4027
4028 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
4029 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
4030 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
4031 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups. In
4032 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
4033 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
4034 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
4035 perspective when working with IT.</p>
4036
4037 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4038 project?</strong></p>
4039
4040 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
4041 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
4042 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
4043 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
4044 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
4045 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
4046
4047 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4048 Edu?</strong></p>
4049
4050 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
4051 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
4052 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
4053 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
4054 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
4055 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
4056 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
4057 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
4058 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
4059 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
4060 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
4061 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
4062 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
4063 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
4064 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
4065 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
4066 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
4067 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time. Our
4068 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
4069 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
4070 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
4071 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
4072 quicker to update.
4073
4074 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4075 Edu?</strong></p>
4076
4077 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
4078 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
4079 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
4080 sound from working with them. It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
4081 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
4082 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
4083
4084 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
4085 install time. In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
4086 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
4087 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
4088 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
4089 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
4090 support for single-sign on. That will make the transition to free
4091 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
4092 need. No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
4093 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
4094 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes. We run a journalist
4095 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
4096 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association). Our
4097 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
4098 are done. This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
4099
4100 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
4101 magazines. We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
4102 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
4103 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
4104 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
4105 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
4106 edit and compile a newspaper. But politically at our school we are not
4107 there yet. And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
4108
4109 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
4110 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
4111 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
4112 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
4113 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
4114 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
4115 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
4116 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise. Those
4117 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
4118 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
4119 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
4120 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
4121 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
4122 sound file.</p>
4123
4124 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
4125 will try. The problem is the students have certain expectations when
4126 they start an education towards a profession. So the programs has to
4127 look and feel professional. Good thing with radio, there are many
4128 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
4129 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
4130 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
4131 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
4132 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
4133
4134 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4135
4136 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days. I use almost
4137 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
4138 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
4139 )</p>
4140
4141 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4142 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4143
4144 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
4145 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
4146 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
4147 flawlessly. The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
4148 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
4149 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
4150 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
4151 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
4152 the administration. It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
4153 open source, if the principal has to run Windows. It also creates a
4154 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
4155 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
4156 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
4157 desktop is essential. At least at our school, where we have mixed
4158 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
4159
4160 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
4161 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
4162 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
4163 management with Airtime</a>,
4164 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
4165 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
4166 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
4167 be complete radio broadcast automation solution. All of them seem
4168 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
4169
4170 </div>
4171 <div class="tags">
4172
4173
4174 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>.
4175
4176
4177 </div>
4178 </div>
4179 <div class="padding"></div>
4180
4181 <div class="entry">
4182 <div class="title">
4183 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
4184 </div>
4185 <div class="date">
4186 8th July 2012
4187 </div>
4188 <div class="body">
4189 <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
4190 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
4191 in schools and municipalities. We provide what the happy users of
4192 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
4193 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution. I
4194 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
4195 Steinberg in his blog post
4196 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
4197 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>". Read it and weep for the
4198 spending of your tax money.</p>
4199
4200 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
4201 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
4202 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
4203 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
4204 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
4205 purchases.</p>
4206
4207 </div>
4208 <div class="tags">
4209
4210
4211 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>.
4212
4213
4214 </div>
4215 </div>
4216 <div class="padding"></div>
4217
4218 <div class="entry">
4219 <div class="title">
4220 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
4221 </div>
4222 <div class="date">
4223 7th July 2012
4224 </div>
4225 <div class="body">
4226 <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4227 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
4228 software. It is one of the packages not installed by default but
4229 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
4230 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
4231 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
4232 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
4233 receive. The software is
4234
4235 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
4236 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
4237 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
4238 both teachers and students. It is available both for
4239 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
4240 Windows</a>.</p>
4241
4242 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
4243 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
4244
4245 <p><ul>
4246
4247 <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
4248 You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
4249
4250 <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
4251 (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
4252 (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
4253 (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
4254 (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
4255 (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
4256 sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
4257 (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
4258 </li>
4259
4260 <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
4261 semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
4262
4263 <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
4264 GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
4265
4266 <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
4267 with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
4268
4269 <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
4270
4271 <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
4272 formats </li>
4273
4274 <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
4275 and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
4276 non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
4277 (as separate sets)</li>
4278
4279 <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
4280 (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
4281 percentage)</li>
4282
4283 <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
4284 demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
4285 memory):
4286 <ul>
4287 <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
4288 <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
4289 <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
4290 <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
4291 <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
4292 <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
4293 <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
4294 <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
4295 <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
4296 <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
4297 students sets for each activity. (it is possible
4298 also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
4299 activity)</li>
4300 <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
4301 <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
4302 </ul></li>
4303
4304 <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
4305 <ul>
4306 <li>Break periods</li>
4307 <li>For teacher(s):
4308 <ul>
4309 <li>Not available periods</li>
4310 <li>Max/min days per week</li>
4311 <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
4312 <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
4313 <li>Min hours daily</li>
4314 <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
4315
4316 <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
4317 days per week</li>
4318 </ul></li>
4319 <li>For students (sets):
4320 <ul>
4321 <li>Not available periods</li>
4322 <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
4323 <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
4324 <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
4325 <li>Min hours daily</li>
4326 <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
4327
4328 <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
4329 days per week</li>
4330 </ul></li>
4331 <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
4332 <ul>
4333 <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
4334 <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
4335 <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
4336 <li>Min/max days between them</li>
4337 <li>End(s) students day</li>
4338 <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
4339 <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
4340 flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
4341 <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
4342 <li>Not overlapping</li>
4343 <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
4344 <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
4345 </ul></li>
4346 </ul></li>
4347
4348 <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
4349 <ul>
4350 <li>Room not available periods</li>
4351 <li>For teacher(s):
4352 <ul>
4353 <li>Home room(s)</li>
4354 <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
4355 <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
4356 </ul>
4357 </li>
4358
4359 <li>For students (sets):
4360 <ul>
4361 <li>Home room(s)</li>
4362 <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
4363 <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
4364 </ul>
4365 </li>
4366 <li>Preferred room(s):
4367 <ul>
4368 <li>For a subject</li>
4369 <li>For an activity tag</li>
4370 <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
4371 <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
4372 </ul>
4373 </li>
4374
4375 <li>For a set of activities:
4376 <ul>
4377 <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
4378 </ul>
4379 </li>
4380 </ul>
4381 </li>
4382 </ul></p>
4383
4384 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
4385 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it. If you
4386 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
4387 manually, check it out.
4388
4389 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
4390 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
4391 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>. If you find FET useful, please provide
4392 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
4393 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
4394 section</a>.</p>
4395
4396 </div>
4397 <div class="tags">
4398
4399
4400 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4401
4402
4403 </div>
4404 </div>
4405 <div class="padding"></div>
4406
4407 <div class="entry">
4408 <div class="title">
4409 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
4410 </div>
4411 <div class="date">
4412 3rd July 2012
4413 </div>
4414 <div class="body">
4415 <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
4416 project (Norwegian version of
4417 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
4418 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
4419 a problem with the municipalities using
4420 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>. When FiksGataMi send a
4421 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
4422 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
4423 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address. The intention is to make
4424 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
4425 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
4426 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
4427 Zimbra. Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
4428 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
4429 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
4430 the From: header.</p>
4431
4432 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
4433 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
4434 problem. We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
4435 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
4436 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports. We have been in
4437 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
4438 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
4439 behaviour.</p>
4440
4441 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
4442 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
4443 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
4444 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
4445 differently. Anyone know? Please let us know at
4446 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
4447 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
4448
4449 </div>
4450 <div class="tags">
4451
4452
4453 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>.
4454
4455
4456 </div>
4457 </div>
4458 <div class="padding"></div>
4459
4460 <div class="entry">
4461 <div class="title">
4462 <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>
4463 </div>
4464 <div class="date">
4465 26th June 2012
4466 </div>
4467 <div class="body">
4468 <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
4469 another interview with the people behind
4470 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
4471 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
4472 helpers from Spain. His effort was the reason we added support for
4473 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
4474 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
4475 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
4476 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
4477
4478 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4479
4480 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
4481 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
4482 ICT in schools</p>
4483
4484 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4485 project?</strong></p>
4486
4487 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
4488 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
4489 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
4490 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
4491
4492 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4493 Edu?</strong></p>
4494
4495 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
4496 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
4497 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
4498 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
4499
4500 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4501 Edu?</strong></p>
4502
4503 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
4504 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
4505 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
4506 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
4507 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
4508 technologies in school.</p>
4509
4510 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4511
4512 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
4513 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
4514 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
4515
4516 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4517 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4518
4519 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
4520 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
4521 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
4522 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
4523
4524 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
4525 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
4526 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
4527
4528 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
4529 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
4530 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
4531 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
4532 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
4533 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
4534 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
4535 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
4536 working there.</p>
4537
4538 </div>
4539 <div class="tags">
4540
4541
4542 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>.
4543
4544
4545 </div>
4546 </div>
4547 <div class="padding"></div>
4548
4549 <div class="entry">
4550 <div class="title">
4551 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
4552 </div>
4553 <div class="date">
4554 24th June 2012
4555 </div>
4556 <div class="body">
4557 <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
4558 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
4559 collecting computer related songs for use at parties. The original
4560 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
4561 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
4562 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format. I have
4563 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
4564 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
4565 help me extend and update the book. If anyone is volunteering to help
4566 me with this, send me an email. Also let me know if there are songs
4567 missing in my book.</p>
4568
4569 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
4570 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
4571 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
4572 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
4573 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going). Want to sing? Check
4574 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
4575 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
4576
4577 </div>
4578 <div class="tags">
4579
4580
4581 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>.
4582
4583
4584 </div>
4585 </div>
4586 <div class="padding"></div>
4587
4588 <div class="entry">
4589 <div class="title">
4590 <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>
4591 </div>
4592 <div class="date">
4593 11th June 2012
4594 </div>
4595 <div class="body">
4596 <p>During my work on
4597 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
4598 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
4599 addressed in the Wheezy release. I finally found time to wrap up my
4600 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
4601 explanation.</p>
4602
4603 <p><ul>
4604
4605 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
4606 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
4607 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
4608 system depend on tasksel tasks in
4609 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
4610 installation.</li>
4611
4612 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services. Now with the Kerberos
4613 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
4614 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions. We should
4615 at least try to enable it for these services:
4616 <ul>
4617
4618 <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
4619 quotas.</li>
4620 <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
4621 <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
4622 <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
4623 <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
4624 <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
4625
4626 </ul></li>
4627
4628 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
4629 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
4630 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
4631 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
4632
4633 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install. The split made
4634 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
4635 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
4636
4637 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
4638 touching the disk if the disk is too small. This is
4639 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
4640 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
4641 it and upload. After this is done we need to adjust
4642 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
4643
4644 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
4645 time config). LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
4646 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
4647 in Wheezy.
4648
4649 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
4650 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
4651 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
4652
4653 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
4654 change on first login. This is useful when handing out password on
4655 paper, to make sure only the user know the password. This require
4656 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
4657
4658 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
4659 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
4660 familiar with GUIs. This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
4661 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
4662
4663 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
4664 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses). None of the
4665 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
4666
4667 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
4668 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
4669 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
4670
4671 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
4672 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol. The hook was
4673 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
4674 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy. We might need to write a
4675 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
4676
4677 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
4678 <ul>
4679
4680 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
4681 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
4682 <li>and probably more?</li>
4683 </ul></li>
4684
4685 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly. This is
4686 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
4687 examples too. For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
4688 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
4689 some GUI to do this. Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
4690 could consider using their packages. At the moment we have some
4691 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
4692 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
4693
4694
4695 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options. We
4696 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
4697 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
4698 use.</li>
4699
4700 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
4701 interesting educational packages. We should work on the package
4702 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
4703 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
4704 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
4705
4706 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
4707 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
4708 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
4709 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled. We should
4710 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
4711 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
4712
4713 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
4714 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
4715 There are at least three implementations,
4716 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
4717 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
4718 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
4719 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school. The challenges is
4720 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
4721 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
4722 given room.</li>
4723
4724 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
4725 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
4726 the Debian Edu network. Not quite sure how. Perhaps we should
4727 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
4728 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
4729 configuration and data with the central server. This should be
4730 investigated.</li>
4731
4732 </ul></p>
4733
4734 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
4735 version.</p>
4736
4737 </div>
4738 <div class="tags">
4739
4740
4741 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>.
4742
4743
4744 </div>
4745 </div>
4746 <div class="padding"></div>
4747
4748 <div class="entry">
4749 <div class="title">
4750 <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>
4751 </div>
4752 <div class="date">
4753 9th June 2012
4754 </div>
4755 <div class="body">
4756 <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
4757 <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
4758 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
4759 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
4760 recognition on the TV image itself. It could let the viewer know who
4761 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
4762 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
4763 evaluate what is being said and done. That would be a feature I would
4764 be willing to pay for.</p>
4765
4766 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
4767 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
4768 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
4769 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
4770 Orwell</a>.</p>
4771
4772 </div>
4773 <div class="tags">
4774
4775
4776 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>.
4777
4778
4779 </div>
4780 </div>
4781 <div class="padding"></div>
4782
4783 <div class="entry">
4784 <div class="title">
4785 <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>
4786 </div>
4787 <div class="date">
4788 6th June 2012
4789 </div>
4790 <div class="body">
4791 <p>A few days ago
4792 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
4793 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
4794 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
4795 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
4796 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>. Combined with my web scraping
4797 code for HP, Dell and IBM
4798 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
4799 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
4800 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
4801 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
4802 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
4803
4804 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
4805 output:
4806
4807 <blockquote><pre>
4808 % 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>
4809 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": ""})
4810 %
4811 </pre></blockquote>
4812
4813 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
4814 support for other vendors. The python source is available on
4815 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
4816
4817 </div>
4818 <div class="tags">
4819
4820
4821 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>.
4822
4823
4824 </div>
4825 </div>
4826 <div class="padding"></div>
4827
4828 <div class="entry">
4829 <div class="title">
4830 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
4831 </div>
4832 <div class="date">
4833 2nd June 2012
4834 </div>
4835 <div class="body">
4836 <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
4837 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
4838 mailing list. He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
4839 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
4840 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
4841 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
4842
4843 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4844
4845 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
4846 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
4847 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
4848 by Angela).</p>
4849
4850 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
4851 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
4852 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
4853 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
4854 becoming an osteopath.</p>
4855
4856 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
4857 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
4858 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
4859 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
4860 skills with communication skills.</p>
4861
4862 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4863 project?</strong></p>
4864
4865 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
4866 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
4867 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
4868 people said. From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
4869 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
4870
4871 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
4872 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
4873 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
4874 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
4875 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
4876 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
4877 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
4878 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
4879 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
4880
4881 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
4882 people. People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
4883 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
4884
4885 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
4886
4887 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
4888 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
4889 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
4890 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
4891 IT solution. The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
4892 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
4893 possible. In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
4894 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
4895 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
4896 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
4897 point.</p>
4898
4899 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
4900 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
4901 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
4902 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
4903 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
4904 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
4905
4906 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
4907 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
4908 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
4909 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
4910 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
4911 spare time.</p>
4912
4913 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
4914 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
4915 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
4916 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
4917 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
4918
4919 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
4920 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
4921 avoidance do exist.</p>
4922
4923 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
4924 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
4925 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
4926 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
4927 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
4928 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
4929 and probably a gain for all.</p>
4930
4931 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4932 Edu?</strong></p>
4933
4934 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
4935 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
4936 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
4937 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
4938 project communication, honest communication within the group of
4939 developers, etc.</p>
4940
4941 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4942 Edu?</strong></p>
4943
4944 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
4945
4946 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
4947 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
4948 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
4949 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
4950 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
4951 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
4952 contribute).</p>
4953
4954 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
4955 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
4956 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
4957 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
4958 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
4959 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
4960 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
4961 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
4962 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
4963 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
4964
4965 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4966
4967 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
4968
4969 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
4970 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
4971 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
4972
4973 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
4974 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
4975 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
4976 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
4977
4978 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
4979 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
4980 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
4981 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
4982 whiteboard.</p>
4983
4984 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
4985
4986 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4987 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4988
4989 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
4990 enrol people.</p>
4991
4992 </div>
4993 <div class="tags">
4994
4995
4996 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>.
4997
4998
4999 </div>
5000 </div>
5001 <div class="padding"></div>
5002
5003 <div class="entry">
5004 <div class="title">
5005 <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>
5006 </div>
5007 <div class="date">
5008 1st June 2012
5009 </div>
5010 <div class="body">
5011 <p>A few years ago I wrote
5012 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
5013 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers. Recently
5014 I have learned from colleges here at the
5015 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
5016 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service. Given
5017 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
5018 readable information about the support status. This perl code
5019 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
5020
5021 <p><pre>
5022 use strict;
5023 use warnings;
5024 use SOAP::Lite;
5025 use Data::Dumper;
5026 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
5027 my $App = 'test';
5028 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
5029 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
5030 my $s = SOAP::Lite
5031 -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
5032 -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
5033 -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
5034 ;
5035 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
5036 SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
5037 SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
5038 SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
5039 );
5040 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
5041 </pre></p>
5042
5043 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
5044
5045 <p><pre>
5046 $VAR1 = {
5047 'Asset' => {
5048 'Entitlements' => {
5049 'EntitlementData' => [
5050 {
5051 'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
5052 'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
5053 'Provider' => '',
5054 'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
5055 'DaysLeft' => '0'
5056 },
5057 {
5058 'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
5059 'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
5060 'Provider' => '',
5061 'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
5062 'DaysLeft' => '0'
5063 },
5064 {
5065 'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
5066 'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
5067 'Provider' => '',
5068 'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
5069 'DaysLeft' => '0'
5070 }
5071 ]
5072 },
5073 'AssetHeaderData' => {
5074 'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
5075 'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
5076 'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
5077 'Buid' => '2323',
5078 'Region' => 'Europe',
5079 'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
5080 'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
5081 }
5082 }
5083 };
5084 </pre></p>
5085
5086 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
5087 service outside the
5088 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
5089 documentation</a>, and according to
5090 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
5091 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
5092 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
5093
5094 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service. If
5095 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
5096
5097 </div>
5098 <div class="tags">
5099
5100
5101 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>.
5102
5103
5104 </div>
5105 </div>
5106 <div class="padding"></div>
5107
5108 <div class="entry">
5109 <div class="title">
5110 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
5111 </div>
5112 <div class="date">
5113 31st May 2012
5114 </div>
5115 <div class="body">
5116 <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
5117 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
5118 mail, and I've had a few days to test it. As all my machines are
5119 running Debian Squeeze, where
5120 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
5121 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
5122 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD. This worked
5123 just fine. So far I have only done the quick calibration. It was
5124 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
5125 another day.</p>
5126
5127 <p>After calibration, I get a
5128 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
5129 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
5130 tools. KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
5131 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
5132 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
5133 monitor setups. But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
5134 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
5135 monitor. After searching a bit, I
5136 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
5137 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
5138 and a simple</p>
5139
5140 <p><pre>
5141 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
5142 </pre></p>
5143
5144 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor. The
5145 result was a bit more pink than I expected. I guess I picked the
5146 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
5147 enough for now.</p>
5148
5149 </div>
5150 <div class="tags">
5151
5152
5153 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5154
5155
5156 </div>
5157 </div>
5158 <div class="padding"></div>
5159
5160 <div class="entry">
5161 <div class="title">
5162 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
5163 </div>
5164 <div class="date">
5165 27th May 2012
5166 </div>
5167 <div class="body">
5168 <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
5169 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
5170 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
5171 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils. His name was Ralf
5172 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
5173 since then, helping to make sure the
5174 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
5175 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
5176
5177 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5178
5179 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
5180 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
5181 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
5182 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
5183 O- or A-level ("Abitur"). For quite as long, I've been taking care of
5184 our computer network.</p>
5185
5186 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
5187 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
5188 (4 months).</p>
5189
5190 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5191 project?</strong></p>
5192
5193 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
5194 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
5195 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
5196 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
5197 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
5198 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
5199 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others. For more
5200 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
5201 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
5202 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
5203 locally installed Skolelinux image. As a consequence, I joined quite
5204 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
5205 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
5206 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
5207
5208 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5209 Edu?</strong></p>
5210
5211 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
5212 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
5213 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
5214 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
5215 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
5216 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
5217 labs). Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
5218 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
5219
5220 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5221 Edu?</strong></p>
5222
5223 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
5224 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
5225 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
5226 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
5227 office packages or desktop environments. These schools have the
5228 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
5229 capacity to do so. Another issue is that Debian release cycles
5230 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
5231 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
5232 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
5233 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
5234 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
5235
5236 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5237
5238 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
5239 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
5240 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
5241
5242 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5243 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5244
5245 <p><ol>
5246
5247 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
5248 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
5249 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
5250 developing.</li>
5251
5252 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
5253 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
5254 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
5255 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
5256 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
5257
5258 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
5259 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
5260 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
5261
5262 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
5263 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
5264 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
5265 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
5266
5267 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
5268 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
5269 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
5270
5271 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
5272
5273 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
5274 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
5275 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials. And
5276 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
5277
5278 </ol></p>
5279
5280 </div>
5281 <div class="tags">
5282
5283
5284 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>.
5285
5286
5287 </div>
5288 </div>
5289 <div class="padding"></div>
5290
5291 <div class="entry">
5292 <div class="title">
5293 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
5294 </div>
5295 <div class="date">
5296 26th May 2012
5297 </div>
5298 <div class="body">
5299 <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
5300 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
5301 government. I just sent him an email to let him know that his
5302 assumption are most likely wrong. Sharing it here in case some of my
5303 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
5304
5305 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi. I just noted your
5306 <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>
5307 comment:</p>
5308
5309 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
5310 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
5311 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
5312 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
5313 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
5314 </blockquote></p>
5315
5316 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated. I believe it is
5317 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
5318 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
5319 at the content. In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
5320 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
5321 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
5322 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
5323 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
5324 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver. In
5325 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
5326 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
5327 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
5328 of wasted effort.</p>
5329
5330 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
5331 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
5332 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
5333
5334 <p>See
5335 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
5336 and
5337 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
5338 for background information. Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
5339 </blockquote></p>
5340
5341 </div>
5342 <div class="tags">
5343
5344
5345 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>.
5346
5347
5348 </div>
5349 </div>
5350 <div class="padding"></div>
5351
5352 <div class="entry">
5353 <div class="title">
5354 <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>
5355 </div>
5356 <div class="date">
5357 18th May 2012
5358 </div>
5359 <div class="body">
5360 <p>In january, I
5361 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
5362 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
5363 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
5364 the color on a computer screen. The software required is
5365 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
5366 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
5367 batch. Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
5368 opportunity to order. Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
5369 delivery. I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
5370 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
5371
5372 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
5373 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
5374 drivers. :)</p>
5375
5376 </div>
5377 <div class="tags">
5378
5379
5380 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5381
5382
5383 </div>
5384 </div>
5385 <div class="padding"></div>
5386
5387 <div class="entry">
5388 <div class="title">
5389 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
5390 </div>
5391 <div class="date">
5392 13th May 2012
5393 </div>
5394 <div class="body">
5395 <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
5396 publish another interview with the people behind
5397 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
5398 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
5399 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
5400 details get right before release.
5401
5402 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5403
5404 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
5405 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany. I worked nearly 20 years as
5406 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
5407 international company for machinery and equipment. Since 2011 I'm a
5408 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
5409 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer. From April this year
5410 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
5411 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
5412
5413 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
5414 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
5415 home since 2006.</p>
5416
5417 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5418 project?</strong></p>
5419
5420 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
5421 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
5422 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
5423 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
5424 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
5425 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
5426
5427 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
5428 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
5429 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
5430 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
5431 and with a lot of fun. About one year later the school was connected
5432 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
5433 building. That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
5434 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
5435 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
5436 costs for things like licence and software. So I searched for a
5437 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
5438 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
5439 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school. I
5440 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
5441 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
5442 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
5443
5444 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5445 Edu?</strong></p>
5446
5447 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
5448 for me as today.</p>
5449
5450 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
5451
5452 <p><ul>
5453
5454 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
5455 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
5456
5457 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
5458 cost.</li>
5459
5460 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
5461 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
5462 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
5463 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
5464 server</li>
5465
5466 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
5467 school.</li>
5468
5469 </ul></p>
5470
5471 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
5472 came up in this way:</p>
5473
5474 <p><ul>
5475
5476 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
5477 now.</li>
5478
5479 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
5480 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
5481 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
5482
5483 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
5484 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
5485 interfaces used in the past.</li>
5486
5487 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
5488 different needs.</li>
5489
5490 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
5491
5492 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
5493 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
5494 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
5495
5496 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
5497 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
5498
5499 </ul></p>
5500
5501 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5502 Edu?</strong></p>
5503
5504 <p><ul>
5505
5506 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
5507 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
5508 whole municipality areas.</li>
5509
5510 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
5511 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
5512 politicians.</li>
5513
5514 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
5515
5516 </ul></p>
5517
5518 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5519
5520 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
5521 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
5522 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
5523 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
5524 need from the KDE environment. On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
5525 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
5526
5527 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
5528 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
5529 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
5530 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
5531 and the whole family. I probably forgot something.</p>
5532
5533 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5534 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5535
5536 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
5537 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
5538 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
5539
5540 </div>
5541 <div class="tags">
5542
5543
5544 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>.
5545
5546
5547 </div>
5548 </div>
5549 <div class="padding"></div>
5550
5551 <div class="entry">
5552 <div class="title">
5553 <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>
5554 </div>
5555 <div class="date">
5556 30th April 2012
5557 </div>
5558 <div class="body">
5559 <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
5560 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
5561
5562 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
5563 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
5564 But the last ones have not really been up to the task. My last
5565 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
5566 time, and cutting my head took forever. And the one before that did
5567 not work very well either. We have looked for something better for a
5568 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
5569 discovered that there are indeed better tools available. But these
5570 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers". The hair saloons
5571 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
5572 companies. The models they sell, are very different from the ones
5573 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal. The main difference is their
5574 efficiency. It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
5575 minutes required by my impotent Braun. The hairdresser I visited had
5576 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
5577 producer. But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
5578
5579 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it. This was not
5580 straight forward. The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
5581 did not want to sell anything to me. But searching for the model on
5582 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
5583 around NOK 4000,-. This was a bit much. We kept searching and
5584 finally found a Danish supplier
5585 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
5586 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>. We ordered one, and it arrived a few
5587 days ago.</p>
5588
5589 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
5590 to use it, so we left it charging over night. Normally it will only
5591 need one hour to charge. The following evening we successfully tested
5592 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
5593 cutter. The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
5594 toys.</p>
5595
5596 </div>
5597 <div class="tags">
5598
5599
5600 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5601
5602
5603 </div>
5604 </div>
5605 <div class="padding"></div>
5606
5607 <div class="entry">
5608 <div class="title">
5609 <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>
5610 </div>
5611 <div class="date">
5612 26th April 2012
5613 </div>
5614 <div class="body">
5615 <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
5616 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
5617 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
5618 that the video editor application included with
5619 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
5620 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use. The article is mostly
5621 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
5622
5623 <p><blockquote>
5624 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
5625 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
5626 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
5627 </blockquote></p>
5628
5629 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
5630
5631 <p><blockquote>
5632 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
5633 commercially. Although I can ONLY use them privately."
5634 </blockquote></p>
5635
5636 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
5637 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
5638 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
5639 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>. The HTC One X specification specifies that
5640 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
5641 video. AMR is
5642 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
5643 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
5644 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
5645 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>. MP4 is
5646 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
5647 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
5648 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
5649
5650 <p>I know why I prefer
5651 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
5652 standards</a> also for video.</p>
5653
5654 </div>
5655 <div class="tags">
5656
5657
5658 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
5659
5660
5661 </div>
5662 </div>
5663 <div class="padding"></div>
5664
5665 <div class="entry">
5666 <div class="title">
5667 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
5668 </div>
5669 <div class="date">
5670 19th April 2012
5671 </div>
5672 <div class="body">
5673 <p>Here in Norway, the
5674 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
5675 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
5676 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
5677 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
5678 government. When the directory was created, the people behind it made
5679 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
5680 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
5681 to the government. Free software and non-free software could compete
5682 on the same level.</p>
5683
5684 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
5685 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
5686 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
5687 directory. And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
5688 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
5689 implementing them. The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
5690 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
5691 willing to pay will get a license. Both sound great in theory. In
5692 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
5693 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user. By
5694 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
5695 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
5696 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
5697 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
5698 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
5699 to implement a standard when the income available is zero. The result
5700 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
5701 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
5702
5703 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
5704 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
5705 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory. Because free
5706 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
5707 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
5708 in Norway. The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
5709 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
5710 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
5711
5712 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
5713 from Simon Phipps
5714 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
5715 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
5716
5717 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
5718 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
5719 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
5720 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government. I
5721 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
5722 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
5723 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
5724 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
5725 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
5726
5727 </div>
5728 <div class="tags">
5729
5730
5731 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>.
5732
5733
5734 </div>
5735 </div>
5736 <div class="padding"></div>
5737
5738 <div class="entry">
5739 <div class="title">
5740 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
5741 </div>
5742 <div class="date">
5743 15th April 2012
5744 </div>
5745 <div class="body">
5746 <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
5747 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
5748 setting together all the pieces. This time I present to you Andreas
5749 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
5750 years. He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
5751 up in the recently released
5752 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
5753 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
5754
5755 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5756
5757 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany. After
5758 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
5759 Quantum Optics. After that I worked some years in an optics company.
5760 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
5761 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school. I teach math, physics,
5762 information technology and science/technology.</p>
5763
5764 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5765 project?</strong></p>
5766
5767 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
5768 project because of my interest in education and Debian. Within the
5769 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
5770 contributing.</p>
5771
5772 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5773 Edu?</strong></p>
5774
5775 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
5776 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
5777 Debian Project!</p>
5778
5779 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5780 Edu?</strong></p>
5781
5782 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
5783 downside, too. In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
5784 setup, if you need or want that. Further more, it is not easily
5785 possible to upgrade the system to a new release. It takes much too
5786 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
5787 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
5788 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
5789
5790 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
5791 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
5792
5793 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5794
5795 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
5796 on all my machines. For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
5797 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing. At school I
5798 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
5799
5800 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5801 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5802
5803 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
5804 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
5805 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader". The school
5806 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
5807 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats. Even
5808 free browsers do not work for the school administration. Publishers
5809 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
5810
5811 <p>To change this, political work is very important. Parts of the
5812 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
5813 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
5814 the system. There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
5815 "Free/Open Standards". I am not sure if all the involved parties have
5816 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
5817 fraction takes them seriously. However it might slowly make free
5818 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
5819
5820 </div>
5821 <div class="tags">
5822
5823
5824 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>.
5825
5826
5827 </div>
5828 </div>
5829 <div class="padding"></div>
5830
5831 <div class="entry">
5832 <div class="title">
5833 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
5834 </div>
5835 <div class="date">
5836 8th April 2012
5837 </div>
5838 <div class="body">
5839 <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
5840 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
5841 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
5842 contributor to the
5843 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
5844 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
5845
5846 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5847
5848 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
5849 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
5850
5851 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5852 project?</strong></p>
5853
5854 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user! The only
5855 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
5856 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
5857 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread... So I did a sweep
5858 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
5859 "localisation".</p>
5860
5861 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5862 Edu?</strong></p>
5863
5864 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5865 Edu?</strong></p>
5866
5867 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it! In fact I
5868 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
5869 education system.</p>
5870
5871 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
5872 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
5873 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
5874 money on the latest hardware.</p>
5875
5876 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5877
5878 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
5879 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
5880 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
5881
5882 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5883 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5884
5885 <p>Well, I don't know. I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
5886 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
5887 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
5888
5889 </div>
5890 <div class="tags">
5891
5892
5893 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>.
5894
5895
5896 </div>
5897 </div>
5898 <div class="padding"></div>
5899
5900 <div class="entry">
5901 <div class="title">
5902 <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>
5903 </div>
5904 <div class="date">
5905 6th April 2012
5906 </div>
5907 <div class="body">
5908 <p>Recently I have spent time with
5909 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
5910 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
5911 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
5912 process I discovered something very surprising. The reason the KDE
5913 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
5914 due to the way KDE find application icons. I discovered that showing
5915 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
5916 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server. Most of these were
5917
5918 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response. Because the
5919 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
5920 ms, the menus would be very slow. Looking at the strace of kicker in
5921 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
5922 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
5923 non-existing files. KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
5924 one icon file. In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
5925 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
5926
5927 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
5928 directories, and the list of possible directories is large. In
5929 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
5930 and .xpm. The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
5931 mounted. Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
5932 requests. I am not the first one to discover this. I found a
5933 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
5934 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
5935
5936 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
5937 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
5938 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
5939 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
5940 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/. Finally, I add symlinks to
5941 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
5942 for them. This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
5943 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
5944 almost instantaneous. I'm not quite sure where to make the package
5945 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
5946
5947 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
5948 and icon handling, but also the login process. Not quite sure how to
5949 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
5950 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
5951
5952 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
5953 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
5954
5955 </div>
5956 <div class="tags">
5957
5958
5959 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>.
5960
5961
5962 </div>
5963 </div>
5964 <div class="padding"></div>
5965
5966 <div class="entry">
5967 <div class="title">
5968 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
5969 </div>
5970 <div class="date">
5971 5th April 2012
5972 </div>
5973 <div class="body">
5974 <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
5975 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
5976 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News. The result was made public for
5977 non-subscribers today. I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
5978 for schools. Check out his article
5979 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
5980 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
5981
5982 </div>
5983 <div class="tags">
5984
5985
5986 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>.
5987
5988
5989 </div>
5990 </div>
5991 <div class="padding"></div>
5992
5993 <div class="entry">
5994 <div class="title">
5995 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
5996 </div>
5997 <div class="date">
5998 1st April 2012
5999 </div>
6000 <div class="body">
6001 <p>Germany is a core area for the
6002 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
6003 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
6004 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
6005
6006 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6007
6008 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
6009 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
6010 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
6011 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school. Here, young adults is given
6012 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
6013 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
6014 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
6015 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
6016
6017 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
6018 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
6019 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
6020 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
6021 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
6022 the end of April this year.</p>
6023
6024 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6025 project?</strong></p>
6026
6027 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
6028 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
6029 Project). At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
6030 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
6031 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
6032 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
6033 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
6034 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
6035 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
6036 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
6037 Skolelinux.</p>
6038
6039 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
6040 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
6041 clients. The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
6042 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
6043 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
6044 the admin teachers.</p>
6045
6046 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6047 Edu?</strong></p>
6048
6049 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
6050 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
6051 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
6052
6053 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
6054 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
6055 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp. It's of
6056 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
6057 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
6058
6059 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6060 Edu?</strong></p>
6061
6062 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
6063
6064 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6065
6066 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
6067 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
6068 Annotator). At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
6069 LibreOffice.</p>
6070
6071 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6072 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6073
6074 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
6075 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
6076 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
6077
6078 </div>
6079 <div class="tags">
6080
6081
6082 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>.
6083
6084
6085 </div>
6086 </div>
6087 <div class="padding"></div>
6088
6089 <div class="entry">
6090 <div class="title">
6091 <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>
6092 </div>
6093 <div class="date">
6094 25th March 2012
6095 </div>
6096 <div class="body">
6097 <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
6098
6099 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
6100 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
6101 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
6102 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
6103 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
6104 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
6105 and download as a
6106 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
6107 Theora</a> file. Check it out below.</p>
6108
6109 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
6110 <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"' />
6111 <p>Download video as
6112 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
6113 </video></p>
6114
6115 </div>
6116 <div class="tags">
6117
6118
6119 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>.
6120
6121
6122 </div>
6123 </div>
6124 <div class="padding"></div>
6125
6126 <div class="entry">
6127 <div class="title">
6128 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
6129 </div>
6130 <div class="date">
6131 19th March 2012
6132 </div>
6133 <div class="body">
6134 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
6135 users are spread all across the globe. The second inteview after
6136 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
6137 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
6138 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
6139
6140 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6141
6142 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
6143 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
6144 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
6145 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
6146 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
6147 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
6148 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
6149 installations.</p>
6150
6151 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6152 project?</strong></p>
6153
6154 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
6155 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
6156 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
6157 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
6158 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
6159 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
6160 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
6161 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
6162 these things we decided to try it.</p>
6163
6164 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6165 Edu?</strong></p>
6166
6167 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
6168 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
6169 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
6170 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
6171 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
6172 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
6173 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
6174 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
6175
6176 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6177 Edu?</strong></p>
6178
6179 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
6180 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
6181 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
6182 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
6183 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
6184
6185 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6186
6187 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
6188 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
6189 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
6190 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
6191 that counts...)</p>
6192
6193 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6194 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6195
6196 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
6197 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
6198 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
6199 applications". However, schools today are experiencing budget
6200 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
6201 XP. At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
6202 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
6203 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
6204 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
6205 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
6206 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
6207
6208 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
6209 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
6210 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
6211
6212 </div>
6213 <div class="tags">
6214
6215
6216 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>.
6217
6218
6219 </div>
6220 </div>
6221 <div class="padding"></div>
6222
6223 <div class="entry">
6224 <div class="title">
6225 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
6226 </div>
6227 <div class="date">
6228 16th March 2012
6229 </div>
6230 <div class="body">
6231 <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
6232 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
6233 translated versions in sync. To do this we have come up with what we
6234 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
6235
6236 <ol>
6237
6238 <li>The documentation is written in a
6239 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
6240 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
6241 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
6242 docbook XML.</li>
6243
6244 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
6245 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
6246 with the translated text.</li>
6247
6248 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
6249 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed. They can
6250 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
6251 the translation. There is even a system in place to handle translated
6252 images.</li>
6253
6254 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
6255 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
6256
6257 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
6258 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
6259
6260 </ol>
6261
6262 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues. The biggest
6263 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
6264 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained. The docbook
6265 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
6266 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
6267
6268 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
6269 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
6270 package</a>.</p>
6271
6272 </div>
6273 <div class="tags">
6274
6275
6276 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>.
6277
6278
6279 </div>
6280 </div>
6281 <div class="padding"></div>
6282
6283 <div class="entry">
6284 <div class="title">
6285 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
6286 </div>
6287 <div class="date">
6288 11th March 2012
6289 </div>
6290 <div class="body">
6291 <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
6292 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
6293 on Debian/Squeeze. The full announcement is
6294 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
6295 from the project announcement list. Now is a good time to test if it
6296 you have not done so already.</p>
6297
6298 <p>I plan to present the new version at
6299 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
6300 meeting</a> on tuesday. I look forward to seeing you there if you are
6301 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
6302
6303 </div>
6304 <div class="tags">
6305
6306
6307 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>.
6308
6309
6310 </div>
6311 </div>
6312 <div class="padding"></div>
6313
6314 <div class="entry">
6315 <div class="title">
6316 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
6317 </div>
6318 <div class="date">
6319 9th March 2012
6320 </div>
6321 <div class="body">
6322 <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
6323 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
6324 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6325 community. This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
6326 more international audience.</p>
6327
6328 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
6329 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
6330 Europe, there are users all around the globe. One of those far away
6331 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
6332 and contributor. It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
6333 work out of the box in Japan. I got him to answer a few questions,
6334 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
6335
6336
6337 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6338
6339 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
6340 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
6341 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
6342 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
6343 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
6344 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
6345 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
6346 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
6347 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
6348 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
6349 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
6350
6351 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6352 project?</strong></p>
6353
6354 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
6355 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
6356 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
6357 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
6358 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
6359 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
6360 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
6361 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
6362 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
6363 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
6364 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
6365 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
6366 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
6367
6368 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6369 Edu?</strong></p>
6370
6371 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
6372 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
6373 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
6374 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
6375 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
6376 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
6377 Japan.</p>
6378
6379 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6380 Edu?</strong></p>
6381
6382 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
6383 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
6384 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
6385 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
6386 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
6387 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
6388 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
6389 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
6390 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is. A
6391 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
6392 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
6393 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
6394 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
6395 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
6396 help.</p>
6397
6398 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6399
6400 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
6401 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
6402 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
6403 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
6404 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music. At school
6405 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
6406 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
6407 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
6408 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS. We also
6409 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
6410 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
6411
6412 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6413 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6414
6415 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
6416 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
6417 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
6418 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
6419 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago. The Edu aspect is
6420 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
6421 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu? But of course the main attraction is
6422 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
6423 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
6424 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
6425 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
6426 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
6427
6428 </div>
6429 <div class="tags">
6430
6431
6432 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>.
6433
6434
6435 </div>
6436 </div>
6437 <div class="padding"></div>
6438
6439 <div class="entry">
6440 <div class="title">
6441 <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>
6442 </div>
6443 <div class="date">
6444 7th March 2012
6445 </div>
6446 <div class="body">
6447 <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
6448
6449 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
6450 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
6451 Debian Edu Squeeze. The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
6452 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
6453 download as a
6454 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
6455 Theora</a> file. Check it out below.</p>
6456
6457 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
6458 <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"' />
6459 <p>Download video as
6460 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
6461 </video></p>
6462
6463 </div>
6464 <div class="tags">
6465
6466
6467 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>.
6468
6469
6470 </div>
6471 </div>
6472 <div class="padding"></div>
6473
6474 <div class="entry">
6475 <div class="title">
6476 <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>
6477 </div>
6478 <div class="date">
6479 4th March 2012
6480 </div>
6481 <div class="body">
6482 <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
6483 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6484 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze. The full announcement is
6485 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
6486 from the project announcement list. Check it out if you
6487 need a software solution for your school.</p>
6488
6489 </div>
6490 <div class="tags">
6491
6492
6493 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>.
6494
6495
6496 </div>
6497 </div>
6498 <div class="padding"></div>
6499
6500 <div class="entry">
6501 <div class="title">
6502 <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>
6503 </div>
6504 <div class="date">
6505 3rd March 2012
6506 </div>
6507 <div class="body">
6508 <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
6509 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
6510 for making stop motion movies. The proposal came from a teacher
6511 needing such tool on Skolelinux. The project, called "stopmotion",
6512 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
6513 national aware with this great project. The project was initiated and
6514 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
6515 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad. They got in touch with people at Aardman
6516 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
6517 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
6518 animators around the globe. But as is usual after studying, both got
6519 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
6520 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now. Until last
6521 year...</p>
6522
6523 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
6524 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
6525 name,
6526 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
6527 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
6528 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
6529 mean). I've been following
6530 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
6531 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
6532 the future is encouraging. If you want to make stop motion movies.
6533 Check it out. :)</p>
6534
6535 </div>
6536 <div class="tags">
6537
6538
6539 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>.
6540
6541
6542 </div>
6543 </div>
6544 <div class="padding"></div>
6545
6546 <div class="entry">
6547 <div class="title">
6548 <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>
6549 </div>
6550 <div class="date">
6551 27th February 2012
6552 </div>
6553 <div class="body">
6554 <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
6555 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6556 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze. The full announcement did for some
6557 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
6558 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
6559 from the Debian development announcement list. Check it out if you
6560 need a software solution for your school.</p>
6561
6562 </div>
6563 <div class="tags">
6564
6565
6566 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>.
6567
6568
6569 </div>
6570 </div>
6571 <div class="padding"></div>
6572
6573 <div class="entry">
6574 <div class="title">
6575 <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>
6576 </div>
6577 <div class="date">
6578 19th February 2012
6579 </div>
6580 <div class="body">
6581 <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
6582 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
6583 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
6584 on Squeeze. The full announcement is
6585 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
6586 on the project announcement list. Check it out if you need a software
6587 solution for your school.</p>
6588
6589 </div>
6590 <div class="tags">
6591
6592
6593 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>.
6594
6595
6596 </div>
6597 </div>
6598 <div class="padding"></div>
6599
6600 <div class="entry">
6601 <div class="title">
6602 <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>
6603 </div>
6604 <div class="date">
6605 14th February 2012
6606 </div>
6607 <div class="body">
6608 <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems. Thanks to Linux
6609 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
6610 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
6611 close</a> this summer :). But once a disk is starting to behave
6612 funny, a practical problem present itself. How to get from the Linux
6613 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
6614 the disk when the computer is turned off? In my case I have SATA
6615 disks with a unique ID printed on the label. All I need is a way to
6616 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
6617
6618 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
6619 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
6620 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
6621 printed on the disk label. The following (almost) one-liner can be
6622 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
6623
6624 <blockquote><pre>
6625 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
6626 do
6627 printf "Failed disk $d: "
6628 hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
6629 done
6630 </blockquote></pre>
6631
6632 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
6633 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
6634
6635 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
6636
6637 <blockquote><pre>
6638 Failed disk sdd1: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1860823
6639 Failed disk sdd2: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1860823
6640 Failed disk sde2: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1840589
6641 </blockquote></pre>
6642
6643 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
6644 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
6645 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
6646 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label. The vendor
6647 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
6648 mounted inside my box.</p>
6649
6650 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
6651 Software RAID in the
6652 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
6653 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
6654 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail. At the moment
6655 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
6656 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
6657 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
6658
6659 </div>
6660 <div class="tags">
6661
6662
6663 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>.
6664
6665
6666 </div>
6667 </div>
6668 <div class="padding"></div>
6669
6670 <div class="entry">
6671 <div class="title">
6672 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
6673 </div>
6674 <div class="date">
6675 13th February 2012
6676 </div>
6677 <div class="body">
6678 <p>New in the Squeeze version of
6679 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
6680 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
6681 based on their environment. We want all systems on the client to use
6682 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
6683 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
6684 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings. The schools can
6685 change the global proxy setting by editing
6686 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
6687 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
6688
6689 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
6690 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
6691 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
6692
6693 <blockquote><pre>
6694 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
6695 {
6696 if (!isResolvable(host) ||
6697 isPlainHostName(host) ||
6698 dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
6699 return "DIRECT";
6700 else
6701 return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
6702 }
6703 </pre></blockquote>
6704
6705 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
6706
6707 <blockquote><pre>
6708 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
6709 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
6710 </pre></blockquote>
6711
6712 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
6713 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
6714 would be used for
6715 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
6716 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
6717 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>. The perl script wpad-extract work just
6718 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
6719 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
6720 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
6721 library. I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
6722 is frozen. An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
6723 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
6724 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
6725
6726 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
6727 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
6728 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
6729 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
6730 feature when it is connected to other networks. And if no proxy is
6731 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
6732
6733 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
6734 or security problem. But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
6735 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
6736 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
6737 distinction to be academic. If you are afraid of using the wrong
6738 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
6739 first place. In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
6740 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
6741 the network setup changes.</p>
6742
6743 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
6744 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
6745 draft</a> and a
6746 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
6747 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
6748
6749 </div>
6750 <div class="tags">
6751
6752
6753 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6754
6755
6756 </div>
6757 </div>
6758 <div class="padding"></div>
6759
6760 <div class="entry">
6761 <div class="title">
6762 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
6763 </div>
6764 <div class="date">
6765 5th February 2012
6766 </div>
6767 <div class="body">
6768 <p>Since the Lenny version of
6769 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
6770 feature to save power have been included. It is as simple as it is
6771 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
6772 in the morning. This is done using the
6773 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
6774
6775 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
6776 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts. For Debian Edu, this is done in
6777 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
6778 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
6779 shut it down if it is. If the hardware in question is supported by
6780 the
6781 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
6782 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
6783 10 minutes. If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
6784 try to turn on the client. The wake-on-lan option is only documented
6785 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
6786
6787 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
6788 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
6789 the common setup for a classroom. The nvram-wakeup method only work
6790 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock. I've seen old
6791 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
6792 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot. If you have one of
6793 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
6794
6795 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
6796 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment. For those without a
6797 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
6798 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
6799 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
6800
6801 </div>
6802 <div class="tags">
6803
6804
6805 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>.
6806
6807
6808 </div>
6809 </div>
6810 <div class="padding"></div>
6811
6812 <div class="entry">
6813 <div class="title">
6814 <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>
6815 </div>
6816 <div class="date">
6817 4th February 2012
6818 </div>
6819 <div class="body">
6820 <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
6821 publish the third beta version of
6822 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
6823 on Squeeze. If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
6824 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
6825 installing new machines, check it out. If you need a software
6826 solution for your school, check it out too. The full announcement is
6827 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
6828 on the project announcement list.</p>
6829
6830 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
6831 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
6832
6833 <ul>
6834
6835 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
6836 10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
6837 the installation.</li>
6838
6839 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
6840 Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
6841
6842 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
6843 disabled queues are restarted every hour. This should cut down on
6844 the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
6845
6846 <li>The set of initial users have been changed. Now a personal user
6847 for the local system administrator is created during installation
6848 instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
6849 and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
6850 membership. This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
6851 up to date on the system.</li>
6852
6853 </ul>
6854
6855 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
6856 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home. I will use it look
6857 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
6858 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
6859
6860 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
6861 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
6862 gathering</a> in Oslo. We will continue the work on the Squeeze
6863 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version. Perhaps I
6864 will see you there?</p>
6865
6866 </div>
6867 <div class="tags">
6868
6869
6870 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>.
6871
6872
6873 </div>
6874 </div>
6875 <div class="padding"></div>
6876
6877 <div class="entry">
6878 <div class="title">
6879 <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>
6880 </div>
6881 <div class="date">
6882 27th January 2012
6883 </div>
6884 <div class="body">
6885 <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
6886 This is the sad fact of todays computers. In the next version of
6887 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
6888 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
6889 firmware blobs easier to handle. The common use case I run into is a
6890 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
6891 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
6892
6893 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
6894 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
6895 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
6896 during installation. This take care firmware for network devices used
6897 by the installer when installing from from local media. But for
6898 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
6899 not taken care of by this.</p>
6900
6901 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
6902 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
6903 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
6904 firmware. The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
6905 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
6906 the requested firmware file(s) is installed. I have proposed to do
6907 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
6908 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
6909 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better. Run the
6910 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
6911 firmware packages.</p>
6912
6913 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
6914 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
6915 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
6916 included to be able to install at all. To fill the PXE installation
6917 initrd with extra firmware, the
6918 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
6919 provided. Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
6920 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
6921
6922 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
6923 network cards working. For this,
6924 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
6925 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs. It is used
6926 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
6927
6928 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation. We
6929 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
6930 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
6931
6932 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend. You might want to give it a
6933 try.</p>
6934
6935 </div>
6936 <div class="tags">
6937
6938
6939 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>.
6940
6941
6942 </div>
6943 </div>
6944 <div class="padding"></div>
6945
6946 <div class="entry">
6947 <div class="title">
6948 <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>
6949 </div>
6950 <div class="date">
6951 25th January 2012
6952 </div>
6953 <div class="body">
6954 <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
6955 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
6956 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
6957 the computers in a school without much manual labour. Here is a short
6958 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
6959
6960 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
6961 central server in the network. Next, PXE boot all the client machines
6962 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
6963 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server. When
6964 this is done, log on to the central server and run
6965 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
6966 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP. The output
6967 will look similar to this:</p>
6968
6969 <p><blockquote><pre>
6970 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
6971 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
6972 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.
6973
6974 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
6975
6976 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6977 enter password: *******
6978 %
6979 </pre></blockquote></p>
6980
6981 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
6982 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
6983 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
6984 automatically generated names. The final step to set up the school is
6985 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
6986 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
6987 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
6988 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems. All clients that should be used
6989 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
6990 group. After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
6991 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
6992 automatically.</p>
6993
6994 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
6995 enabled this weekend. You might want to give it a try.</p>
6996
6997 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
6998 hosts, one need to add the option -a. I forgot to mention this in my
6999 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
7000
7001 </div>
7002 <div class="tags">
7003
7004
7005 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>.
7006
7007
7008 </div>
7009 </div>
7010 <div class="padding"></div>
7011
7012 <div class="entry">
7013 <div class="title">
7014 <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>
7015 </div>
7016 <div class="date">
7017 10th January 2012
7018 </div>
7019 <div class="body">
7020 <p>In the Squeeze version of
7021 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
7022 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
7023 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
7024 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP. In
7025 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
7026 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
7027 first time.</p>
7028
7029 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
7030 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
7031 default content. By changing this value to another URL, all users get
7032 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
7033
7034 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool. It can be
7035 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
7036 new setting.</p>
7037
7038 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
7039 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
7040 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
7041
7042 </div>
7043 <div class="tags">
7044
7045
7046 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>.
7047
7048
7049 </div>
7050 </div>
7051 <div class="padding"></div>
7052
7053 <div class="entry">
7054 <div class="title">
7055 <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>
7056 </div>
7057 <div class="date">
7058 7th January 2012
7059 </div>
7060 <div class="body">
7061 <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
7062 the second beta version of
7063 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>. If
7064 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
7065 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
7066 machines, check it out. If you need a software solution for your
7067 school, check it out too. The full announcement is
7068 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
7069 on the project announcement list.</p>
7070
7071 </div>
7072 <div class="tags">
7073
7074
7075 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>.
7076
7077
7078 </div>
7079 </div>
7080 <div class="padding"></div>
7081
7082 <div class="entry">
7083 <div class="title">
7084 <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>
7085 </div>
7086 <div class="date">
7087 3rd January 2012
7088 </div>
7089 <div class="body">
7090 <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
7091 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
7092 for release. The initial problem I looked at was particularly
7093 interesting.</p>
7094
7095 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
7096 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
7097 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
7098 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
7099 scratch. I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
7100 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
7101 wrap up its tasks.</p>
7102
7103 <p>Eventually the cause was found. The kernel was simply running out
7104 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
7105 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
7106 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
7107 because I was typing.</P>
7108
7109 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
7110 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
7111 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
7112 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
7113 generate some disk IO. Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
7114 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
7115 generate entropy.</p>
7116
7117 <p>The fix is in
7118 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
7119 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
7120 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
7121 developers</a>. We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
7122
7123 </div>
7124 <div class="tags">
7125
7126
7127 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>.
7128
7129
7130 </div>
7131 </div>
7132 <div class="padding"></div>
7133
7134 <div class="entry">
7135 <div class="title">
7136 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
7137 </div>
7138 <div class="date">
7139 21st November 2011
7140 </div>
7141 <div class="body">
7142 <p>At work we have heaps of servers. I believe the total count is
7143 around 1000 at the moment. To be able to get help from the vendors
7144 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
7145 up to date. If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
7146 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
7147 firmware is upgraded. So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
7148 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
7149 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
7150 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
7151 the tools to do so.</p>
7152
7153 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
7154 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got. Most of
7155 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
7156 so far. This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
7157
7158 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
7159 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
7160 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
7161 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
7162 site I can find it. Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
7163 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
7164 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
7165 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
7166
7167 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
7168 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
7169 servers at a site? Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
7170
7171 <p><pre>
7172 #!/usr/bin/perl
7173 use strict;
7174 use warnings;
7175 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
7176 BEGIN {
7177 # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
7178 my %rhelmodules = (
7179 'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
7180 );
7181 for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
7182 eval "use $module;";
7183 if ($@) {
7184 my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
7185 system("yum install -y $pkg");
7186 eval "use $module;";
7187 }
7188 }
7189 }
7190 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
7191
7192 upgrade_dell();
7193
7194 exit 0;
7195
7196 sub run_firmware_script {
7197 my ($opts, $script) = @_;
7198 unless ($script) {
7199 print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
7200 exit 1
7201 }
7202 print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
7203
7204 if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
7205 print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
7206 } else {
7207 print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
7208 }
7209 }
7210
7211 sub run_firmware_scripts {
7212 my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
7213 # Run firmware packages
7214 for my $dir (@dirs) {
7215 print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
7216 opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
7217 while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
7218 next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
7219 run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
7220 }
7221 closedir $dh;
7222 }
7223 }
7224
7225 sub download {
7226 my $url = shift;
7227 print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
7228 system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
7229 }
7230
7231 sub upgrade_dell {
7232 my @dirs;
7233 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
7234 chomp $product;
7235
7236 if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
7237
7238 # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
7239 system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
7240
7241 my $tmpdir = tempdir(
7242 CLEANUP => 1
7243 );
7244 chdir($tmpdir);
7245 fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
7246 system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
7247 my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
7248 # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
7249 my $fwopts = "-q";
7250 if (@paths) {
7251 for my $url (@paths) {
7252 fetch_dell_fw($url);
7253 }
7254 run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
7255 } else {
7256 print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
7257 print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
7258 }
7259 chdir('/');
7260 } else {
7261 print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
7262 print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
7263 }
7264 }
7265
7266 sub fetch_dell_fw {
7267 my $path = shift;
7268 my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
7269 download($url);
7270 }
7271
7272 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
7273 # firmware packages to download from Dell. Only work for Linux
7274 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
7275 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
7276 my $filename = shift;
7277
7278 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
7279 chomp $product;
7280 my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
7281
7282 print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
7283
7284 my $xml = XMLin($filename);
7285 my @paths;
7286 for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
7287 my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
7288 my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
7289 my $oscode;
7290 if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
7291 $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
7292 } else {
7293 $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
7294 }
7295 if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
7296 {
7297 @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
7298 }
7299 }
7300 for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
7301 my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
7302
7303 # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
7304 next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
7305
7306 my $cpath = $component->{path};
7307 for my $path (@paths) {
7308 if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
7309 push(@paths, $cpath);
7310 }
7311 }
7312 }
7313 return @paths;
7314 }
7315 </pre>
7316
7317 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
7318 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking. Anyone know a
7319 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers? At the
7320 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
7321 outdated.</p>
7322
7323 </div>
7324 <div class="tags">
7325
7326
7327 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>.
7328
7329
7330 </div>
7331 </div>
7332 <div class="padding"></div>
7333
7334 <div class="entry">
7335 <div class="title">
7336 <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>
7337 </div>
7338 <div class="date">
7339 7th October 2011
7340 </div>
7341 <div class="body">
7342 <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
7343 publishing houses how to handle electronic books. Surprisingly, the
7344 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
7345 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
7346 publishing houses. Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
7347 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
7348 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
7349 models.</p>
7350
7351 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
7352 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
7353 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
7354 to a better model. The idea is simple:</p>
7355
7356 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
7357 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
7358 solution to hand out free e-books. As a start, the books distributed
7359 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
7360 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
7361 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
7362 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
7363 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
7364 distributed.</p>
7365
7366 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
7367
7368 <ul>
7369
7370 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
7371 other relevant equipment.</li>
7372
7373 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
7374
7375 </ul>
7376
7377 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
7378 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
7379 visiting the library. The site would be the distribution point for
7380 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
7381 books available.</p>
7382
7383 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this? I guess it would
7384 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
7385 libraries. :)</p>
7386
7387 </div>
7388 <div class="tags">
7389
7390
7391 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>.
7392
7393
7394 </div>
7395 </div>
7396 <div class="padding"></div>
7397
7398 <div class="entry">
7399 <div class="title">
7400 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
7401 </div>
7402 <div class="date">
7403 17th September 2011
7404 </div>
7405 <div class="body">
7406 <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
7407 server. It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
7408 movie collection easily available. It also make it possible to let
7409 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
7410 down. I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
7411 subtitle options intact. It also ensure that the entire film is one
7412 file on the disk. As this is for personal use, the ripping is
7413 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
7414
7415 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
7416
7417 <blockquote><pre>
7418 #!/bin/sh
7419 # apt-get install lsdvd
7420 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
7421 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
7422 </pre></blockquote>
7423
7424 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
7425 been looking for a better alternative. I have no idea why this I/O
7426 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
7427 something fishy with the DVDs in question. Or perhaps all three.</p>
7428
7429 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
7430 genisoimage. This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
7431 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
7432 back as an ISO.
7433
7434 <blockquote><pre>
7435 #!/bin/sh
7436 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
7437 set -e
7438 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
7439 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
7440 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
7441 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
7442 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
7443 </pre></blockquote>
7444
7445 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
7446
7447 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
7448 readom program from the wodim package. It is specially written to
7449 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
7450 f=image.iso</tt>. It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
7451 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
7452
7453 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
7454 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
7455 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
7456 for. Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
7457 creating a ISO image. The git source built and installed just fine in
7458 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
7459
7460 </div>
7461 <div class="tags">
7462
7463
7464 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>.
7465
7466
7467 </div>
7468 </div>
7469 <div class="padding"></div>
7470
7471 <div class="entry">
7472 <div class="title">
7473 <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>
7474 </div>
7475 <div class="date">
7476 4th August 2011
7477 </div>
7478 <div class="body">
7479 <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
7480 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
7481 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
7482 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
7483 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
7484 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
7485 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>. I only have time to address one
7486 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
7487 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
7488
7489 <p><blockquote>
7490 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
7491 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
7492 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
7493 </blockquote></p>
7494
7495 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
7496 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same. I am not surprised he
7497 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
7498 thing to believe. But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
7499 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
7500 mode. I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
7501 hard to explain.</p>
7502
7503 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
7504 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>". This means the only thing that is
7505 executed in single user mode is sulogin. Single user mode is a boot
7506 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
7507 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
7508 enters the single user state. When switching to runlevel 1, the state
7509 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
7510 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
7511 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
7512 1. It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
7513 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
7514 mode).</p>
7515
7516 <p>This summary might make it clearer. When booting for the first
7517 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
7518 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>". When booting into
7519 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
7520 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>". A problem show up when
7521 trying to continue after visiting single user mode. Not all services
7522 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
7523 unpredicatble state. This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
7524 after visiting single user mode.</p>
7525
7526 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
7527 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/. When switching from say runlevel 2
7528 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
7529 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
7530 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
7531 2-5. I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
7532 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
7533 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
7534
7535 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
7536 and discovered this problem a few years ago. I suspect it originates
7537 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
7538
7539 </div>
7540 <div class="tags">
7541
7542
7543 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>.
7544
7545
7546 </div>
7547 </div>
7548 <div class="padding"></div>
7549
7550 <div class="entry">
7551 <div class="title">
7552 <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>
7553 </div>
7554 <div class="date">
7555 30th July 2011
7556 </div>
7557 <div class="body">
7558 <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
7559 are started from /etc/rcS.d/. In fact, there is a bite more of them
7560 than make sense, and this causes a few problems. What kind of
7561 problems, you might ask. There are at least two problems. The first
7562 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
7563 runlevel 1. One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
7564 the expected state. The other is that single user boot will sometimes
7565 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
7566 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
7567 machine from a problem in that subsystem. A minor additional point is
7568 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
7569 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
7570 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
7571
7572 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/. In short, only the
7573 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
7574 presented during a single user boot should go there. Everything else
7575 should go into the numeric runlevels. This means things like
7576 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
7577 the numeric runlevels. Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
7578 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
7579 out. Do your package have one of them? Please help us make single
7580 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
7581
7582 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
7583 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
7584 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
7585 is presented.</p>
7586
7587 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound. To keep
7588 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
7589 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
7590 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
7591 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
7592 moved first. This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
7593 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
7594 the system state correct. This will require some coordination when it
7595 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
7596 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
7597 on them. Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
7598 package, while others are still left to do. I wish I had time to work
7599 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
7600 find time to push this forward.</p>
7601
7602 </div>
7603 <div class="tags">
7604
7605
7606 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>.
7607
7608
7609 </div>
7610 </div>
7611 <div class="padding"></div>
7612
7613 <div class="entry">
7614 <div class="title">
7615 <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>
7616 </div>
7617 <div class="date">
7618 29th July 2011
7619 </div>
7620 <div class="body">
7621 <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
7622 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
7623 desktop to be useful for more people. The use case for this is my
7624 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
7625 issues.</p>
7626
7627 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
7628 implement. After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
7629 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
7630
7631 <ol>
7632
7633 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
7634 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
7635 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
7636 tool to handle it. I have no problem guiding both of my parents
7637 through the process over the phone. If a kernel reboot is required,
7638 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool. Last
7639 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
7640 Debian.</li>
7641
7642 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
7643 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
7644 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
7645 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
7646 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
7647 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
7648 Packages file in the APT archive). If one or more packages are found,
7649 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
7650 type. If the package require the user to accept some non-free
7651 license, this is explained to the user. The entire process make it
7652 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
7653 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
7654 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
7655
7656 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
7657 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
7658 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
7659 should search for a package that would add support for it. This
7660 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264. The selection
7661 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
7662 plugin handling. This is as far as I know implemented using a
7663 gstreamer hook. The end result is that the user easily get access to
7664 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
7665 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
7666
7667 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
7668 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
7669 start emacs to show it. If I remember correctly, when doing the same
7670 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser. At least I
7671 know Opera will show text files within the browser. I much prefer the
7672 latter behaviour.</li>
7673
7674 </ol>
7675
7676 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
7677 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
7678 it do not matter much.</p>
7679
7680 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
7681 Debian release. It would require the coordinated effort of several
7682 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
7683
7684 </div>
7685 <div class="tags">
7686
7687
7688 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7689
7690
7691 </div>
7692 </div>
7693 <div class="padding"></div>
7694
7695 <div class="entry">
7696 <div class="title">
7697 <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>
7698 </div>
7699 <div class="date">
7700 26th July 2011
7701 </div>
7702 <div class="body">
7703 <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
7704 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
7705 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
7706 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
7707 security support for a few years.</p>
7708
7709 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
7710 that are missing in Debian at the moment. It would be great if these
7711 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
7712 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
7713 in their own country using only Debian packages. The list of modules
7714 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
7715 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
7716 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
7717 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
7718 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
7719 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
7720 easier in the future.</p>
7721
7722 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
7723 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
7724 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package. But this leave me
7725 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
7726 do not have time for.</p>
7727
7728 </div>
7729 <div class="tags">
7730
7731
7732 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>.
7733
7734
7735 </div>
7736 </div>
7737 <div class="padding"></div>
7738
7739 <div class="entry">
7740 <div class="title">
7741 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
7742 </div>
7743 <div class="date">
7744 20th June 2011
7745 </div>
7746 <div class="body">
7747 <p>Reading
7748 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
7749 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
7750 parts of the
7751 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
7752 and
7753 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
7754 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
7755 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs. Whenever I take
7756 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
7757
7758 </div>
7759 <div class="tags">
7760
7761
7762 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>.
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/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
7772 </div>
7773 <div class="date">
7774 30th April 2011
7775 </div>
7776 <div class="body">
7777 <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
7778 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
7779 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
7780 work. It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
7781 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
7782 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
7783 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
7784 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
7785 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
7786 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
7787
7788 <p>Where is it? Visit
7789 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
7790 to have a look. Please send feedback to the
7791 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
7792 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
7793
7794 </div>
7795 <div class="tags">
7796
7797
7798 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>.
7799
7800
7801 </div>
7802 </div>
7803 <div class="padding"></div>
7804
7805 <div class="entry">
7806 <div class="title">
7807 <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>
7808 </div>
7809 <div class="date">
7810 29th April 2011
7811 </div>
7812 <div class="body">
7813 <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
7814 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
7815 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
7816 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
7817 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
7818 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
7819 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
7820 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
7821 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
7822 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
7823 FixMyStreet. The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
7824 to get a draft limping along. In the process, I have discovered a few
7825 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
7826
7827 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
7828 handling in the specification. The specification seem to assume all
7829 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
7830 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there. To be
7831 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
7832 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
7833 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
7834 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
7835 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
7836 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
7837 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
7838 know which language to use when writing a problem report. I suspect
7839 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
7840
7841 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
7842 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet. One issue I
7843 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
7844 each category. The specification do not state that the identifier
7845 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
7846 here. In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
7847 category. As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
7848 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
7849 it.</p>
7850
7851 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
7852 differ in a key part. FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
7853 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title. I'm not
7854 quite sure how to best handle this yet. When asking for a FixMyStreet
7855 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
7856 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
7857 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
7858
7859 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
7860 near a geographic location. I believe this is important if one is to
7861 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units. The specification
7862 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
7863 and range= options.</p>
7864
7865 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
7866 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
7867 to assume only one administration. For FixMyStreet, this mean a
7868 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
7869 available depend on the location of the problem. Not quite sure how
7870 to best handle this. I've noticed
7871 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
7872 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
7873 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
7874 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
7875
7876 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
7877 up with the open311 developer group. I really wish they had a email
7878 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
7879 discussions instead of only
7880 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>. Oh,
7881 well. That will probably resolve itself, one way or another. I've
7882 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
7883 seem to reply to my questions there. This make me wonder if I just
7884 fail to understand how the open311 community work. It sure do not
7885 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
7886
7887 </div>
7888 <div class="tags">
7889
7890
7891 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>.
7892
7893
7894 </div>
7895 </div>
7896 <div class="padding"></div>
7897
7898 <div class="entry">
7899 <div class="title">
7900 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
7901 </div>
7902 <div class="date">
7903 6th April 2011
7904 </div>
7905 <div class="body">
7906 <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
7907 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
7908 A few days ago the project
7909 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
7910 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code. I hope many
7911 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
7912 into Gnash.</p>
7913
7914 </div>
7915 <div class="tags">
7916
7917
7918 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>.
7919
7920
7921 </div>
7922 </div>
7923 <div class="padding"></div>
7924
7925 <div class="entry">
7926 <div class="title">
7927 <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>
7928 </div>
7929 <div class="date">
7930 3rd April 2011
7931 </div>
7932 <div class="body">
7933 <p>Here is a small update for my English readers. Most of my blog
7934 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
7935 update in English.</p>
7936
7937 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
7938 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
7939 of the British service
7940 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
7941 and it has been running for a month now. The entire project has been
7942 organised by me and two others. Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
7943 to fund the development work. In January I drafted a contract with
7944 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
7945 and in February the development took place. Most of it involved
7946 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
7947 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
7948 running in any country by now. The Norwegian
7949 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
7950 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
7951 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
7952 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
7953
7954 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
7955 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th. The system is
7956 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
7957 problem reports in a few weeks. Soon we hope to announce the Android
7958 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
7959 public infrastructure.</p>
7960
7961 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
7962 such service?</p>
7963
7964 </div>
7965 <div class="tags">
7966
7967
7968 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>.
7969
7970
7971 </div>
7972 </div>
7973 <div class="padding"></div>
7974
7975 <div class="entry">
7976 <div class="title">
7977 <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>
7978 </div>
7979 <div class="date">
7980 28th January 2011
7981 </div>
7982 <div class="body">
7983 <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
7984 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo. My idea is that
7985 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
7986 available on the Internet, and check our locally
7987 maintained/distributed software against this information. It should
7988 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten. The
7989 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
7990 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
7991 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
7992 out which security holes were present in our free software
7993 collection.</p>
7994
7995 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
7996 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
7997 consistent way across data sources. I considered several ways to do
7998 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
7999 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
8000 existing naming scheme. And it seem like I am not the first one to
8001 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
8002 solution. Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
8003 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
8004 software, hardware and other platform components. The CPE ids are
8005 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
8006 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
8007 issues for any CPE name. With this in place, all I need to do is to
8008 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
8009 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
8010 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
8011
8012 <p>To give you an example. The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
8013 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip. If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
8014 check out, one could look up
8015 <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
8016 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
8017 The most recent one is
8018 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
8019 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
8020 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
8021
8022 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
8023 for offline processing of issues. Using this dump, I've written a
8024 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
8025 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs. One give it CPEs
8026 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
8027 security issues out.</p>
8028
8029 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
8030 information need to be high. For that to happen, I believe as many as
8031 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database. I notice
8032 RHEL is providing
8033 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
8034 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
8035 information. I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
8036
8037 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
8038 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
8039 the CVE database in NVD. The result look fairly good, but there are
8040 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
8041 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
8042 Debian believe are affected by a CVE). Hope to find time to improve
8043 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
8044 someone maintaining it. So far my three emails with questions and
8045 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
8046 established soon.</p>
8047
8048 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
8049 mapping. It would be useful to know which packages in for example
8050 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
8051 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
8052 for their packages.</p>
8053
8054 </div>
8055 <div class="tags">
8056
8057
8058 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>.
8059
8060
8061 </div>
8062 </div>
8063 <div class="padding"></div>
8064
8065 <div class="entry">
8066 <div class="title">
8067 <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>
8068 </div>
8069 <div class="date">
8070 23rd January 2011
8071 </div>
8072 <div class="body">
8073 <p>In the
8074 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
8075 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
8076 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
8077 information. One part of this script that I find very useful when
8078 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
8079 to the PCI device it claims. It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
8080 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with. To see
8081 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
8082 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>. The relevant output on
8083 one of my machines like this:</p>
8084
8085 <pre>
8086 loaded modules:
8087 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
8088 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
8089 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
8090 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
8091 10de:03ec pata_amd
8092 10de:03f6 sata_nv
8093 1022:1103 k8temp
8094 109e:036e bttv
8095 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
8096 11ab:4364 sky2
8097 </pre>
8098
8099 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
8100 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
8101
8102 <pre>
8103 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
8104 echo loaded pci modules:
8105 (
8106 cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
8107 for address in * ; do
8108 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
8109 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
8110 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
8111 address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
8112 id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
8113 echo "$id $module"
8114 fi
8115 fi
8116 done
8117 )
8118 echo
8119 fi
8120 </pre>
8121
8122 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
8123 mappings:</p>
8124
8125 <pre>
8126 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
8127 echo loaded usb modules:
8128 (
8129 cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
8130 for address in * ; do
8131 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
8132 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
8133 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
8134 address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
8135 id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
8136 if [ "$id" ] ; then
8137 echo "$id $module"
8138 fi
8139 fi
8140 fi
8141 done
8142 )
8143 echo
8144 fi
8145 </pre>
8146
8147 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
8148 well.</p>
8149
8150 </div>
8151 <div class="tags">
8152
8153
8154 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>.
8155
8156
8157 </div>
8158 </div>
8159 <div class="padding"></div>
8160
8161 <div class="entry">
8162 <div class="title">
8163 <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>
8164 </div>
8165 <div class="date">
8166 16th January 2011
8167 </div>
8168 <div class="body">
8169 <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
8170 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM. Most video sites
8171 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora. Interestingly enough,
8172 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
8173 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
8174 the Wikipedia article on
8175 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
8176 this is not true. Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
8177 different browsers there. The format supported by most browsers is
8178 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
8179 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
8180 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
8181 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
8182 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
8183 Firefox. H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
8184 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
8185 Explorer. Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
8186 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
8187
8188 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
8189 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
8190 HTML5 video tag. Of course to reach all those without a browser
8191 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms. In
8192 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
8193 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
8194 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
8195 Theora. This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
8196 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
8197 from last week</a>.</p>
8198
8199 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
8200 the least supported is simple. Implementing and using H.264
8201 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
8202 are incompatible with free software licensing. If you believed H.264
8203 was without royalties and license terms, check out
8204 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
8205 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
8206
8207 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
8208 available from
8209 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
8210 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look. I'm not aware of a
8211 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
8212
8213 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
8214 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
8215 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
8216 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
8217
8218 </div>
8219 <div class="tags">
8220
8221
8222 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
8223
8224
8225 </div>
8226 </div>
8227 <div class="padding"></div>
8228
8229 <div class="entry">
8230 <div class="title">
8231 <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>
8232 </div>
8233 <div class="date">
8234 12th January 2011
8235 </div>
8236 <div class="body">
8237 <p>Today I discovered
8238 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
8239 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
8240 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
8241 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
8242 the browser. The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
8243 open" codec technology. If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
8244 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
8245 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
8246 Free That Matters</a>". It is not free of cost for creators of video
8247 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
8248 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
8249 licensing the patents needed for H.264. Some background information
8250 on the Google announcement is available from
8251 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
8252 A good read. :)</p>
8253
8254 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
8255 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
8256 the Internet. This can only be done by publishing using free and open
8257 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
8258 for these free and open standards. At the moment there seem to be two
8259 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support. Some
8260 browsers support H.264, and others support
8261 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
8262 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
8263 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
8264 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
8265 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
8266 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
8267 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
8268 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
8269
8270 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
8271 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
8272 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
8273 the mind set</a> of these people quite well. His rhetorical questions
8274 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
8275 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
8276 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
8277
8278 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
8279 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin. This
8280 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
8281 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
8282 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context. To me it
8283 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
8284 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
8285
8286 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
8287 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
8288 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse. A lot of TV
8289 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
8290 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
8291 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
8292 publishing. Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
8293
8294 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this. While the
8295 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
8296 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
8297 perspective. One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
8298 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
8299 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
8300 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
8301 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
8302 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
8303 video format not requiring royalties at all. A third reason might be
8304 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
8305 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
8306 I guess time will tell.</p>
8307
8308 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
8309 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
8310 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
8311
8312 </div>
8313 <div class="tags">
8314
8315
8316 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
8317
8318
8319 </div>
8320 </div>
8321 <div class="padding"></div>
8322
8323 <div class="entry">
8324 <div class="title">
8325 <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>
8326 </div>
8327 <div class="date">
8328 30th December 2010
8329 </div>
8330 <div class="body">
8331 <p>After trying to
8332 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
8333 Ogg Theora</a> to
8334 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
8335 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
8336 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
8337 this. As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
8338 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
8339 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others. But to be able to complete this in a
8340 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
8341
8342 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
8343 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
8344 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
8345 to help out. The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
8346 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
8347 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
8348 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
8349
8350 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do. Do not be
8351 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
8352
8353 </div>
8354 <div class="tags">
8355
8356
8357 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>.
8358
8359
8360 </div>
8361 </div>
8362 <div class="padding"></div>
8363
8364 <div class="entry">
8365 <div class="title">
8366 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
8367 </div>
8368 <div class="date">
8369 27th December 2010
8370 </div>
8371 <div class="body">
8372 <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
8373 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
8374 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
8375 the term has been decided by Digistan. The term "Open Standard" has
8376 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
8377 about standards. One end up discussing which definition is the best
8378 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
8379 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
8380
8381 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
8382 standards, here are a few that I know about. This list is not
8383 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
8384 complete survey. More definitions are available on the
8385 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
8386 page</a>.</p>
8387
8388 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
8389 Interoperability Framework version 1.0. Really sad to notice that BSA
8390 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
8391 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
8392 their own people. Anyway, the definition is still available and it
8393 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
8394 specification on equal terms.</p>
8395
8396 <blockquote>
8397
8398 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
8399 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
8400 open standard:</p>
8401
8402 <ul>
8403
8404 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
8405 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
8406 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
8407 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
8408
8409 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
8410 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
8411 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
8412 nominal fee.</li>
8413
8414 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
8415 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
8416 free basis.</li>
8417
8418 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
8419
8420 </ul>
8421 </blockquote>
8422
8423 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
8424 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
8425 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
8426 definition</a> in 2004. It even made it into the Danish parlament as
8427 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
8428 definition of a open standard</a>. Another from a different part of
8429 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
8430
8431 <blockquote>
8432
8433 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
8434
8435 <ol>
8436
8437 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
8438 tilgængelig.</li>
8439
8440 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
8441 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
8442
8443 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
8444 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
8445
8446 </ol>
8447
8448 </blockquote>
8449
8450 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
8451 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
8452
8453 <blockquote>
8454
8455 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
8456
8457 <ol>
8458
8459 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
8460 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
8461
8462 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
8463 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
8464 Standard themselves;</li>
8465
8466 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
8467 any party or in any business model;</li>
8468
8469 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
8470 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
8471 parties;</li>
8472
8473 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
8474 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
8475 parties.</li>
8476
8477 </ol>
8478
8479 </blockquote>
8480
8481 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
8482 its
8483 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
8484 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
8485
8486 <blockquote>
8487 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
8488
8489 <ul>
8490
8491 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
8492 democratic:
8493
8494 <ul>
8495
8496 <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
8497 participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
8498 imposed by the organization under which it is developed
8499 and managed.</li>
8500
8501 <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
8502 method, can be changed through input from all
8503 participants.</li>
8504
8505 <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
8506 the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
8507
8508 <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
8509 and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
8510
8511 <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
8512 public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
8513 comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
8514
8515 </ul>
8516
8517 </li>
8518
8519 </ul>
8520
8521 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
8522 <ul>
8523
8524 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
8525 and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
8526 implementations to the interface described in the standard without
8527 undue or restrictive constraints. Interfaces include APIs,
8528 protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
8529
8530 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
8531 a technical or economic barriers</li>
8532
8533 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
8534 interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
8535 program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
8536 programs and mutually to use the information which has been
8537 exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
8538 file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
8539 conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
8540 computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
8541 intended to function.</li>
8542
8543 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
8544 standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
8545 must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
8546
8547 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
8548 fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
8549 perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
8550 sell products based on the standard. The only exceptions are
8551 terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
8552 outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
8553 patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
8554 only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
8555
8556 <ul>
8557
8558 <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
8559 licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
8560 (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
8561
8562 <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
8563 or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
8564 essential to practice that standard (also known as a
8565 "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
8566
8567 <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
8568 licensor</li>
8569
8570 </ul>
8571 </li>
8572
8573 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
8574 implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
8575 or restricted licensing terms</li>
8576
8577 </ul>
8578
8579 </blockquote>
8580
8581 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
8582 there are so many of them. As you can see, the same holds true for
8583 open standard definitions. Most of the definitions have a lot in
8584 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
8585 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
8586 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
8587 competition to downplay the significance of open standards. I hope we
8588 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
8589 Standards.</p>
8590
8591 </div>
8592 <div class="tags">
8593
8594
8595 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>.
8596
8597
8598 </div>
8599 </div>
8600 <div class="padding"></div>
8601
8602 <div class="entry">
8603 <div class="title">
8604 <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>
8605 </div>
8606 <div class="date">
8607 25th December 2010
8608 </div>
8609 <div class="body">
8610 <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
8611 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
8612
8613 <blockquote>
8614
8615 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
8616 as follows:</p>
8617
8618 <ol>
8619
8620 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
8621 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
8622 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
8623
8624 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
8625 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
8626 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
8627 parties.</li>
8628
8629 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
8630 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
8631 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
8632
8633 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
8634 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
8635
8636 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
8637
8638 </ol>
8639
8640 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
8641 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
8642 products based on the standard.</p>
8643 </blockquote>
8644
8645 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
8646 and open standard according to this definition. Here is a short
8647 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far. I brought up the
8648 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
8649 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
8650 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
8651 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
8652 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
8653
8654 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
8655
8656 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
8657 Ogg Theora specification. It can be argued that the
8658 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
8659 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
8660 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
8661 obvious that this is a real risk. One issue with the Xiph
8662 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
8663 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web. I've
8664 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
8665 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
8666 where is is spent in the foundation. It is thus not obvious for an
8667 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
8668 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
8669 specification. But it seem unlikely.</p>
8670
8671 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
8672
8673 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
8674 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled. If Xiph foundation is
8675 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
8676 documentation indicating this.</p>
8677
8678 <p>According to
8679 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
8680 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
8681 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
8682 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
8683 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
8684 report is correct.</p>
8685
8686 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
8687
8688 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
8689 container format</a> and both the
8690 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
8691 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
8692 the web. This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
8693
8694 <blockquote>
8695
8696 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
8697 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
8698 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
8699 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
8700 specification compliance.
8701
8702 </blockquote>
8703
8704 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
8705 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
8706 this is the term:<p>
8707
8708 <blockquote>
8709
8710 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
8711 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
8712 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
8713 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
8714 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
8715 included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
8716 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
8717 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
8718 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
8719 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
8720 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
8721 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
8722
8723 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
8724 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
8725 </blockquote>
8726
8727 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
8728 this term seem to be fulfilled. There might be a problem with the
8729 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
8730 thus reuse it in other specifications. Not quite sure if that is a
8731 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
8732
8733 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
8734
8735 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
8736 Theora format.
8737 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
8738 and
8739 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
8740 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
8741 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
8742 them. Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
8743 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
8744 without paying any royalties. For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
8745 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
8746 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
8747
8748 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
8749
8750 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
8751
8752 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
8753
8754 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
8755 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation. Given the
8756 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
8757 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
8758 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
8759 this.</p>
8760
8761 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
8762 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
8763
8764 </div>
8765 <div class="tags">
8766
8767
8768 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
8769
8770
8771 </div>
8772 </div>
8773 <div class="padding"></div>
8774
8775 <div class="entry">
8776 <div class="title">
8777 <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>
8778 </div>
8779 <div class="date">
8780 25th December 2010
8781 </div>
8782 <div class="body">
8783 <p>A few days ago
8784 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
8785 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
8786 2.0 of
8787 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
8788 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
8789 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
8790 Nothing very surprising there, given
8791 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
8792 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
8793 this work. But I find this very sad. The definition of
8794 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
8795 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
8796 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
8797 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
8798 definition from Digistan</A>. Version 2 have removed the open
8799 standard definition from its content.</p>
8800
8801 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
8802 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
8803 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
8804 in the public sector in Peru. As the text was not available from a
8805 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
8806 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
8807 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future. Some
8808 background information about that story is available in
8809 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
8810 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
8811
8812 <blockquote>
8813 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
8814 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
8815 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
8816
8817 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
8818
8819 <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>
8820
8821 <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>
8822
8823 <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>
8824
8825 <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>
8826
8827 <p>
8828 <ul>
8829 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
8830 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
8831 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
8832 </ul>
8833 </p>
8834
8835 <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>
8836
8837 <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>
8838
8839 <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>
8840
8841 <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>
8842
8843 <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>
8844
8845
8846 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
8847 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
8848 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
8849 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
8850 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
8851 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
8852
8853 </p>
8854
8855 <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>
8856
8857 <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>
8858
8859 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
8860
8861 <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>
8862
8863 <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>
8864
8865 <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>
8866
8867 <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>
8868
8869 <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>
8870
8871 <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>
8872
8873 <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>
8874
8875 <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>
8876
8877 <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>
8878
8879 <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>
8880
8881 <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>
8882
8883 <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>
8884
8885 <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>
8886
8887 <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>
8888
8889 <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>
8890
8891 <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>
8892
8893 <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>
8894
8895 <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>
8896
8897 <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>
8898
8899 <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>
8900
8901 <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>
8902
8903 <p>On security:</p>
8904
8905 <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>
8906
8907 <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>
8908
8909 <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>
8910
8911 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
8912
8913 <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>
8914
8915 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
8916
8917 <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>
8918
8919 <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>
8920
8921 <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>
8922
8923 <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>
8924
8925 <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>
8926
8927 <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>
8928
8929 <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>
8930
8931 <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>
8932
8933 <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>
8934
8935 <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>
8936
8937 <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>
8938
8939 <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>
8940
8941 <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>
8942
8943 <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>
8944
8945 <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>
8946
8947 <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>
8948
8949 <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>
8950
8951 <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>
8952
8953 <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>
8954
8955 <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>
8956
8957 <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>
8958
8959 <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>
8960
8961 <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>
8962
8963 <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>
8964
8965 <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>
8966
8967 <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>
8968
8969 <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>
8970
8971 <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>
8972
8973 <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>
8974
8975 <p>Cordially,<br>
8976 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
8977 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
8978 </blockquote>
8979
8980 </div>
8981 <div class="tags">
8982
8983
8984 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>.
8985
8986
8987 </div>
8988 </div>
8989 <div class="padding"></div>
8990
8991 <div class="entry">
8992 <div class="title">
8993 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
8994 </div>
8995 <div class="date">
8996 25th December 2010
8997 </div>
8998 <div class="body">
8999 <p>Half a year ago I
9000 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
9001 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
9002 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
9003 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
9004
9005 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
9006 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
9007 different Office implementations handle different ODF features. Sad
9008 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
9009 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
9010 for OfficeShots users yet). I am glad to see that the ODF community
9011 got such a great test tool available.</p>
9012
9013 </div>
9014 <div class="tags">
9015
9016
9017 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>.
9018
9019
9020 </div>
9021 </div>
9022 <div class="padding"></div>
9023
9024 <div class="entry">
9025 <div class="title">
9026 <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>
9027 </div>
9028 <div class="date">
9029 22nd December 2010
9030 </div>
9031 <div class="body">
9032 <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
9033 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
9034 batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
9035 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
9036 computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
9037 five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
9038 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
9039 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
9040 university.</p>
9041
9042 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
9043 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
9044 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
9045 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
9046 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
9047 on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
9048 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
9049 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
9050
9051 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
9052 I perform on a new model.</p>
9053
9054 <ul>
9055
9056 <li>Is PXE installation working? I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
9057 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
9058 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
9059
9060 <li>Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
9061 installation, X.org is working.</li>
9062
9063 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
9064 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
9065 reported by the program.</li>
9066
9067 <li>Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
9068 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
9069 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
9070 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
9071 normally test this by playing
9072 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
9073 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
9074
9075 <li>Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
9076 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
9077
9078 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
9079 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
9080
9081 <li>Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
9082 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
9083
9084 <li>Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
9085 any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
9086 few.</li>
9087
9088 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
9089 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
9090 notice this.</li>
9091
9092 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working? I'm testing if the
9093 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
9094 resume.</li>
9095
9096 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
9097 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
9098 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
9099 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
9100 not.</li>
9101
9102 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
9103 acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
9104 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
9105 existence.</li>
9106
9107 </ul>
9108
9109 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
9110 for the HP machines I am testing. I'm not done yet, so I will report
9111 the test results later. For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
9112 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
9113 and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p. As you
9114 can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
9115 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
9116 RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.</p>
9117
9118 </div>
9119 <div class="tags">
9120
9121
9122 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>.
9123
9124
9125 </div>
9126 </div>
9127 <div class="padding"></div>
9128
9129 <div class="entry">
9130 <div class="title">
9131 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
9132 </div>
9133 <div class="date">
9134 11th December 2010
9135 </div>
9136 <div class="body">
9137 <p>As I continue to explore
9138 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
9139 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
9140 and regulations here in Norway. Here are some random notes.</p>
9141
9142 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
9143 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
9144 is known to everyone. This means that if a BitCoin address has been
9145 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
9146 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
9147 that address. There is even a web service to look at the details for
9148 all transactions. There I can see that my address
9149 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
9150 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
9151 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
9152 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
9153 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
9154 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far. Thank you to each and
9155 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
9156 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
9157 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
9158 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction. I'm told
9159 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
9160 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
9161 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
9162
9163 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
9164 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
9165 without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting
9166 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
9167 If the Skolelinux foundation
9168 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
9169 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
9170 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
9171 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
9172 not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate
9173 should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay
9174 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
9175 BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
9176
9177 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
9178 accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to
9179 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
9180 easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
9181 access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really
9182 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
9183 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I
9184 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
9185 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
9186 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
9187 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular. I'm sure they
9188 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
9189 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
9190 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
9191 currencies.</p>
9192
9193 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
9194 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
9195 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
9196 to see which one get the next lump of cash). The "winner" get 50
9197 BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
9198 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
9199 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
9200 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
9201 BitCoins. Check out
9202 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
9203 if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a
9204 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
9205 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
9206 yet.</p>
9207
9208 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
9209 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
9210 criticism</a> of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
9211 it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be
9212 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
9213
9214 </div>
9215 <div class="tags">
9216
9217
9218 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>.
9219
9220
9221 </div>
9222 </div>
9223 <div class="padding"></div>
9224
9225 <div class="entry">
9226 <div class="title">
9227 <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>
9228 </div>
9229 <div class="date">
9230 10th December 2010
9231 </div>
9232 <div class="body">
9233 <p>With this weeks lawless
9234 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
9235 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
9236 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
9237 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
9238 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
9239 A blog post from
9240 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
9241 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
9242 mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
9243 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>. I got
9244 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
9245 some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
9246 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
9247
9248 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital
9249 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
9250 networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
9251 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
9252 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The
9253 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
9254 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
9255 line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas
9256 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
9257 Debian</a> soon.</p>
9258
9259 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
9260 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
9261 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
9262 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided. There
9263 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you
9264 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
9265 you can even get
9266 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
9267 bitcoin at the time of writing). Use
9268 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
9269 on the current exchange rates.</p>
9270
9271 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
9272 machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
9273 donations to the address
9274 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>. Thank you!</p>
9275
9276 </div>
9277 <div class="tags">
9278
9279
9280 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>.
9281
9282
9283 </div>
9284 </div>
9285 <div class="padding"></div>
9286
9287 <div class="entry">
9288 <div class="title">
9289 <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>
9290 </div>
9291 <div class="date">
9292 9th December 2010
9293 </div>
9294 <div class="body">
9295 <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
9296 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
9297 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
9298 get their own 3D printer. They wanted to learn from me based on my
9299 work in the area. After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
9300 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
9301 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon. I look
9302 forward to see how this goes. This monday their volunteer driver
9303 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
9304 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
9305 operational.</p>
9306
9307 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
9308 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational. I really look
9309 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
9310 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>. I even got
9311 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
9312 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
9313 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
9314
9315 </div>
9316 <div class="tags">
9317
9318
9319 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>.
9320
9321
9322 </div>
9323 </div>
9324 <div class="padding"></div>
9325
9326 <div class="entry">
9327 <div class="title">
9328 <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>
9329 </div>
9330 <div class="date">
9331 29th November 2010
9332 </div>
9333 <div class="body">
9334 <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
9335 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
9336 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway. I
9337 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
9338 Squeeze release. The gathering is open for everyone interested in
9339 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
9340
9341 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
9342 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
9343 will hold its
9344 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
9345 for 2010</a>. Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
9346 people registered as members. Last year 32 members cast their vote in
9347 the memberdb based election system. I hope more people find time to
9348 vote this year.</p>
9349
9350 </div>
9351 <div class="tags">
9352
9353
9354 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>.
9355
9356
9357 </div>
9358 </div>
9359 <div class="padding"></div>
9360
9361 <div class="entry">
9362 <div class="title">
9363 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
9364 </div>
9365 <div class="date">
9366 27th November 2010
9367 </div>
9368 <div class="body">
9369 <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
9370 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
9371 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
9372 to play a video file or stream. Only if VLC fail will I drag out
9373 gmplayer to see if it can do better. The reason is mostly the failure
9374 model and trust. When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
9375 reporting the problem. When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
9376 just hangs. The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
9377
9378 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
9379 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
9380 Edu/Skolelinux</a>. The reason is simple. We need a good browser
9381 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
9382 not very good. For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
9383 is no way for the user to pause the video. Also, when I
9384 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
9385 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
9386 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked. If
9387 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
9388 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
9389
9390 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
9391 annoying. The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
9392 keyboard shortcuts. When the player is in full screen mode, its
9393 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
9394 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode. I
9395 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
9396 window mode. Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
9397 the current video. It is very nice when playing short videos from the
9398 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
9399 what is going on.</p>
9400
9401 </div>
9402 <div class="tags">
9403
9404
9405 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>.
9406
9407
9408 </div>
9409 </div>
9410 <div class="padding"></div>
9411
9412 <div class="entry">
9413 <div class="title">
9414 <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>
9415 </div>
9416 <div class="date">
9417 22nd November 2010
9418 </div>
9419 <div class="body">
9420 <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
9421 upgrade testing of the
9422 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
9423 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
9424 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
9425 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
9426
9427 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
9428
9429 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
9430
9431 <blockquote><p>
9432 apache2.2-bin
9433 aptdaemon
9434 baobab
9435 binfmt-support
9436 browser-plugin-gnash
9437 cheese-common
9438 cli-common
9439 cups-pk-helper
9440 dmz-cursor-theme
9441 empathy
9442 empathy-common
9443 freedesktop-sound-theme
9444 freeglut3
9445 gconf-defaults-service
9446 gdm-themes
9447 gedit-plugins
9448 geoclue
9449 geoclue-hostip
9450 geoclue-localnet
9451 geoclue-manual
9452 geoclue-yahoo
9453 gnash
9454 gnash-common
9455 gnome
9456 gnome-backgrounds
9457 gnome-cards-data
9458 gnome-codec-install
9459 gnome-core
9460 gnome-desktop-environment
9461 gnome-disk-utility
9462 gnome-screenshot
9463 gnome-search-tool
9464 gnome-session-canberra
9465 gnome-system-log
9466 gnome-themes-extras
9467 gnome-themes-more
9468 gnome-user-share
9469 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
9470 gstreamer0.10-tools
9471 gtk2-engines
9472 gtk2-engines-pixbuf
9473 gtk2-engines-smooth
9474 hamster-applet
9475 libapache2-mod-dnssd
9476 libapr1
9477 libaprutil1
9478 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
9479 libaprutil1-ldap
9480 libart2.0-cil
9481 libboost-date-time1.42.0
9482 libboost-python1.42.0
9483 libboost-thread1.42.0
9484 libchamplain-0.4-0
9485 libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
9486 libcheese-gtk18
9487 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
9488 libcryptui0
9489 libdiscid0
9490 libelf1
9491 libepc-1.0-2
9492 libepc-common
9493 libepc-ui-1.0-2
9494 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
9495 libfreerdp0
9496 libgconf2.0-cil
9497 libgdata-common
9498 libgdata7
9499 libgdu-gtk0
9500 libgee2
9501 libgeoclue0
9502 libgexiv2-0
9503 libgif4
9504 libglade2.0-cil
9505 libglib2.0-cil
9506 libgmime2.4-cil
9507 libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
9508 libgnome2.24-cil
9509 libgnomepanel2.24-cil
9510 libgpod-common
9511 libgpod4
9512 libgtk2.0-cil
9513 libgtkglext1
9514 libgtksourceview2.0-common
9515 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
9516 libmono-addins0.2-cil
9517 libmono-cairo2.0-cil
9518 libmono-corlib2.0-cil
9519 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
9520 libmono-posix2.0-cil
9521 libmono-security2.0-cil
9522 libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
9523 libmono-system2.0-cil
9524 libmtp8
9525 libmusicbrainz3-6
9526 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
9527 libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
9528 libopal3.6.8
9529 libpolkit-gtk-1-0
9530 libpt2.6.7
9531 libpython2.6
9532 librpm1
9533 librpmio1
9534 libsdl1.2debian
9535 libsrtp0
9536 libssh-4
9537 libtelepathy-farsight0
9538 libtelepathy-glib0
9539 libtidy-0.99-0
9540 media-player-info
9541 mesa-utils
9542 mono-2.0-gac
9543 mono-gac
9544 mono-runtime
9545 nautilus-sendto
9546 nautilus-sendto-empathy
9547 p7zip-full
9548 pkg-config
9549 python-aptdaemon
9550 python-aptdaemon-gtk
9551 python-axiom
9552 python-beautifulsoup
9553 python-bugbuddy
9554 python-clientform
9555 python-coherence
9556 python-configobj
9557 python-crypto
9558 python-cupshelpers
9559 python-elementtree
9560 python-epsilon
9561 python-evolution
9562 python-feedparser
9563 python-gdata
9564 python-gdbm
9565 python-gst0.10
9566 python-gtkglext1
9567 python-gtksourceview2
9568 python-httplib2
9569 python-louie
9570 python-mako
9571 python-markupsafe
9572 python-mechanize
9573 python-nevow
9574 python-notify
9575 python-opengl
9576 python-openssl
9577 python-pam
9578 python-pkg-resources
9579 python-pyasn1
9580 python-pysqlite2
9581 python-rdflib
9582 python-serial
9583 python-tagpy
9584 python-twisted-bin
9585 python-twisted-conch
9586 python-twisted-core
9587 python-twisted-web
9588 python-utidylib
9589 python-webkit
9590 python-xdg
9591 python-zope.interface
9592 remmina
9593 remmina-plugin-data
9594 remmina-plugin-rdp
9595 remmina-plugin-vnc
9596 rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
9597 rhythmbox-plugins
9598 rpm-common
9599 rpm2cpio
9600 seahorse-plugins
9601 shotwell
9602 software-center
9603 system-config-printer-udev
9604 telepathy-gabble
9605 telepathy-mission-control-5
9606 telepathy-salut
9607 tomboy
9608 totem
9609 totem-coherence
9610 totem-mozilla
9611 totem-plugins
9612 transmission-common
9613 xdg-user-dirs
9614 xdg-user-dirs-gtk
9615 xserver-xephyr
9616 </p></blockquote>
9617
9618 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
9619
9620 <blockquote><p>
9621 cheese
9622 ekiga
9623 eog
9624 epiphany-extensions
9625 evolution-exchange
9626 fast-user-switch-applet
9627 file-roller
9628 gcalctool
9629 gconf-editor
9630 gdm
9631 gedit
9632 gedit-common
9633 gnome-games
9634 gnome-games-data
9635 gnome-nettool
9636 gnome-system-tools
9637 gnome-themes
9638 gnuchess
9639 gucharmap
9640 guile-1.8-libs
9641 libavahi-ui0
9642 libdmx1
9643 libgalago3
9644 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
9645 libgtksourceview2.0-0
9646 liblircclient0
9647 libsdl1.2debian-alsa
9648 libspeexdsp1
9649 libsvga1
9650 rhythmbox
9651 seahorse
9652 sound-juicer
9653 system-config-printer
9654 totem-common
9655 transmission-gtk
9656 vinagre
9657 vino
9658 </p></blockquote>
9659
9660 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
9661
9662 <blockquote><p>
9663 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
9664 </p></blockquote>
9665
9666 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
9667
9668 <blockquote><p>
9669 [nothing]
9670 </p></blockquote>
9671
9672 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
9673
9674 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
9675
9676 <blockquote><p>
9677 ksmserver
9678 </p></blockquote>
9679
9680 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
9681
9682 <blockquote><p>
9683 kwin
9684 network-manager-kde
9685 </p></blockquote>
9686
9687 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
9688
9689 <blockquote><p>
9690 arts
9691 dolphin
9692 freespacenotifier
9693 google-gadgets-gst
9694 google-gadgets-xul
9695 kappfinder
9696 kcalc
9697 kcharselect
9698 kde-core
9699 kde-plasma-desktop
9700 kde-standard
9701 kde-window-manager
9702 kdeartwork
9703 kdeartwork-emoticons
9704 kdeartwork-style
9705 kdeartwork-theme-icon
9706 kdebase
9707 kdebase-apps
9708 kdebase-workspace
9709 kdebase-workspace-bin
9710 kdebase-workspace-data
9711 kdeeject
9712 kdelibs
9713 kdeplasma-addons
9714 kdeutils
9715 kdewallpapers
9716 kdf
9717 kfloppy
9718 kgpg
9719 khelpcenter4
9720 kinfocenter
9721 konq-plugins-l10n
9722 konqueror-nsplugins
9723 kscreensaver
9724 kscreensaver-xsavers
9725 ktimer
9726 kwrite
9727 libgle3
9728 libkde4-ruby1.8
9729 libkonq5
9730 libkonq5-templates
9731 libnetpbm10
9732 libplasma-ruby
9733 libplasma-ruby1.8
9734 libqt4-ruby1.8
9735 marble-data
9736 marble-plugins
9737 netpbm
9738 nuvola-icon-theme
9739 plasma-dataengines-workspace
9740 plasma-desktop
9741 plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
9742 plasma-runners-addons
9743 plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
9744 plasma-scriptengine-python
9745 plasma-scriptengine-qedje
9746 plasma-scriptengine-ruby
9747 plasma-scriptengine-webkit
9748 plasma-scriptengines
9749 plasma-wallpapers-addons
9750 plasma-widget-folderview
9751 plasma-widget-networkmanagement
9752 ruby
9753 sweeper
9754 update-notifier-kde
9755 xscreensaver-data-extra
9756 xscreensaver-gl
9757 xscreensaver-gl-extra
9758 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
9759 </p></blockquote>
9760
9761 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
9762
9763 <blockquote><p>
9764 ark
9765 google-gadgets-common
9766 google-gadgets-qt
9767 htdig
9768 kate
9769 kdebase-bin
9770 kdebase-data
9771 kdepasswd
9772 kfind
9773 klipper
9774 konq-plugins
9775 konqueror
9776 ksysguard
9777 ksysguardd
9778 libarchive1
9779 libcln6
9780 libeet1
9781 libeina-svn-06
9782 libggadget-1.0-0b
9783 libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
9784 libgps19
9785 libkdecorations4
9786 libkephal4
9787 libkonq4
9788 libkonqsidebarplugin4a
9789 libkscreensaver5
9790 libksgrd4
9791 libksignalplotter4
9792 libkunitconversion4
9793 libkwineffects1a
9794 libmarblewidget4
9795 libntrack-qt4-1
9796 libntrack0
9797 libplasma-geolocation-interface4
9798 libplasmaclock4a
9799 libplasmagenericshell4
9800 libprocesscore4a
9801 libprocessui4a
9802 libqalculate5
9803 libqedje0a
9804 libqtruby4shared2
9805 libqzion0a
9806 libruby1.8
9807 libscim8c2a
9808 libsmokekdecore4-3
9809 libsmokekdeui4-3
9810 libsmokekfile3
9811 libsmokekhtml3
9812 libsmokekio3
9813 libsmokeknewstuff2-3
9814 libsmokeknewstuff3-3
9815 libsmokekparts3
9816 libsmokektexteditor3
9817 libsmokekutils3
9818 libsmokenepomuk3
9819 libsmokephonon3
9820 libsmokeplasma3
9821 libsmokeqtcore4-3
9822 libsmokeqtdbus4-3
9823 libsmokeqtgui4-3
9824 libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
9825 libsmokeqtopengl4-3
9826 libsmokeqtscript4-3
9827 libsmokeqtsql4-3
9828 libsmokeqtsvg4-3
9829 libsmokeqttest4-3
9830 libsmokeqtuitools4-3
9831 libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
9832 libsmokeqtxml4-3
9833 libsmokesolid3
9834 libsmokesoprano3
9835 libtaskmanager4a
9836 libtidy-0.99-0
9837 libweather-ion4a
9838 libxklavier16
9839 libxxf86misc1
9840 okteta
9841 oxygencursors
9842 plasma-dataengines-addons
9843 plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
9844 plasma-widget-lancelot
9845 plasma-widgets-addons
9846 plasma-widgets-workspace
9847 polkit-kde-1
9848 ruby1.8
9849 systemsettings
9850 update-notifier-common
9851 </p></blockquote>
9852
9853 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
9854 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
9855 differences. I have no idea what packages should be installed after
9856 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
9857
9858 </div>
9859 <div class="tags">
9860
9861
9862 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>.
9863
9864
9865 </div>
9866 </div>
9867 <div class="padding"></div>
9868
9869 <div class="entry">
9870 <div class="title">
9871 <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>
9872 </div>
9873 <div class="date">
9874 22nd November 2010
9875 </div>
9876 <div class="body">
9877 <p>Most of the computers in use by the
9878 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
9879 are virtual machines. And they have been Xen machines running on a
9880 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
9881 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine. This was a
9882 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
9883 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
9884 know is not supported by KVM. So to migrate, we had to convert
9885 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
9886
9887 <p>I found
9888 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
9889 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
9890 migration. It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
9891 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
9892 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data. I NFS mounted the
9893 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
9894
9895 <pre>
9896 #!/bin/sh
9897
9898 # Based on
9899 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
9900
9901 set -e
9902 set -x
9903
9904 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
9905 echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
9906 exit 1
9907 else
9908 host="$1"
9909 fi
9910
9911 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
9912 echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
9913 exit 1
9914 fi
9915
9916 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs. not sure why.
9917 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
9918 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
9919 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
9920
9921 img=$host.img
9922 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
9923 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
9924
9925 parted $img mklabel msdos
9926 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
9927 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
9928 parted $img set 1 boot on
9929
9930 modprobe dm-mod
9931 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
9932 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
9933
9934 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
9935 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
9936 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
9937
9938 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
9939 losetup -d /dev/loop0
9940 </pre>
9941
9942 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
9943 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
9944
9945 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
9946 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
9947 set up grub to boot from the disk image. After this, the KVM machines
9948 seem to work just fine.</p>
9949
9950 </div>
9951 <div class="tags">
9952
9953
9954 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>.
9955
9956
9957 </div>
9958 </div>
9959 <div class="padding"></div>
9960
9961 <div class="entry">
9962 <div class="title">
9963 <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>
9964 </div>
9965 <div class="date">
9966 20th November 2010
9967 </div>
9968 <div class="body">
9969 <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
9970 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
9971 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
9972 status. Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
9973
9974 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
9975 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
9976 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
9977
9978 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
9979
9980 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
9981
9982 <blockquote><p>
9983 apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
9984 browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
9985 dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
9986 freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
9987 gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
9988 geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
9989 gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
9990 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
9991 gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
9992 gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
9993 gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
9994 gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
9995 gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
9996 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
9997 libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
9998 libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
9999 libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
10000 libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
10001 libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
10002 libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
10003 libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
10004 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
10005 libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
10006 libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
10007 libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
10008 libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
10009 libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
10010 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
10011 libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
10012 libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
10013 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
10014 libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
10015 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
10016 libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
10017 libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
10018 libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
10019 mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
10020 nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
10021 openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
10022 python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
10023 python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
10024 python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
10025 python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
10026 python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
10027 python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
10028 python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
10029 python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
10030 python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
10031 python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
10032 python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
10033 python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
10034 python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
10035 remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
10036 rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
10037 software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
10038 telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
10039 totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
10040 transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
10041 zip
10042 </p></blockquote>
10043
10044 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
10045
10046 <blockquote><p>
10047 arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
10048 epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
10049 fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
10050 gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
10051 gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
10052 gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
10053 guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
10054 libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
10055 libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
10056 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
10057 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
10058 libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
10059 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
10060 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
10061 libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
10062 libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
10063 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
10064 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
10065 libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
10066 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
10067 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
10068 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
10069 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
10070 libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
10071 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
10072 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
10073 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
10074 sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
10075 totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
10076 </p></blockquote>
10077
10078 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10079
10080 <blockquote><p>
10081 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10082 </p></blockquote>
10083
10084 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10085
10086 <blockquote><p>
10087 [nothing]
10088 </p></blockquote>
10089
10090 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
10091
10092 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
10093
10094 <blockquote><p>
10095 autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
10096 edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
10097 ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
10098 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
10099 kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
10100 kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
10101 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
10102 kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
10103 kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
10104 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
10105 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
10106 kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
10107 killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
10108 kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
10109 ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
10110 libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
10111 libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
10112 libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
10113 libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
10114 libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
10115 libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
10116 libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
10117 libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
10118 libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
10119 lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
10120 openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
10121 parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
10122 pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
10123 speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
10124 ttf-sazanami-gothic
10125 </p></blockquote>
10126
10127 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
10128
10129 <blockquote><p>
10130 amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
10131 dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
10132 kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
10133 kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
10134 keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
10135 kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
10136 kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
10137 klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
10138 kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
10139 kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
10140 kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
10141 ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
10142 ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
10143 kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
10144 kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
10145 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
10146 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
10147 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
10148 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
10149 libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
10150 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
10151 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
10152 libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
10153 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
10154 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
10155 libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
10156 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
10157 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
10158 libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
10159 libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
10160 mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
10161 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
10162 ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
10163 </p></blockquote>
10164
10165 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10166
10167 <blockquote><p>
10168 dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
10169 kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
10170 kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
10171 kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
10172 netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
10173 xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
10174 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
10175 </p></blockquote>
10176
10177 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10178
10179 <blockquote><p>
10180 kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
10181 </p></blockquote>
10182
10183 </div>
10184 <div class="tags">
10185
10186
10187 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>.
10188
10189
10190 </div>
10191 </div>
10192 <div class="padding"></div>
10193
10194 <div class="entry">
10195 <div class="title">
10196 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
10197 </div>
10198 <div class="date">
10199 20th November 2010
10200 </div>
10201 <div class="body">
10202 <p>Answering
10203 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
10204 call from the Gnash project</a> for
10205 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
10206 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
10207 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
10208 Debian/Squeeze. I hope this can help the developers in getting new
10209 releases out more often.</p>
10210
10211 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
10212 I have considered setting up a <a
10213 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
10214 machine as well. I have also considered using the kfreebsd
10215 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
10216 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video. Because of this, I
10217 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
10218 kfreebsd. Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
10219 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
10220 screen at random locations). Have not gotten very far with the
10221 testing. Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
10222 fatal problem. Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
10223 useful as a file server for NUUG. Will try to find time to set up a
10224 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
10225
10226 </div>
10227 <div class="tags">
10228
10229
10230 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>.
10231
10232
10233 </div>
10234 </div>
10235 <div class="padding"></div>
10236
10237 <div class="entry">
10238 <div class="title">
10239 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
10240 </div>
10241 <div class="date">
10242 9th November 2010
10243 </div>
10244 <div class="body">
10245 <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
10246
10247 <p>3D printing is just great. I just came across this Debian logo in
10248 3D linked in from
10249 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
10250 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
10251
10252 </div>
10253 <div class="tags">
10254
10255
10256 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>.
10257
10258
10259 </div>
10260 </div>
10261 <div class="padding"></div>
10262
10263 <div class="entry">
10264 <div class="title">
10265 <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>
10266 </div>
10267 <div class="date">
10268 7th November 2010
10269 </div>
10270 <div class="body">
10271 <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
10272 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
10273 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
10274 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard. Even
10275 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
10276 working using this DVD.</p>
10277
10278 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
10279 installing recommended packages by default. We want the same set of
10280 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
10281 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD. I created
10282 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
10283 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
10284 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
10285
10286 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
10287 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
10288 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
10289 Debian archive.</p>
10290
10291 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
10292 were using most space. A few large packages are well know;
10293 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont. But I also
10294 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
10295 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
10296 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
10297 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
10298 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
10299 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
10300 documentation. Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
10301 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
10302 free X driver should work.</p>
10303
10304 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
10305 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
10306 DVD more useful again.</p>
10307
10308 </div>
10309 <div class="tags">
10310
10311
10312 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>.
10313
10314
10315 </div>
10316 </div>
10317 <div class="padding"></div>
10318
10319 <div class="entry">
10320 <div class="title">
10321 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
10322 </div>
10323 <div class="date">
10324 24th October 2010
10325 </div>
10326 <div class="body">
10327 <p>Some updates.</p>
10328
10329 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
10330 raise money for the project is going well. The lower limit of 10
10331 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
10332 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
10333 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
10334 :)</p>
10335
10336 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
10337 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
10338 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
10339 It is called
10340 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
10341 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
10342 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
10343 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
10344 libglib2.0-dev. Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
10345 solvable. I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
10346
10347 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
10348 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
10349 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
10350 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
10351 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
10352 release. Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
10353 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
10354 client servers and diskless workstations. A nice touch added
10355 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
10356 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
10357
10358 </div>
10359 <div class="tags">
10360
10361
10362 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>.
10363
10364
10365 </div>
10366 </div>
10367 <div class="padding"></div>
10368
10369 <div class="entry">
10370 <div class="title">
10371 <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>
10372 </div>
10373 <div class="date">
10374 19th October 2010
10375 </div>
10376 <div class="body">
10377 <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
10378 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
10379 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
10380 funding has dried up. I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
10381 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
10382 AVM2 flash files.</p>
10383
10384 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
10385 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
10386 following text:</P>
10387
10388 <p><blockquote>
10389
10390 <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
10391 only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
10392
10393 <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
10394
10395 <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
10396
10397 <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
10398 format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
10399 web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
10400 format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
10401 days. The project web page is available from
10402 http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
10403 of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
10404 the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
10405
10406 <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
10407 time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
10408 to get this to happen.</p>
10409
10410 <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
10411 <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
10412
10413 </blockquote></p>
10414
10415 <p>I hope you will support this effort too. I hope more than 10
10416 people will participate to make this happen. The more money the
10417 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
10418 :)</p>
10419
10420 </div>
10421 <div class="tags">
10422
10423
10424 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>.
10425
10426
10427 </div>
10428 </div>
10429 <div class="padding"></div>
10430
10431 <div class="entry">
10432 <div class="title">
10433 <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>
10434 </div>
10435 <div class="date">
10436 9th October 2010
10437 </div>
10438 <div class="body">
10439 <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
10440 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
10441 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
10442 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
10443 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
10444 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
10445 robots.</p>
10446
10447 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
10448 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them. There are
10449 a few less important features too.</p>
10450
10451 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
10452 but I never got around to releasing the current source. I decided
10453 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
10454 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
10455
10456 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
10457 published the source and deb. If you got a spykee robot, grab the
10458 source or binary package:</p>
10459
10460 <p><ul>
10461 <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>
10462 <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>
10463 <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>
10464 </ul></p>
10465
10466 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
10467 please let me know.</p>
10468
10469 </div>
10470 <div class="tags">
10471
10472
10473 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>.
10474
10475
10476 </div>
10477 </div>
10478 <div class="padding"></div>
10479
10480 <div class="entry">
10481 <div class="title">
10482 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
10483 </div>
10484 <div class="date">
10485 3rd October 2010
10486 </div>
10487 <div class="body">
10488 <p><ul>
10489
10490 <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
10491 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
10492
10493 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
10494 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
10495 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
10496
10497 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
10498 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
10499 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
10500 simple setup.
10501
10502 </ul></p>
10503
10504 </div>
10505 <div class="tags">
10506
10507
10508 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>.
10509
10510
10511 </div>
10512 </div>
10513 <div class="padding"></div>
10514
10515 <div class="entry">
10516 <div class="title">
10517 <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>
10518 </div>
10519 <div class="date">
10520 9th September 2010
10521 </div>
10522 <div class="body">
10523 <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
10524 camera, a Canon IXUS 130. It was instructive and very disturbing to
10525 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
10526 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
10527 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
10528 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway. What is the
10529 problem, you might ask? It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
10530 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
10531 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
10532
10533 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
10534 written:</p>
10535
10536 <blockquote>
10537 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
10538 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
10539 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
10540 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
10541 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
10542
10543 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
10544 standard.</p>
10545 </blockquote>
10546
10547 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
10548 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
10549 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
10550 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
10551
10552 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
10553 read
10554 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
10555 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
10556 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
10557 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
10558 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
10559 the issue. The solution is to support the
10560 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
10561 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
10562 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
10563
10564 </div>
10565 <div class="tags">
10566
10567
10568 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10569
10570
10571 </div>
10572 </div>
10573 <div class="padding"></div>
10574
10575 <div class="entry">
10576 <div class="title">
10577 <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>
10578 </div>
10579 <div class="date">
10580 4th September 2010
10581 </div>
10582 <div class="body">
10583 <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
10584 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
10585 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian. The sixth
10586 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla. This is a clear indication that
10587 working flash is important for Debian users. Around 10 percent of the
10588 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
10589 installed.</p>
10590
10591 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
10592 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
10593 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
10594 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
10595 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
10596 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash. A lot of educational
10597 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
10598 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
10599 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
10600
10601 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
10602 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
10603 everything you told him but could work fairly well. This was a
10604 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
10605 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
10606 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
10607 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
10608 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
10609 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
10610 pages they want to visit.</p>
10611
10612 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
10613 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
10614 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
10615 Video to working out of the box. For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
10616 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
10617 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
10618 unstable. The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
10619 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
10620 release team have not had time to reply to it yet. I hope they agree
10621 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
10622 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
10623
10624 </div>
10625 <div class="tags">
10626
10627
10628 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>.
10629
10630
10631 </div>
10632 </div>
10633 <div class="padding"></div>
10634
10635 <div class="entry">
10636 <div class="title">
10637 <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>
10638 </div>
10639 <div class="date">
10640 1st September 2010
10641 </div>
10642 <div class="body">
10643 <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application. The last few
10644 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
10645 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
10646 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
10647 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
10648 allow me to drive the robot around. I picked PerlQt as I have had
10649 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
10650 browsing the web for examples. Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
10651 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
10652 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
10653 libqt-perl. Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
10654 drive around.</p>
10655
10656 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
10657 controlling the robot. Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
10658
10659 <p><pre>
10660 use Spykee;
10661 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
10662 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
10663 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
10664 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
10665 $spykee->left();
10666 sleep 2;
10667 $spykee->right();
10668 sleep 2;
10669 $spykee->forward();
10670 sleep 2;
10671 $spykee->back();
10672 sleep 2;
10673 $spykee->stop();
10674 </pre></p>
10675
10676 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
10677 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
10678 implement the protocol used by the robot. I've implemented several of
10679 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
10680 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote. First I
10681 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
10682 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
10683 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
10684 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
10685 going. :).</p>
10686
10687 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
10688 where to make it available first. I will add a link to
10689 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
10690 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
10691
10692 </div>
10693 <div class="tags">
10694
10695
10696 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>.
10697
10698
10699 </div>
10700 </div>
10701 <div class="padding"></div>
10702
10703 <div class="entry">
10704 <div class="title">
10705 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
10706 </div>
10707 <div class="date">
10708 30th August 2010
10709 </div>
10710 <div class="body">
10711 <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
10712 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
10713 post about sshfs</a>. He reported another problem with sshfs. It
10714 fail to handle hard links properly. A simple way to spot this is to
10715 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree. These should have
10716 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1. I just tested to see
10717 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
10718
10719 <pre>
10720 % ln foo bar
10721 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
10722 %
10723 </pre>
10724
10725 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
10726 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
10727 avoid surprised unix programs. Not as useful as working file locking
10728 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
10729 nevertheless. :)</p>
10730
10731 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
10732 git from
10733 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
10734
10735 </div>
10736 <div class="tags">
10737
10738
10739 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>.
10740
10741
10742 </div>
10743 </div>
10744 <div class="padding"></div>
10745
10746 <div class="entry">
10747 <div class="title">
10748 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
10749 </div>
10750 <div class="date">
10751 26th August 2010
10752 </div>
10753 <div class="body">
10754 <p>My file system sematics program
10755 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
10756 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
10757 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit. I'm
10758 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
10759 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs. My friend
10760 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
10761 Edu, but stopped because of problems. I asked today what the problems
10762 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
10763 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
10764 script:</p>
10765
10766 <pre>
10767 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
10768 mode_t retval = 0;
10769 int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
10770 if (-1 != fd) {
10771 unlink(name);
10772 struct stat statbuf;
10773 if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
10774 retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
10775 }
10776 close(fd);
10777 }
10778 return retval;
10779 }
10780
10781 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
10782 int test_umask(void) {
10783 printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
10784
10785 mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
10786 mode_t newmode;
10787 if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
10788 printf(" error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
10789 newmode);
10790 }
10791 umask(007);
10792 if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
10793 printf(" error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
10794 newmode);
10795 }
10796
10797 umask (orig_umask);
10798 return 0;
10799 }
10800
10801 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
10802 [...]
10803 test_umask();
10804 return 0;
10805 }
10806 </pre>
10807
10808 <p>Sure enough. On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
10809
10810 <pre>
10811 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
10812 info: testing symlink creation
10813 info: testing subdirectory creation
10814 info: testing fcntl locking
10815 Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
10816 Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
10817 Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
10818 Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
10819 Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
10820 Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
10821 info: testing umask effect on file creation
10822 </pre>
10823
10824 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
10825 result:</p>
10826
10827 <pre>
10828 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
10829 info: testing symlink creation
10830 info: testing subdirectory creation
10831 info: testing fcntl locking
10832 Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
10833 Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
10834 Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
10835 Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
10836 Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
10837 Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
10838 info: testing umask effect on file creation
10839 error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
10840 error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
10841 </pre>
10842
10843 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
10844 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
10845 directory.</p>
10846
10847 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
10848 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
10849
10850 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
10851 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
10852 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
10853
10854 </div>
10855 <div class="tags">
10856
10857
10858 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>.
10859
10860
10861 </div>
10862 </div>
10863 <div class="padding"></div>
10864
10865 <div class="entry">
10866 <div class="title">
10867 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
10868 </div>
10869 <div class="date">
10870 15th August 2010
10871 </div>
10872 <div class="body">
10873 <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
10874 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
10875 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
10876 well. Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
10877 should go down. In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
10878 long time.</p>
10879
10880 </div>
10881 <div class="tags">
10882
10883
10884 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>.
10885
10886
10887 </div>
10888 </div>
10889 <div class="padding"></div>
10890
10891 <div class="entry">
10892 <div class="title">
10893 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
10894 </div>
10895 <div class="date">
10896 9th August 2010
10897 </div>
10898 <div class="body">
10899 <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
10900 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
10901 configuration settings on the clients. I believe the work to be
10902 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
10903 generated configuration.</p>
10904
10905 <p>What is the point, you might ask? The point is to allow a Debian
10906 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
10907 without any manual configuration.</p>
10908
10909 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
10910 the University of Oslo using PXE. With the PXE installation, I am
10911 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
10912 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
10913 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
10914 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret). After answering
10915 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
10916 after around 50 minutes it is done. I press enter to finish the
10917 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE. When the machine is
10918 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
10919 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
10920 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
10921 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop. At no point during
10922 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
10923 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
10924 fetched via DHCP and DNS. The roaming workstation is now ready for
10925 use.</p>
10926
10927 <p>How was this done, you might wonder? First of all, here is the
10928 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
10929 working properly out of the box:</p>
10930
10931 <ul>
10932 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
10933 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
10934 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
10935 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
10936 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
10937 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
10938 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
10939 </ul>
10940
10941 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything? Let me knew if I did.)</p>
10942
10943 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
10944 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
10945 administrators to track their machines. Since yesterday, everything
10946 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
10947 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
10948
10949 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
10950 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
10951 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
10952 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
10953 /etc/apt/apt.conf. I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
10954 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
10955 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
10956 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
10957
10958 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
10959 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot. First the
10960 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain. If
10961 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead. If an
10962 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
10963 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
10964 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS. If there are several
10965 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
10966 LDAP subtree is used as the base. If defaultNamingContext is missing,
10967 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
10968 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
10969 such an object is used as the LDAP base. For Kerberos, a similar
10970 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
10971 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record. I've been unable to find a way to
10972 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
10973 current DNS domain is used.</p>
10974
10975 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
10976 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
10977 found. This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
10978 Oslo. A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
10979 server, but have not been implemented yet. I decided to fetch and
10980 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
10981 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
10982 log in nor the passwords required to log in. Usernames and passwords
10983 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
10984 network, and will not change as the laptop move around. For a
10985 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
10986 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much. Perhaps we
10987 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
10988
10989 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
10990 located when the user logs in for the first time. The LDAP server is
10991 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
10992 attribute is used if found. If it isn't found, the home directory
10993 path fetched from NSS is used instead. Assuming the path is of the
10994 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
10995 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
10996 smb://server.domain/username. This algorithm works for both Debian
10997 edu and the University of Oslo. Perhaps there are better attributes
10998 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
10999 do for now. :)</p>
11000
11001 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
11002 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
11003 more flexible than before. I suspect it will also work for thin
11004 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
11005 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
11006 yet.</p>
11007
11008 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
11009 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11010
11011 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
11012 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
11013 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name. Will have to
11014 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
11015
11016 </div>
11017 <div class="tags">
11018
11019
11020 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>.
11021
11022
11023 </div>
11024 </div>
11025 <div class="padding"></div>
11026
11027 <div class="entry">
11028 <div class="title">
11029 <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>
11030 </div>
11031 <div class="date">
11032 8th August 2010
11033 </div>
11034 <div class="body">
11035 <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
11036 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
11037 Edu/Skolelinux machines. This was thought to be no problem, as the
11038 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
11039 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
11040 mount home directories without any problems. But, after months of
11041 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
11042
11043 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
11044 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
11045 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
11046 underlying file system is a unix file system. When using a Windows
11047 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
11048 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
11049 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
11050
11051 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
11052 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
11053 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
11054 it should. If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
11055 help you find your way out again. This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
11056
11057 <pre>
11058 /*
11059 * Some tests to check the file system sematics. Used to verify that
11060 * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
11061 * directory.
11062 * License: GPL v2 or later
11063 *
11064 * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
11065 * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
11066 */
11067
11068 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
11069 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
11070 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
11071
11072 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
11073
11074 #include &lt;errno.h>
11075 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
11076 #include &lt;stdio.h>
11077 #include &lt;string.h>
11078 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
11079 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
11080 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
11081 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
11082 #include &lt;unistd.h>
11083
11084 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
11085 /*
11086 * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
11087 * package and linking with -lsqlite3. A more low level test is
11088 * below.
11089 * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
11090 */
11091 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
11092 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS \
11093 "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
11094 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
11095 char *zErrMsg;
11096 char *name = "testsqlite.db";
11097 sqlite3 *db=NULL;
11098 unlink(name);
11099 int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
11100 if( rc ){
11101 printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
11102 sqlite3_close(db);
11103 return -1;
11104 }
11105
11106 /* create tables */
11107 rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL, 0, &zErrMsg);
11108 if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
11109 printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
11110 sqlite3_close(db);
11111 return -1;
11112 }
11113 printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
11114 sqlite3_close(db);
11115 return 0;
11116 }
11117 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
11118
11119 /*
11120 * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3. This
11121 * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003. This is
11122 * done in the sqlite3 library.
11123 * See also
11124 * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
11125 * POSIX specification
11126 * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
11127 */
11128 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
11129 struct flock fl;
11130 char *name = "testsqlite.db";
11131 unlink(name);
11132 int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
11133 printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
11134
11135 fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
11136 fl.l_pid = getpid();
11137 printf(" Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
11138 fl.l_start = 1073741824;
11139 fl.l_len = 1;
11140 fl.l_type = F_RDLCK;
11141 if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
11142
11143 printf(" Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
11144 fl.l_start = 1073741826;
11145 fl.l_len = 510;
11146 fl.l_type = F_RDLCK;
11147 if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
11148
11149 printf(" Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
11150 fl.l_start = 1073741824;
11151 fl.l_len = 1;
11152 fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
11153 if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
11154
11155 printf(" Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
11156 fl.l_start = 1073741824;
11157 fl.l_len = 1;
11158 fl.l_type = F_WRLCK;
11159 if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
11160
11161 printf(" Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
11162 fl.l_start = 1073741826;
11163 fl.l_len = 510;
11164 if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
11165
11166 printf(" Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
11167 fl.l_start = 1073741824;
11168 fl.l_len = 2;
11169 fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
11170 if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
11171
11172 close(fd);
11173 return 0;
11174 }
11175
11176 /*
11177 * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
11178 * below them. This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
11179 * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
11180 * slowing down file operations.
11181 */
11182 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
11183 #define LEVELS 5
11184 char *path = strdup("test");
11185 char *dirs[LEVELS];
11186 int level;
11187 printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
11188 for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
11189 char *newpath = NULL;
11190 if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
11191 printf(" error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
11192 path, strerror(errno));
11193 break;
11194 }
11195 asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
11196 free(path);
11197 path = newpath;
11198 }
11199 return 0;
11200 }
11201
11202 /*
11203 * Test if symlinks can be created. This was a problem detected with
11204 * KDE.
11205 */
11206 int test_symlinks(void) {
11207 printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
11208 unlink("symlink");
11209 if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
11210 printf(" error: Unable to create symlink\n");
11211 return 0;
11212 }
11213
11214 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
11215 printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
11216 test_symlinks();
11217 test_subdirectory_creation();
11218 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
11219 test_sqlite_open();
11220 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
11221 test_gcompris_locking();
11222 return 0;
11223 }
11224 </pre>
11225
11226 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
11227 this:</p>
11228
11229 <pre>
11230 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
11231 info: testing symlink creation
11232 info: testing subdirectory creation
11233 info: sqlite worked
11234 info: testing fcntl locking
11235 Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
11236 Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
11237 Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
11238 Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
11239 Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
11240 Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
11241 </pre>
11242
11243 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
11244 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
11245 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
11246 the read-only lock (while Windows do not). Another was a bug in the
11247 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
11248 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
11249 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
11250 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
11251
11252 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
11253 it. :)</p>
11254
11255 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
11256 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
11257 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
11258
11259 </div>
11260 <div class="tags">
11261
11262
11263 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>.
11264
11265
11266 </div>
11267 </div>
11268 <div class="padding"></div>
11269
11270 <div class="entry">
11271 <div class="title">
11272 <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>
11273 </div>
11274 <div class="date">
11275 7th August 2010
11276 </div>
11277 <div class="body">
11278 <p>A few days ago, I
11279 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
11280 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
11281 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
11282 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
11283 university infrastructure. It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
11284 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
11285 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
11286 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
11287 around it. Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
11288
11289 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
11290 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
11291 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
11292 servers for Kerberos authentication. All this without any
11293 configuration at all during installation. My users home directory got
11294 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
11295 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured. In addition to
11296 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
11297 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
11298 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf. Iceweasel and KDE is
11299 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
11300 a proxy when at the university network. If the machine is moved to a
11301 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
11302 gave it a IP address.</p>
11303
11304 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
11305 entry ldap.$domain. If this do not exist, it look for the
11306 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
11307 server. Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
11308 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
11309 pick the first one as the LDAP base. For Kerberos, a similar
11310 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
11311 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
11312
11313 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask. SMB mounting my home
11314 directory do not work. No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
11315 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
11316 the cause. These are not properly configured during installation, and
11317 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
11318 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
11319
11320 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
11321 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
11322 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
11323 authentication. It should also work out of the box in a Active
11324 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
11325 with UID and GID values.</p>
11326
11327 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
11328 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11329
11330 </div>
11331 <div class="tags">
11332
11333
11334 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>.
11335
11336
11337 </div>
11338 </div>
11339 <div class="padding"></div>
11340
11341 <div class="entry">
11342 <div class="title">
11343 <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>
11344 </div>
11345 <div class="date">
11346 3rd August 2010
11347 </div>
11348 <div class="body">
11349 <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
11350 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
11351 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
11352 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
11353 infrastructure. In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
11354 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
11355 servers.</p>
11356
11357 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
11358 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
11359 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
11360 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
11361 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
11362 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
11363 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
11364 .uio.no.</p>
11365
11366 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
11367 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
11368 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
11369 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
11370 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
11371 university servers.</p>
11372
11373 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
11374 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
11375 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
11376 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
11377 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
11378 uses.</p>
11379
11380 </div>
11381 <div class="tags">
11382
11383
11384 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>.
11385
11386
11387 </div>
11388 </div>
11389 <div class="padding"></div>
11390
11391 <div class="entry">
11392 <div class="title">
11393 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
11394 </div>
11395 <div class="date">
11396 27th July 2010
11397 </div>
11398 <div class="body">
11399 <p>I discovered this while doing
11400 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
11401 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>. A few packages
11402 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
11403 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
11404 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
11405
11406 <p>An example is from todays
11407 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
11408 of KDE using aptitude</a>. In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
11409 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade. The cause is simple. If a
11410 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
11411 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
11412 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
11413 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
11414
11415 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
11416
11417 <blockquote><pre>
11418 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
11419 perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
11420 Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
11421 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
11422 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
11423 </pre></blockquote>
11424
11425 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
11426 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
11427 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
11428 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
11429 failures. Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
11430 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
11431 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
11432 of dependency loops.</p>
11433
11434 <p>Thanks to
11435 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
11436 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
11437 dependencies
11438 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
11439 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
11440
11441 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
11442 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
11443 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
11444 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
11445 dependency. Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
11446 it.</p>
11447
11448 </div>
11449 <div class="tags">
11450
11451
11452 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>.
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/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
11462 </div>
11463 <div class="date">
11464 27th July 2010
11465 </div>
11466 <div class="body">
11467 <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
11468 with the next Debian Edu release. Not nearly done, but one major step
11469 completed.</p>
11470
11471 <blockquote>
11472 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
11473 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
11474 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
11475 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
11476 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
11477 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
11478 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
11479 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
11480
11481 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
11482 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
11483 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
11484
11485 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
11486 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
11487 much.</p>
11488
11489 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
11490
11491 <ul>
11492 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
11493 <ul>
11494 <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
11495 combination with some new artwork
11496 <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
11497 <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
11498 <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
11499 <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
11500 <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
11501 <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
11502 <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
11503 <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
11504 <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
11505 </ul></li>
11506 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
11507 Enabled for:
11508 <ul>
11509 <li>PAM
11510 <li>LDAP
11511 <li>IMAP
11512 <li>SMTP (sender verification)
11513 </ul>
11514 </li>
11515 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
11516 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
11517 fetched from LDAP.</li>
11518 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
11519 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
11520 </ul>
11521 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
11522
11523 <ul>
11524 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
11525 scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
11526 for testing.</li>
11527 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
11528 and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
11529 clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
11530 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
11531 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
11532 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
11533 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
11534 netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
11535 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
11536 some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
11537 jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
11538 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
11539 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
11540 and help out with translations.</li>
11541 </ul>
11542
11543 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
11544
11545 <ul>
11546 <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>
11547 <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>
11548 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
11549 </ul>
11550 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
11551
11552 <ul>
11553 <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>
11554 <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>
11555 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
11556 </ul>
11557
11558 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
11559 get closer to the final release.</p>
11560
11561 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
11562
11563 <ul>
11564 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
11565 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
11566 </ul>
11567
11568 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
11569 <ul>
11570 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
11571 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
11572 </ul>
11573 <p>How to report bugs:
11574 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
11575
11576 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
11577 </blockquote>
11578
11579 </div>
11580 <div class="tags">
11581
11582
11583 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>.
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/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
11593 </div>
11594 <div class="date">
11595 25th July 2010
11596 </div>
11597 <div class="body">
11598 <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
11599 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
11600 Edu/Skolelinux into shape. This future version will use Kerberos for
11601 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
11602 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
11603
11604 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
11605 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
11606 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
11607 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server. This
11608 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
11609 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
11610 package. I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
11611
11612 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
11613 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
11614 password when mounting the SMB volume. A simple click on the shortcut
11615 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
11616 up. :)</p>
11617
11618 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
11619 Debian Edu. We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
11620 also Samba. Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
11621
11622 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
11623 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
11624 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
11625 the release. It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
11626 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
11627 time for a alpha0 release today. As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
11628 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
11629 release another day.</p>
11630
11631 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
11632 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11633
11634 </div>
11635 <div class="tags">
11636
11637
11638 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>.
11639
11640
11641 </div>
11642 </div>
11643 <div class="padding"></div>
11644
11645 <div class="entry">
11646 <div class="title">
11647 <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>
11648 </div>
11649 <div class="date">
11650 18th July 2010
11651 </div>
11652 <div class="body">
11653 <p>Thanks to
11654 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
11655 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
11656 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
11657 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
11658 for calculating routes</a>. The support is still experimental and
11659 only available from the development server, until more experience is
11660 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
11661
11662 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
11663 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
11664 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
11665 the issue. I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
11666 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
11667 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
11668 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
11669
11670 </div>
11671 <div class="tags">
11672
11673
11674 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>.
11675
11676
11677 </div>
11678 </div>
11679 <div class="padding"></div>
11680
11681 <div class="entry">
11682 <div class="title">
11683 <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>
11684 </div>
11685 <div class="date">
11686 17th July 2010
11687 </div>
11688 <div class="body">
11689 <p>This is a
11690 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
11691 on my
11692 <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
11693 work</a> on
11694 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
11695 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
11696
11697 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
11698 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
11699 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server. The two
11700 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
11701
11702 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
11703 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
11704 on a Debian Edu main-server. Here is a summary.
11705
11706 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
11707
11708 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
11709 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
11710 the web.
11711
11712 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
11713 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
11714 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
11715 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
11716 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
11717 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
11718
11719 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
11720 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
11721 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
11722 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
11723 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
11724 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry. For
11725 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
11726 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
11727 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
11728 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
11729 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
11730 spfrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entries it is looking for
11731 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
11732 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
11733 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. The equivalent
11734 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
11735
11736 <blockquote><pre>
11737 ldapsearch -h ldap \
11738 -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
11739 -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
11740 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
11741 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
11742 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
11743 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
11744
11745 ldapsearch -h ldap \
11746 -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
11747 -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
11748 dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
11749 hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
11750 srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
11751 </pre></blockquote>
11752
11753 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
11754 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
11755 example LDAP objects used there. In addition to these objects, the
11756 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11757 also exist.</p>
11758
11759 <blockquote><pre>
11760 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11761 objectclass: top
11762 objectclass: dnsdomain
11763 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11764 dc: tjener
11765 arecord: 10.0.2.2
11766 associateddomain: tjener.intern
11767
11768 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11769 objectclass: top
11770 objectclass: dnsdomain2
11771 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11772 dc: 2
11773 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
11774 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
11775 </pre></blockquote>
11776
11777 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently. When looking for
11778 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
11779 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
11780 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
11781 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
11782 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
11783 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entires it also do a
11784 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
11785 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
11786 modifytimestamp. In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
11787 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
11788 instead.</p>
11789
11790 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
11791 like this:</p>
11792
11793 <blockquote><pre>
11794 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
11795 '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
11796 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
11797 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
11798 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
11799 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
11800
11801 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
11802 '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
11803 </pre></blockquote>
11804
11805 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
11806 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
11807 reverse lookups.</p>
11808
11809 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
11810 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
11811 need to generate a DNS reply. This make it able to work with any
11812 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
11813
11814 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
11815 dnsdomain2 schemas. The latter is used for reverse entries like
11816 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
11817
11818 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
11819 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
11820 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain). The use
11821 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
11822 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
11823
11824 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
11825 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
11826 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
11827 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
11828 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
11829
11830 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
11831 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
11832 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
11833 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
11834 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
11835 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
11836
11837 <blockquote><pre>
11838 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
11839 SUP top
11840 AUXILIARY
11841 MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
11842 DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
11843 TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
11844 NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
11845 A6Record $ DNAMERecord
11846 ))
11847 </pre></blockquote>
11848
11849 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
11850 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
11851 all the attributes PowerDNS wants. I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
11852 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
11853 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
11854 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
11855
11856 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
11857
11858 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
11859 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want. This
11860 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
11861 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
11862 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
11863
11864 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
11865 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
11866 stored. These are the relevant entries from
11867 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
11868
11869 <blockquote><pre>
11870 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
11871 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
11872 </pre></blockquote>
11873
11874 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
11875 configuration it need. The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
11876 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))". The
11877 search result is this entry:</p>
11878
11879 <blockquote><pre>
11880 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11881 cn: dhcp
11882 objectClass: top
11883 objectClass: dhcpServer
11884 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11885 </pre></blockquote>
11886
11887 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
11888 subtree with DHCP configuration. The DHCP configuration subtree base
11889 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
11890 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
11891 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
11892 The search result is this entry:</p>
11893
11894 <blockquote><pre>
11895 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11896 cn: DHCP Config
11897 objectClass: top
11898 objectClass: dhcpService
11899 objectClass: dhcpOptions
11900 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11901 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
11902 dhcpStatements: authoritative
11903 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
11904 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
11905 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
11906 </pre></blockquote>
11907
11908 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time. When
11909 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
11910 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
11911 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
11912 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost. These provide options
11913 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc. Leaving out the
11914 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
11915 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
11916 related computer objects.</p>
11917
11918 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
11919 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
11920 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
11921 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
11922 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter. This is what a host object look
11923 like:</p>
11924
11925 <blockquote><pre>
11926 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11927 cn: hostname
11928 objectClass: top
11929 objectClass: dhcpHost
11930 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
11931 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
11932 </pre></blockquote>
11933
11934 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
11935 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
11936 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure. On the
11937 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
11938 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries. The latter should make
11939 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
11940 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
11941 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
11942 structural object class.
11943
11944 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
11945
11946 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
11947 to which LDAP schemas to use. While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
11948 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
11949 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
11950 in the configuration.</p>
11951
11952 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
11953 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
11954 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
11955 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
11956 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
11957 structure.</p>
11958
11959 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
11960 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
11961
11962 <blockquote><pre>
11963 ou=services
11964 cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
11965 cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
11966 cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
11967 cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
11968 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
11969 cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
11970 cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
11971 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
11972 ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
11973 cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
11974 </pre></blockquote>
11975
11976 <P>This is not tested yet. If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
11977 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
11978 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
11979 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
11980
11981 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
11982 like this:</p>
11983
11984 <blockquote><pre>
11985 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11986 dc: hostname
11987 objectClass: top
11988 objectClass: dhcpHost
11989 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11990 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
11991 associateddomain: hostname.intern
11992 arecord: 10.11.12.13
11993 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
11994 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
11995 </pre></blockquote>
11996
11997 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
11998 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
11999 auxiliary object class.</p>
12000
12001 </div>
12002 <div class="tags">
12003
12004
12005 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>.
12006
12007
12008 </div>
12009 </div>
12010 <div class="padding"></div>
12011
12012 <div class="entry">
12013 <div class="title">
12014 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
12015 </div>
12016 <div class="date">
12017 14th July 2010
12018 </div>
12019 <div class="body">
12020 <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
12021 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
12022 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
12023 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
12024 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
12025
12026 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
12027 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
12028
12029 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
12030 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry. If
12031 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
12032 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
12033 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
12034 to a slave DNS server.</p>
12035
12036 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
12037 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
12038 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
12039 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
12040 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup. It
12041 seem to work.</p>
12042
12043 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
12044 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
12045 an earlier email. The combined LDAP object will look something like
12046 this:</p>
12047
12048 <blockquote><pre>
12049 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12050 cn: hostname
12051 objectClass: dhcphost
12052 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
12053 objectclass: dnsdomainaux
12054 associateddomain: hostname.intern
12055 arecord: 10.11.12.13
12056 dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
12057 dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
12058 ldapconfigsound: Y
12059 </pre></blockquote>
12060
12061 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
12062 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
12063 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress. LTSP will use
12064 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
12065
12066 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
12067 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
12068 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
12069 that. If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
12070 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
12071 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
12072 content. I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
12073 might be a good place to put it.</p>
12074
12075 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12076 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12077
12078 </div>
12079 <div class="tags">
12080
12081
12082 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>.
12083
12084
12085 </div>
12086 </div>
12087 <div class="padding"></div>
12088
12089 <div class="entry">
12090 <div class="title">
12091 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
12092 </div>
12093 <div class="date">
12094 11th July 2010
12095 </div>
12096 <div class="body">
12097 <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
12098 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
12099 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
12100 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
12101
12102 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
12103 to get configuration from LDAP. The idea is to look up the MAC
12104 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
12105 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
12106 LTSP clients.</p>
12107
12108 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
12109 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
12110 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
12111
12112 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
12113 this approach. A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
12114 need to be written. Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
12115
12116 <blockquote><pre>
12117 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
12118 #
12119 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
12120 #
12121 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
12122 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
12123 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
12124 #
12125 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
12126 # existence of attribute names.
12127 #
12128 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
12129 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
12130 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
12131 #
12132 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
12133 # configuration settings. Something like this should work:
12134 #
12135 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
12136 # SUP top
12137 # AUXILIARY
12138 # MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
12139
12140 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
12141 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
12142 LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
12143 for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
12144 filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
12145 ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
12146 grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
12147 # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
12148 attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
12149 # bass value on to clients
12150 eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
12151 done
12152 done
12153 fi
12154 </pre></blockquote>
12155
12156 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
12157 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
12158 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
12159 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
12160 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
12161
12162 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12163 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12164
12165 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
12166 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
12167 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
12168 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>. I found its
12169 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
12170 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
12171
12172 </div>
12173 <div class="tags">
12174
12175
12176 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>.
12177
12178
12179 </div>
12180 </div>
12181 <div class="padding"></div>
12182
12183 <div class="entry">
12184 <div class="title">
12185 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
12186 </div>
12187 <div class="date">
12188 9th July 2010
12189 </div>
12190 <div class="body">
12191 <p>Since
12192 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
12193 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
12194 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma. The java application
12195 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
12196 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
12197 authenticate using Kerberos. I have only tested the Kerberos
12198 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
12199 LDAP with my test user yet. It is
12200 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
12201 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment. The only problem I
12202 have with it is how it handle errors. If something go wrong, its
12203 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
12204 and remove the failing query. Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
12205
12206 </div>
12207 <div class="tags">
12208
12209
12210 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>.
12211
12212
12213 </div>
12214 </div>
12215 <div class="padding"></div>
12216
12217 <div class="entry">
12218 <div class="title">
12219 <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>
12220 </div>
12221 <div class="date">
12222 3rd July 2010
12223 </div>
12224 <div class="body">
12225 <p>Here is a short update on my <a
12226 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
12227 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>. Here is a summary of the
12228 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude. I'm
12229 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
12230 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
12231 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
12232 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
12233
12234 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
12235 complete list of the installed packages. Based on this I see these
12236 differences when I did a test run today. As usual, I do not really
12237 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
12238 publish the difference.</p>
12239
12240 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
12241
12242 <blockquote><p>
12243 at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
12244 libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
12245 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
12246 libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
12247 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
12248 libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
12249 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
12250 python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
12251 </p></blockquote>
12252
12253 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
12254
12255 <blockquote><p>
12256 bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
12257 gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
12258 libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
12259 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
12260 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
12261 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
12262 libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
12263 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
12264 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
12265 libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
12266 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
12267 libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
12268 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
12269 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
12270 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
12271 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
12272 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
12273 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
12274 libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
12275 mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
12276 </p></blockquote>
12277
12278 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
12279
12280 <blockquote><p>
12281 gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
12282 python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
12283 xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
12284 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
12285 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
12286 xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
12287 xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
12288 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
12289 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
12290 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
12291 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
12292 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
12293 xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
12294 xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
12295 xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
12296 xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
12297 xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
12298 xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
12299 xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
12300 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
12301 xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
12302 </p></blockquote>
12303
12304 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
12305
12306 <blockquote><p>
12307 deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
12308 xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
12309 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
12310 </p></blockquote>
12311
12312 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
12313 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
12314 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
12315 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
12316 the difference somewhat.
12317
12318 </div>
12319 <div class="tags">
12320
12321
12322 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>.
12323
12324
12325 </div>
12326 </div>
12327 <div class="padding"></div>
12328
12329 <div class="entry">
12330 <div class="title">
12331 <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>
12332 </div>
12333 <div class="date">
12334 1st July 2010
12335 </div>
12336 <div class="body">
12337 <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
12338 a bit troubling. Laptops are typically used also when not connected
12339 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
12340 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
12341 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
12342 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
12343 in Debian. Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
12344 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
12345 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
12346
12347 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
12348
12349 This is the traditional method with a twist. The password caching is
12350 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
12351 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd. The directory
12352 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP. If one want to use
12353 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
12354 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal. If one is happy having a
12355 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
12356 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
12357 using libpam-mklocaluser. A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
12358 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
12359 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
12360 archive. Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
12361 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
12362 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/. This
12363 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
12364
12365 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
12366
12367 <blockquote><pre>
12368 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
12369 </pre></blockquote>
12370
12371 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
12372 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site. Make sure the
12373 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
12374 sent in clear text to the LDAP server. I've been unable to get TLS
12375 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
12376 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
12377 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
12378 on how to get this working.</p>
12379
12380 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
12381 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
12382 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
12383 currently in /etc/nscd.conf. The changes are in the fields
12384 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
12385 instructions I found in the
12386 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
12387 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
12388
12389 <blockquote><pre>
12390 debug-level 0
12391 reload-count unlimited
12392 paranoia no
12393
12394 enable-cache passwd yes
12395 positive-time-to-live passwd 2592000
12396 negative-time-to-live passwd 20
12397 suggested-size passwd 211
12398 check-files passwd yes
12399 persistent passwd yes
12400 shared passwd yes
12401 max-db-size passwd 33554432
12402 auto-propagate passwd yes
12403
12404 enable-cache group yes
12405 positive-time-to-live group 2592000
12406 negative-time-to-live group 20
12407 suggested-size group 211
12408 check-files group yes
12409 persistent group yes
12410 shared group yes
12411 max-db-size group 33554432
12412 auto-propagate group yes
12413
12414 enable-cache hosts no
12415 positive-time-to-live hosts 2592000
12416 negative-time-to-live hosts 20
12417 suggested-size hosts 211
12418 check-files hosts yes
12419 persistent hosts yes
12420 shared hosts yes
12421 max-db-size hosts 33554432
12422
12423 enable-cache services yes
12424 positive-time-to-live services 2592000
12425 negative-time-to-live services 20
12426 suggested-size services 211
12427 check-files services yes
12428 persistent services yes
12429 shared services yes
12430 max-db-size services 33554432
12431 </pre></blockquote>
12432
12433 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
12434 automatically like the one provided in
12435 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
12436 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
12437 directory service on the machine. /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
12438 look like this:</p>
12439
12440 <blockquote><pre>
12441 passwd: files ldap
12442 group: files ldap
12443 shadow: files ldap
12444 hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
12445 networks: files
12446 protocols: files
12447 services: files
12448 ethers: files
12449 rpc: files
12450 netgroup: files ldap
12451 </pre></blockquote>
12452
12453 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
12454 shadow and netgroup.</p>
12455
12456 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
12457 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
12458 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
12459 attributes cached.
12460
12461 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
12462 libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
12463
12464 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
12465 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
12466 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
12467 LDAP database is available. I have not tested such setup, because I
12468 discovered sssd.</p>
12469
12470 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
12471
12472 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
12473 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
12474 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
12475 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
12476 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
12477 machines. The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
12478 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
12479 libpam-ccreds. It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS. Version
12480 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
12481 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010. Because the
12482 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
12483 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
12484 version 1.2 is now in testing.
12485
12486 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
12487 roaming setup I want</p>
12488
12489 <blockquote><pre>
12490 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
12491 </pre></blockquote>
12492
12493 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
12494 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
12495
12496 <blockquote><pre>
12497 [sssd]
12498 config_file_version = 2
12499 reconnection_retries = 3
12500 sbus_timeout = 30
12501 services = nss, pam
12502 domains = INTERN
12503
12504 [nss]
12505 filter_groups = root
12506 filter_users = root
12507 reconnection_retries = 3
12508
12509 [pam]
12510 reconnection_retries = 3
12511
12512 [domain/INTERN]
12513 enumerate = false
12514 cache_credentials = true
12515
12516 id_provider = ldap
12517 auth_provider = ldap
12518 chpass_provider = ldap
12519
12520 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
12521 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12522 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
12523 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
12524 </pre></blockquote>
12525
12526 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking. Had to set
12527 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
12528
12529 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
12530 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
12531 modify it manually.</p>
12532
12533 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12534 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12535
12536 </div>
12537 <div class="tags">
12538
12539
12540 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>.
12541
12542
12543 </div>
12544 </div>
12545 <div class="padding"></div>
12546
12547 <div class="entry">
12548 <div class="title">
12549 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
12550 </div>
12551 <div class="date">
12552 28th June 2010
12553 </div>
12554 <div class="body">
12555 <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
12556 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
12557 tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
12558 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
12559 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
12560 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
12561 populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
12562 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
12563 objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
12564 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
12565
12566 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
12567 the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
12568 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
12569 Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
12570 released.</p>
12571
12572 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
12573 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
12574 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
12575 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
12576
12577 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
12578 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12579
12580 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
12581 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
12582 useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
12583 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
12584 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
12585
12586 </div>
12587 <div class="tags">
12588
12589
12590 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>.
12591
12592
12593 </div>
12594 </div>
12595 <div class="padding"></div>
12596
12597 <div class="entry">
12598 <div class="title">
12599 <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>
12600 </div>
12601 <div class="date">
12602 24th June 2010
12603 </div>
12604 <div class="body">
12605 <p>A while back, I
12606 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
12607 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
12608 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
12609 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
12610
12611 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
12612 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
12613 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
12614 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
12615
12616 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
12617 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
12618 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
12619 Debian Edu.</p>
12620
12621 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
12622 the
12623 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
12624 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
12625 available today from IETF.</p>
12626
12627 <pre>
12628 --- dhcp.schema (revision 65192)
12629 +++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
12630 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
12631 objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
12632 NAME 'dhcpHost'
12633 DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
12634 - SUP top
12635 + SUP top AUXILIARY
12636 MUST cn
12637 MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
12638 X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
12639 </pre>
12640
12641 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
12642 Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
12643 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
12644
12645 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12646 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12647
12648 </div>
12649 <div class="tags">
12650
12651
12652 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>.
12653
12654
12655 </div>
12656 </div>
12657 <div class="padding"></div>
12658
12659 <div class="entry">
12660 <div class="title">
12661 <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>
12662 </div>
12663 <div class="date">
12664 16th June 2010
12665 </div>
12666 <div class="body">
12667 <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
12668 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now,
12669 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
12670 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
12671 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
12672 this:
12673
12674 <blockquote><pre>
12675 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
12676 tasksel --new-install
12677 </pre></blockquote>
12678
12679 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
12680 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
12681 any output what so ever.
12682
12683 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
12684 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
12685 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
12686 happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
12687 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
12688 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using
12689 code like this:
12690
12691 <blockquote><pre>
12692 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
12693 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
12694 $cmd
12695 </pre></blockquote>
12696
12697 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
12698 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
12699 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
12700 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
12701 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
12702 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
12703 installation.</p>
12704
12705 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
12706 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
12707 like this.</p>
12708
12709 </div>
12710 <div class="tags">
12711
12712
12713 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>.
12714
12715
12716 </div>
12717 </div>
12718 <div class="padding"></div>
12719
12720 <div class="entry">
12721 <div class="title">
12722 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
12723 </div>
12724 <div class="date">
12725 13th June 2010
12726 </div>
12727 <div class="body">
12728 <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
12729 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
12730 is a great service. It is to ODF documents what
12731 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
12732 pages.</p>
12733
12734 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
12735 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
12736 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
12737 interested in supporting the project. I helped him to navigate his
12738 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
12739 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
12740 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot. The machine is
12741 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
12742 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
12743 see how the project is doing.</p>
12744
12745 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
12746 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
12747 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
12748 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
12749 Windows. This is great.</p>
12750
12751 </div>
12752 <div class="tags">
12753
12754
12755 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>.
12756
12757
12758 </div>
12759 </div>
12760 <div class="padding"></div>
12761
12762 <div class="entry">
12763 <div class="title">
12764 <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>
12765 </div>
12766 <div class="date">
12767 13th June 2010
12768 </div>
12769 <div class="body">
12770 <p>My
12771 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
12772 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
12773 finally made the upgrade logs available from
12774 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
12775 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
12776 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting. This time
12777 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
12778
12779 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
12780 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze. The
12781 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
12782 xserver-xorg-video* drivers. Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
12783 sure why. When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
12784 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
12785 longer needed. Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
12786 I do not know. Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
12787
12788 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
12789 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
12790 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
12791 too surprising.</p>
12792
12793 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
12794 and avoided, and perhaps others as well. Here are the complete list
12795 of planned removals. The complete logs is available from the URL
12796 above. Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
12797 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
12798 conffile questions. No idea why. I worked around it by using
12799 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
12800 continue.</p>
12801
12802 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
12803 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
12804 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
12805 iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
12806 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
12807 nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
12808 serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
12809 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
12810 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
12811 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
12812 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
12813 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
12814 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
12815 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
12816 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
12817 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12818 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
12819 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
12820 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
12821 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
12822 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
12823 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
12824 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
12825 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
12826 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
12827 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
12828 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
12829 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
12830 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
12831 xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
12832
12833 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
12834
12835 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
12836 djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
12837 gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
12838 gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
12839 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
12840 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
12841 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
12842 libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
12843 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
12844 libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
12845 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
12846 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
12847 libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
12848 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
12849 libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
12850 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
12851 libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
12852 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
12853 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
12854 libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
12855 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
12856 libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
12857 libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
12858 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
12859 openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
12860 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
12861 python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
12862 python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
12863 swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
12864 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12865 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
12866 zip</p>
12867
12868 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
12869
12870 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
12871 kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
12872 kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
12873 kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
12874 kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
12875 libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
12876 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
12877 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
12878 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
12879 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
12880 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
12881 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
12882 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
12883 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
12884 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12885 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
12886 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
12887 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
12888 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
12889 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
12890 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
12891 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
12892 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
12893 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
12894 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
12895 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
12896 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
12897 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
12898
12899 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
12900 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
12901 djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
12902 ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
12903 kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
12904 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
12905 kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
12906 kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
12907 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
12908 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
12909 kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
12910 kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
12911 klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
12912 kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
12913 krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
12914 ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
12915 kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
12916 kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
12917 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
12918 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
12919 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
12920 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
12921 libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
12922 libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
12923 libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
12924 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
12925 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
12926 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
12927 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
12928 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
12929 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
12930 libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
12931 openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
12932 superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
12933 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
12934 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12935 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
12936 xulrunner-1.9</p>
12937
12938
12939 </div>
12940 <div class="tags">
12941
12942
12943 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>.
12944
12945
12946 </div>
12947 </div>
12948 <div class="padding"></div>
12949
12950 <div class="entry">
12951 <div class="title">
12952 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
12953 </div>
12954 <div class="date">
12955 11th June 2010
12956 </div>
12957 <div class="body">
12958 <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
12959 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
12960 have been discovered and reported in the process
12961 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
12962 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
12963 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
12964 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
12965 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
12966
12967 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
12968 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
12969 it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
12970 script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
12971 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
12972 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
12973
12974 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
12975 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
12976 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
12977 is created. The bug report
12978 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
12979 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
12980 to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
12981 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
12982 do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
12983 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
12984 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
12985 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
12986 working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
12987 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
12988 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
12989 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
12990 Debian Squeeze.</p>
12991
12992 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
12993 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
12994 trick:</p>
12995
12996 <blockquote><pre>
12997 #!/bin/sh
12998 set -ex
12999
13000 if [ "$1" ] ; then
13001 desktop=$1
13002 else
13003 desktop=gnome
13004 fi
13005
13006 from=lenny
13007 to=squeeze
13008
13009 exec &lt; /dev/null
13010 unset LANG
13011 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
13012 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
13013 fuser -mv .
13014 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
13015 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
13016 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
13017 #!/bin/sh
13018 exit 101
13019 EOF
13020 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
13021 exit_cleanup() {
13022 umount $tmpdir/proc
13023 }
13024 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
13025 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
13026 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
13027
13028 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
13029
13030 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
13031 # to return the correct answers.
13032 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
13033 chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
13034
13035 # Include the desktop and laptop task
13036 for test in desktop laptop ; do
13037 echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
13038 #!/bin/sh
13039 exit 2
13040 EOF
13041 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
13042 done
13043
13044 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
13045 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
13046 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
13047 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
13048
13049 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
13050 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
13051 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
13052 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
13053 fuser -mv
13054 </pre></blockquote>
13055
13056 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
13057 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
13058 differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
13059 regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
13060 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
13061 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
13062
13063 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
13064 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
13065 post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
13066 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
13067 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
13068 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
13069 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
13070
13071 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
13072 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
13073 booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
13074 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
13075 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
13076 packages.</p>
13077
13078 </div>
13079 <div class="tags">
13080
13081
13082 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>.
13083
13084
13085 </div>
13086 </div>
13087 <div class="padding"></div>
13088
13089 <div class="entry">
13090 <div class="title">
13091 <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>
13092 </div>
13093 <div class="date">
13094 6th June 2010
13095 </div>
13096 <div class="body">
13097 <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
13098 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
13099 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd. The packages with such
13100 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
13101 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart. Because of
13102 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
13103 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
13104
13105 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
13106 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
13107 COLUMNS):</p>
13108
13109 <blockquote><pre>
13110 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
13111 previous=N
13112 PREVLEVEL=
13113 RUNLEVEL=
13114 runlevel=S
13115 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
13116 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
13117 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
13118 </pre></blockquote>
13119
13120 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
13121 script.</p>
13122
13123 <blockquote><pre>
13124 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
13125 previous=N
13126 PREVLEVEL=N
13127 RUNLEVEL=S
13128 runlevel=S
13129 </pre></blockquote>
13130
13131 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
13132 sysvinit are not set by upstart. Not sure if it is intentional or not
13133 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
13134
13135 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
13136 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
13137 choice.</p>
13138
13139 </div>
13140 <div class="tags">
13141
13142
13143 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>.
13144
13145
13146 </div>
13147 </div>
13148 <div class="padding"></div>
13149
13150 <div class="entry">
13151 <div class="title">
13152 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
13153 </div>
13154 <div class="date">
13155 6th June 2010
13156 </div>
13157 <div class="body">
13158 <p>Via the
13159 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
13160 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
13161 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
13162 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
13163 following the standards wars of today.</p>
13164
13165 </div>
13166 <div class="tags">
13167
13168
13169 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>.
13170
13171
13172 </div>
13173 </div>
13174 <div class="padding"></div>
13175
13176 <div class="entry">
13177 <div class="title">
13178 <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>
13179 </div>
13180 <div class="date">
13181 3rd June 2010
13182 </div>
13183 <div class="body">
13184 <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
13185 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
13186 information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
13187 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
13188 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
13189
13190 <blockquote><pre>
13191 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
13192 vendor count
13193 Dell Computer Corporation 1
13194 PowerEdge 1750 1
13195 IBM 1
13196 eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]- 1
13197 Intel 2
13198 [no-dmi-info] 3
13199 maintainer:~#
13200 </pre></blockquote>
13201
13202 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
13203 provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
13204 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
13205 machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
13206 option to list the individual machines.</p>
13207
13208 <p>A larger list is
13209 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
13210 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
13211 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
13212 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
13213 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
13214 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
13215 collector.</p>
13216
13217 </div>
13218 <div class="tags">
13219
13220
13221 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>.
13222
13223
13224 </div>
13225 </div>
13226 <div class="padding"></div>
13227
13228 <div class="entry">
13229 <div class="title">
13230 <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>
13231 </div>
13232 <div class="date">
13233 1st June 2010
13234 </div>
13235 <div class="body">
13236 <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
13237 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
13238 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
13239 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
13240 wait.</p>
13241
13242 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
13243 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
13244 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
13245 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
13246 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
13247 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
13248
13249 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
13250 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
13251 distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
13252 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
13253 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
13254 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
13255 distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
13256 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
13257
13258 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
13259
13260 </div>
13261 <div class="tags">
13262
13263
13264 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>.
13265
13266
13267 </div>
13268 </div>
13269 <div class="padding"></div>
13270
13271 <div class="entry">
13272 <div class="title">
13273 <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>
13274 </div>
13275 <div class="date">
13276 27th May 2010
13277 </div>
13278 <div class="body">
13279 <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
13280 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
13281 issues are known and should be solved:
13282
13283 <p><ul>
13284
13285 <li>The wicd package seen to
13286 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
13287 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
13288 parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
13289 seem to be on the case.</li>
13290
13291 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
13292 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
13293 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
13294 maintainer is on the case.</li>
13295
13296 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
13297 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
13298 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
13299 sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
13300 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
13301 sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
13302 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
13303 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
13304
13305 </ul></p>
13306
13307 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
13308 solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
13309 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
13310 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
13311
13312 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
13313 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
13314 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
13315 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
13316
13317 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
13318
13319 </div>
13320 <div class="tags">
13321
13322
13323 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>.
13324
13325
13326 </div>
13327 </div>
13328 <div class="padding"></div>
13329
13330 <div class="entry">
13331 <div class="title">
13332 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
13333 </div>
13334 <div class="date">
13335 22nd May 2010
13336 </div>
13337 <div class="body">
13338 <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
13339 found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
13340 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
13341 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
13342
13343 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
13344 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
13345 get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
13346 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
13347 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
13348 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
13349 an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
13350 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
13351 debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
13352 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
13353 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
13354 /cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
13355 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
13356 going to work.</p>
13357
13358 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
13359 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
13360 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
13361 packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
13362 "external" media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
13363 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
13364 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
13365 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
13366 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
13367 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
13368 Edu.</p>
13369
13370 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
13371 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
13372 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
13373 run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
13374 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
13375 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
13376
13377 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
13378 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
13379
13380 </div>
13381 <div class="tags">
13382
13383
13384 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>.
13385
13386
13387 </div>
13388 </div>
13389 <div class="padding"></div>
13390
13391 <div class="entry">
13392 <div class="title">
13393 <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>
13394 </div>
13395 <div class="date">
13396 19th May 2010
13397 </div>
13398 <div class="body">
13399 <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
13400 Edu finally entered the Debian archive. Today, the new
13401 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
13402 package was accepted. Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
13403 into unstable. The
13404 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
13405 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
13406 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
13407 passed NEW on Monday. In addition, the
13408 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
13409 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
13410 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
13411
13412 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
13413 roaming laptops. The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
13414 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
13415 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
13416 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
13417 #485282</a> is implemented. The alternative setup is to use sssd with
13418 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
13419 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
13420
13421 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
13422 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
13423 problem with the server certificate. I plan to update the Debian
13424 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
13425 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
13426 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches. Upstream is friendly and responsive,
13427 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
13428
13429 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
13430 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
13431 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
13432 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
13433 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information. The
13434 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
13435 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
13436 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used. To avoid confusion
13437 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
13438 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
13439 on the home directory servers.</p>
13440
13441 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
13442 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
13443 is created. Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
13444 message. The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
13445 a bug in gdm. Have not investigated if there is some other message
13446 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
13447
13448 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
13449 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
13450
13451 </div>
13452 <div class="tags">
13453
13454
13455 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>.
13456
13457
13458 </div>
13459 </div>
13460 <div class="padding"></div>
13461
13462 <div class="entry">
13463 <div class="title">
13464 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html">Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</a>
13465 </div>
13466 <div class="date">
13467 14th May 2010
13468 </div>
13469 <div class="body">
13470 <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
13471 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
13472 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
13473 expected, if I am to believe the
13474 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
13475 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
13476 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
13477 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen. If serious problems are
13478 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
13479 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
13480 version.</p>
13481
13482 More information about
13483 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
13484 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki. It is
13485 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
13486 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
13487
13488 <blockquote><pre>
13489 CONCURRENCY=none
13490 </pre></blockquote>
13491
13492 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
13493 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
13494 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
13495 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
13496
13497 </div>
13498 <div class="tags">
13499
13500
13501 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>.
13502
13503
13504 </div>
13505 </div>
13506 <div class="padding"></div>
13507
13508 <div class="entry">
13509 <div class="title">
13510 <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>
13511 </div>
13512 <div class="date">
13513 14th May 2010
13514 </div>
13515 <div class="body">
13516 <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
13517 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
13518 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
13519 network. Each machine will automatically report its status to the
13520 central server after boot and once per night. The network setup is
13521 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
13522 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines. This is useful
13523 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
13524
13525 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
13526 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary. Run
13527 this on the collector host:</p>
13528
13529 <blockquote><pre>
13530 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
13531 </pre></blockquote>
13532
13533 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
13534 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
13535
13536 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
13537 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
13538 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
13539 tables in LDAP using this information. Such tool is unfortunately not
13540 written yet.</p>
13541
13542 </div>
13543 <div class="tags">
13544
13545
13546 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>.
13547
13548
13549 </div>
13550 </div>
13551 <div class="padding"></div>
13552
13553 <div class="entry">
13554 <div class="title">
13555 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
13556 </div>
13557 <div class="date">
13558 13th May 2010
13559 </div>
13560 <div class="body">
13561 <p>The last few days a new boot system called
13562 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
13563 has been
13564 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
13565
13566 to the free software world. I have not yet had time to play around
13567 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
13568 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
13569 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
13570 based boot system. Tollef is
13571 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
13572 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work. I
13573 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
13574 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
13575 at the moment do not.</p>
13576
13577 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
13578 platform support. It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
13579 some new kernel features enabled to function properly. This means
13580 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
13581 system. Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
13582 way forward.</p>
13583
13584 <p>In the mean time, based on the
13585 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
13586 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
13587 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
13588 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
13589 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies. A
13590 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
13591 already in experimental. If all go well, Squeeze will be released
13592 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
13593
13594 </div>
13595 <div class="tags">
13596
13597
13598 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>.
13599
13600
13601 </div>
13602 </div>
13603 <div class="padding"></div>
13604
13605 <div class="entry">
13606 <div class="title">
13607 <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>
13608 </div>
13609 <div class="date">
13610 6th May 2010
13611 </div>
13612 <div class="body">
13613 <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
13614 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
13615 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies. If you want
13616 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
13617 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
13618 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
13619 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
13620
13621 <blockquote><pre>
13622 CONCURRENCY=makefile
13623 </pre></blockquote>
13624
13625 <p>That is it. It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
13626 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
13627 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
13628 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts. Startpar is configured
13629 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
13630 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
13631 make this happen.</p>
13632
13633 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result. If some services
13634 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
13635 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
13636 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies). Report bugs and get
13637 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
13638
13639 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
13640 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct. I
13641 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
13642 fix the remaining issues.</p>
13643
13644 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
13645 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
13646 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
13647 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
13648
13649 </div>
13650 <div class="tags">
13651
13652
13653 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>.
13654
13655
13656 </div>
13657 </div>
13658 <div class="padding"></div>
13659
13660 <div class="entry">
13661 <div class="title">
13662 <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>
13663 </div>
13664 <div class="date">
13665 2nd May 2010
13666 </div>
13667 <div class="body">
13668 <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
13669 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
13670 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
13671
13672 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
13673 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account. The account
13674 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
13675 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
13676 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
13677
13678 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
13679 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
13680
13681 <blockquote><pre>
13682 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
13683 Last password change : May 02, 2010
13684 Password expires : never
13685 Password inactive : never
13686 Account expires : never
13687 Minimum number of days between password change : 0
13688 Maximum number of days between password change : 99999
13689 Number of days of warning before password expires : 7
13690 root@tjener:~#
13691 </pre></blockquote>
13692
13693 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
13694 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
13695 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
13696 to the difference in days between that date and today. To make it
13697 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
13698 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
13699
13700 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
13701 intended:</p>
13702
13703 <blockquote><pre>
13704 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
13705 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
13706 Last password change : Jan 02, 1970
13707 Password expires : never
13708 Password inactive : never
13709 Account expires : never
13710 Minimum number of days between password change : 0
13711 Maximum number of days between password change : 10950
13712 Number of days of warning before password expires : 7
13713 root@tjener:~#
13714 </pre></blockquote>
13715
13716 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
13717 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
13718 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
13719
13720 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
13721 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
13722
13723 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
13724 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
13725
13726 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
13727 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
13728 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
13729 on the first login. This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
13730 I did not notice this in my initial testing. I have tested it on
13731 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there. I have not
13732 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
13733
13734 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
13735 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
13736 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
13737 change.</p>
13738
13739 </div>
13740 <div class="tags">
13741
13742
13743 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>.
13744
13745
13746 </div>
13747 </div>
13748 <div class="padding"></div>
13749
13750 <div class="entry">
13751 <div class="title">
13752 <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>
13753 </div>
13754 <div class="date">
13755 28th April 2010
13756 </div>
13757 <div class="body">
13758 <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
13759 Debian Edu. The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
13760 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
13761 and go.</p>
13762
13763 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
13764 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
13765 example called Roaming Workstations. Here are my thought on this.
13766 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
13767
13768 <ul>
13769
13770 <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
13771 the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
13772 the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
13773 server. This allow the user to work also when offline. The
13774 central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
13775 request, for example mounted via CIFS. It could be mounted
13776 automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
13777 and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
13778 hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
13779 request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
13780 can be used to access it when needed. Perhaps it is enough to use
13781 the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
13782
13783 <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
13784 authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
13785 to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
13786 to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server. This can be done using
13787 <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
13788 or the Fedora developed
13789 <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
13790 Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
13791
13792 <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
13793 using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
13794 directory, using unison.</li>
13795
13796 <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
13797 their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
13798 the box with CUPS. For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
13799 system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
13800 implemented.</li>
13801
13802 <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
13803 sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
13804
13805 <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
13806 cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
13807 local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
13808
13809 </ul>
13810
13811 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
13812 the moment. If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
13813 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze. Some of the pieces need
13814 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
13815 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
13816 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
13817 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
13818 when disconnected from the net. If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
13819 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
13820
13821 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
13822 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
13823
13824 </div>
13825 <div class="tags">
13826
13827
13828 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>.
13829
13830
13831 </div>
13832 </div>
13833 <div class="padding"></div>
13834
13835 <div class="entry">
13836 <div class="title">
13837 <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>
13838 </div>
13839 <div class="date">
13840 19th April 2010
13841 </div>
13842 <div class="body">
13843 <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
13844 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
13845 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
13846 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
13847 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
13848 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
13849 restrictions on the web, for example from
13850 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
13851 epub-version from
13852 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
13853 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
13854 strongly recommend this book.</p>
13855
13856 </div>
13857 <div class="tags">
13858
13859
13860 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>.
13861
13862
13863 </div>
13864 </div>
13865 <div class="padding"></div>
13866
13867 <div class="entry">
13868 <div class="title">
13869 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
13870 </div>
13871 <div class="date">
13872 14th April 2010
13873 </div>
13874 <div class="body">
13875 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
13876 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
13877 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux. Setting up a
13878 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
13879 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
13880 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
13881 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
13882 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
13883 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
13884
13885 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration. Is there a
13886 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
13887 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups? With it, the
13888 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
13889 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
13890
13891 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
13892 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together. Anyone know?</p>
13893
13894 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
13895 Nagios. I have no idea how much work that will be to implement. We
13896 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
13897 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
13898 to work properly.</p>
13899
13900 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
13901 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
13902 configuration and integration. A natural starting point would be
13903 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
13904 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
13905 time.</p>
13906
13907 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
13908 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
13909 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home. The video show show
13910 up in a few days.</p>
13911
13912 </div>
13913 <div class="tags">
13914
13915
13916 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>.
13917
13918
13919 </div>
13920 </div>
13921 <div class="padding"></div>
13922
13923 <div class="entry">
13924 <div class="title">
13925 <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>
13926 </div>
13927 <div class="date">
13928 6th March 2010
13929 </div>
13930 <div class="body">
13931 <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
13932 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
13933 when the user log out. A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
13934 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
13935 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
13936 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
13937
13938 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
13939 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
13940 been updated to use this framework. Next on my agenda is to make sure
13941 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
13942
13943 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
13944 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
13945 after a user. With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
13946 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
13947 framework. My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
13948 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
13949
13950 </div>
13951 <div class="tags">
13952
13953
13954 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>.
13955
13956
13957 </div>
13958 </div>
13959 <div class="padding"></div>
13960
13961 <div class="entry">
13962 <div class="title">
13963 <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>
13964 </div>
13965 <div class="date">
13966 11th February 2010
13967 </div>
13968 <div class="body">
13969 <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
13970 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
13971 shipped. This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
13972 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up. Work on the first
13973 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
13974 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
13975 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
13976
13977 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
13978
13979 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
13980 next major release, based on Squeeze. We will try to get as many of
13981 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
13982 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
13983
13984 </div>
13985 <div class="tags">
13986
13987
13988 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>.
13989
13990
13991 </div>
13992 </div>
13993 <div class="padding"></div>
13994
13995 <div class="entry">
13996 <div class="title">
13997 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
13998 </div>
13999 <div class="date">
14000 27th January 2010
14001 </div>
14002 <div class="body">
14003 <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
14004 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
14005 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
14006 Nagios. The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
14007 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
14008 further.</p>
14009
14010 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
14011 configured as a Munin and Nagios server. In addition, it is
14012 configured to be a server for the
14013 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
14014 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu. The SiteSummary
14015 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
14016 work. In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
14017 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
14018 computer submitting information to this collector. This allow for
14019 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
14020 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
14021 packages got etc. This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
14022 and Nagios configuration.</p>
14023
14024 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
14025 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
14026 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
14027 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
14028
14029 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
14030 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
14031 services detected). In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
14032 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
14033 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
14034 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
14035 the machine.</p>
14036
14037 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
14038 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
14039 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
14040 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
14041
14042 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
14043 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP. The system
14044 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
14045 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
14046 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages. After that,
14047 everything is taken care of.</p>
14048
14049 </div>
14050 <div class="tags">
14051
14052
14053 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>.
14054
14055
14056 </div>
14057 </div>
14058 <div class="padding"></div>
14059
14060 <div class="entry">
14061 <div class="title">
14062 <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>
14063 </div>
14064 <div class="date">
14065 12th August 2009
14066 </div>
14067 <div class="body">
14068 <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
14069 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
14070 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage. I searched using
14071 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
14072
14073 <table>
14074 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
14075 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
14076 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
14077 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500 </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
14078 </table>
14079
14080 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
14081 got these numbers:</p>
14082
14083 <table>
14084 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
14085 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
14086 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299 </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
14087 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187 </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
14088 </table>
14089
14090 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
14091
14092 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
14093 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
14094 they are conduced in another country. Because of this, I did the same
14095 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
14096 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
14097
14098
14099 <table>
14100 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
14101 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
14102 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
14103 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500 </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
14104 </table>
14105
14106 <p>And with 'site:no':
14107
14108 <table>
14109 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
14110 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
14111 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
14112 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186 </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
14113 </table>
14114
14115 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
14116 numbers.</p>
14117
14118 </div>
14119 <div class="tags">
14120
14121
14122 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>.
14123
14124
14125 </div>
14126 </div>
14127 <div class="padding"></div>
14128
14129 <div class="entry">
14130 <div class="title">
14131 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
14132 </div>
14133 <div class="date">
14134 8th August 2009
14135 </div>
14136 <div class="body">
14137 <p>According to <a
14138 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
14139 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
14140 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages. His interesting point is that the
14141 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
14142 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
14143 can be fixed in ISO. Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
14144 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
14145 close to solving the problems. I was part of the Norwegian committee
14146 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
14147 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
14148
14149 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
14150 with the future ahead of it. We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
14151 seminar this autumn.</p>
14152
14153 </div>
14154 <div class="tags">
14155
14156
14157 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>.
14158
14159
14160 </div>
14161 </div>
14162 <div class="padding"></div>
14163
14164 <div class="entry">
14165 <div class="title">
14166 <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>
14167 </div>
14168 <div class="date">
14169 27th July 2009
14170 </div>
14171 <div class="body">
14172 <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
14173 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
14174 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing. This
14175 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
14176 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
14177 installation. Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
14178 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
14179
14180 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
14181 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
14182 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
14183
14184 </div>
14185 <div class="tags">
14186
14187
14188 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>.
14189
14190
14191 </div>
14192 </div>
14193 <div class="padding"></div>
14194
14195 <div class="entry">
14196 <div class="title">
14197 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
14198 </div>
14199 <div class="date">
14200 22nd July 2009
14201 </div>
14202 <div class="body">
14203 <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
14204 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
14205 take over the package and become the new upstream. The number of
14206 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
14207 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
14208 the package up to date.</p>
14209
14210 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
14211 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman. About 10 days ago, I made
14212 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
14213 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
14214 distributions. We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
14215 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge. Since the
14216 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
14217 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
14218 development there. The project is registered and currently waiting
14219 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
14220 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
14221 working on the future release.</p>
14222
14223 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
14224 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
14225
14226 </div>
14227 <div class="tags">
14228
14229
14230 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>.
14231
14232
14233 </div>
14234 </div>
14235 <div class="padding"></div>
14236
14237 <div class="entry">
14238 <div class="title">
14239 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
14240 </div>
14241 <div class="date">
14242 24th June 2009
14243 </div>
14244 <div class="body">
14245 <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
14246 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
14247 could find more ways to speed up the boot system. This was an Ubuntu
14248 funded
14249 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
14250 gathering</a>. It was quite productive. We also discussed the future
14251 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
14252 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
14253 asynchronous and event base. The Ubuntu approach using udev and
14254 upstart might be a good way forward. Time will show.</p>
14255
14256 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
14257 process in Debian. All of these should be applied to get a quick
14258 boot:</p>
14259
14260 <ul>
14261
14262 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
14263
14264 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
14265 clock is in UTC.</li>
14266
14267 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
14268 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
14269 based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
14270
14271 </ul>
14272
14273 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
14274 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
14275 Villegas</a>.
14276
14277 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
14278 unstable yesterday. When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
14279 from the boot sequence. It depend on very correct dependency
14280 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
14281 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
14282 using this.</p>
14283
14284 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
14285 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
14286 startup speed as well. Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
14287 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
14288 possible to run a of them in the same process. A quick way to test
14289 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
14290 insserv'. Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
14291
14292 </div>
14293 <div class="tags">
14294
14295
14296 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>.
14297
14298
14299 </div>
14300 </div>
14301 <div class="padding"></div>
14302
14303 <div class="entry">
14304 <div class="title">
14305 <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>
14306 </div>
14307 <div class="date">
14308 2nd May 2009
14309 </div>
14310 <div class="body">
14311 <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
14312 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
14313 do not yet know them.</p>
14314
14315 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
14316 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
14317 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
14318 and it will report any problems on stdout. It is even better if the
14319 program include debug information. With debug information, it is able
14320 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
14321 occurs. It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
14322 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
14323 'using uninitialised value in control logic'. This tool has made it
14324 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
14325 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
14326
14327 <p>The second one is
14328 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
14329 a source code checker. It is able to process the source of a program
14330 and find problems in the logic without running the program. It
14331 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
14332 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel. It is now a commercial tool
14333 and the company behind it is running
14334 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
14335 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
14336 their source checked for free. Several thousand defects have been
14337 found and fixed so far. It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
14338 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
14339 Y lines O to P can never be executed'. The projects included in the
14340 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
14341 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
14342
14343 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
14344 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
14345 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
14346 surrounded by today.</p>
14347
14348 </div>
14349 <div class="tags">
14350
14351
14352 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>.
14353
14354
14355 </div>
14356 </div>
14357 <div class="padding"></div>
14358
14359 <div class="entry">
14360 <div class="title">
14361 <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>
14362 </div>
14363 <div class="date">
14364 28th April 2009
14365 </div>
14366 <div class="body">
14367 <p>Julien Blache
14368 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
14369 patch is better than a useless patch</a>. I completely disagree, as a
14370 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
14371 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
14372 time on fixing it. No patch do not provide any of these positive
14373 properties.</p>
14374
14375 </div>
14376 <div class="tags">
14377
14378
14379 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>.
14380
14381
14382 </div>
14383 </div>
14384 <div class="padding"></div>
14385
14386 <div class="entry">
14387 <div class="title">
14388 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
14389 </div>
14390 <div class="date">
14391 5th April 2009
14392 </div>
14393 <div class="body">
14394 <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
14395 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net. The
14396 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
14397 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
14398 vlc. I finally found a way to do it today. I spent an hour or so
14399 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation. The
14400 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
14401 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
14402
14403 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
14404 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
14405 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
14406 --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
14407 --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
14408
14409 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
14410 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
14411 dummy interface. The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
14412 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
14413
14414 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
14415 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
14416 the vlc process with SIGTERM. Here is a complete script
14417 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
14418
14419 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
14420 set -e
14421 URL="$1"
14422 SAVEFILE="$2"
14423 DURATION="$3"
14424 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
14425 --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
14426 --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
14427 pid=$!
14428 sleep $DURATION
14429 kill $pid
14430 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
14431
14432 </div>
14433 <div class="tags">
14434
14435
14436 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>.
14437
14438
14439 </div>
14440 </div>
14441 <div class="padding"></div>
14442
14443 <div class="entry">
14444 <div class="title">
14445 <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>
14446 </div>
14447 <div class="date">
14448 30th March 2009
14449 </div>
14450 <div class="body">
14451 <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
14452 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure. It is the
14453 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
14454 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
14455 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
14456 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
14457 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
14458 application.</p>
14459
14460 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
14461 independently of the server applications. One can even allow users to
14462 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
14463 protocol and format. In the normal case, only one client application
14464 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
14465 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
14466 blocked from doing so.</p>
14467
14468 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
14469 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
14470 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
14471 requirements change.</p>
14472
14473 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
14474 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
14475 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
14476
14477 </div>
14478 <div class="tags">
14479
14480
14481 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>.
14482
14483
14484 </div>
14485 </div>
14486 <div class="padding"></div>
14487
14488 <div class="entry">
14489 <div class="title">
14490 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
14491 </div>
14492 <div class="date">
14493 29th March 2009
14494 </div>
14495 <div class="body">
14496 <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
14497 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering. I got a bit done tuning the
14498 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
14499 implementation avahi. It look like it could be useful for us. Almost
14500 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
14501 get to know the Skolelinux system. Walter Bender, involved in the
14502 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
14503 also helped me improve my OLPC installation. He also showed me that
14504 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
14505 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian. As a
14506 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu. We also
14507 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
14508 proved to be too hard for us. The application seem to need more work
14509 before it is ready for me. I look forward to getting home and relax
14510 now. :)</p>
14511
14512 </div>
14513 <div class="tags">
14514
14515
14516 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>.
14517
14518
14519 </div>
14520 </div>
14521 <div class="padding"></div>
14522
14523 <div class="entry">
14524 <div class="title">
14525 <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>
14526 </div>
14527 <div class="date">
14528 29th March 2009
14529 </div>
14530 <div class="body">
14531 <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
14532 optimal. There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
14533 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
14534 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory. The RFC
14535 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
14536 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
14537
14538 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
14539 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
14540 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
14541 and LTSP configuration in LDAP. These objects have a lot in common,
14542 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
14543 object per entity. For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
14544 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
14545 DNS information and another with DHCP information. The schemas
14546 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
14547 object. In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
14548 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
14549 It just do not scale. I believe it is time for a few RFC
14550 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
14551
14552 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
14553 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
14554 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
14555 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
14556
14557 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
14558 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
14559
14560 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
14561 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up. Time to start a
14562 new IETF work group?</p>
14563
14564 </div>
14565 <div class="tags">
14566
14567
14568 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>.
14569
14570
14571 </div>
14572 </div>
14573 <div class="padding"></div>
14574
14575 <div class="entry">
14576 <div class="title">
14577 <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>
14578 </div>
14579 <div class="date">
14580 28th February 2009
14581 </div>
14582 <div class="body">
14583 <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
14584 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
14585 contract expire for each server. We have a machine (and service)
14586 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
14587 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
14588 each machine. To make it easier for us to track support contract
14589 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
14590 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
14591 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
14592 machines. I extended a perl script already being used to import
14593 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
14594 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
14595 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
14596 for the relevant machines. This make the support status information
14597 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
14598 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
14599 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
14600 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
14601 them. 27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
14602 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
14603 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
14604 services. After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
14605 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
14606 them break down. When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
14607 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
14608 machine.</p>
14609
14610 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
14611 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
14612 Werner Forsbring. The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
14613 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
14614 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code. I know the HTML
14615 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
14616 introduce more dependencies. This is the current incarnation:</p>
14617
14618 <pre>
14619 use LWP::Simple;
14620 use POSIX;
14621 use WWW::Mechanize;
14622 use Date::Parse;
14623 [...]
14624 sub get_support_info {
14625 my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
14626 my $str;
14627
14628 if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
14629 # fetch website from Dell support
14630 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";
14631 my $webpage = get($url);
14632 return undef unless ($webpage);
14633
14634 my $daysleft = -1;
14635 my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
14636 foreach my $line (@lines) {
14637 next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
14638 $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
14639 $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
14640
14641 my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
14642 @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
14643 my $lastend = "";
14644 while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
14645 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
14646
14647 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
14648 localtime(str2time($startstr)));
14649 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
14650 localtime(str2time($endstr)));
14651 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
14652 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
14653 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
14654 }
14655 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
14656 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
14657 if ($lastend lt $today);
14658 }
14659 } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
14660 my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
14661 my $url =
14662 'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
14663 $mech->get($url);
14664 my $fields = {
14665 'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
14666 'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
14667 'country' => 'NO',
14668 'productNumber' => $productnumber,
14669 'serialNumber1' => $serial,
14670 };
14671 $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
14672 fields => $fields );
14673 # Next step is screen scraping
14674 my $content = $mech->content();
14675
14676 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
14677 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
14678 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
14679 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
14680
14681 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
14682
14683 while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
14684 my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
14685 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
14686 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
14687 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
14688 localtime(str2time($startstr)));
14689 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
14690 localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
14691
14692 $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
14693
14694 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
14695 if ($end lt $today);
14696 }
14697 } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
14698 # This code ignore extended support contracts.
14699 my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
14700 if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
14701 my $content =
14702 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
14703 if ($content) {
14704 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
14705 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
14706 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
14707 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
14708
14709 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
14710 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
14711
14712 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
14713
14714 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
14715 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
14716 if ($end lt $today);
14717 }
14718 }
14719 }
14720 return $str;
14721 }
14722 </pre>
14723
14724 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
14725 serial numbers. The information passed in as arguments are fetched
14726 from dmidecode.</p>
14727
14728 <pre>
14729 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
14730 "447707-B21");
14731 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
14732 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
14733 "1234567");
14734 </pre>
14735
14736 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
14737 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
14738
14739 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
14740 contracts, so it is useless in that case. The original Dell code do
14741 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
14742 do so.</p>
14743
14744 </div>
14745 <div class="tags">
14746
14747
14748 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>.
14749
14750
14751 </div>
14752 </div>
14753 <div class="padding"></div>
14754
14755 <div class="entry">
14756 <div class="title">
14757 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
14758 </div>
14759 <div class="date">
14760 20th February 2009
14761 </div>
14762 <div class="body">
14763 <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
14764 in our computing center. This give us a challenge in tracking the
14765 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
14766 removed. Some times the location register is not updated when a
14767 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
14768 the "missing" computer.</p>
14769
14770 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
14771 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
14772 code blocks as defined in the
14773 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
14774 Standard</a>. This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
14775 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
14776 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture. The bar code standard
14777 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag. There is another project
14778 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
14779 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
14780 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
14781 codes.</p>
14782
14783 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
14784 machines in our computing center. If both racks and computers are
14785 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
14786 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
14787 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
14788 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
14789
14790 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
14791 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names. Next, I
14792 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
14793 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read. This worked
14794 fairly well. If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
14795 side, all tags in the image could be read. Because of limited space
14796 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
14797 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
14798 about half the rack. I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
14799 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
14800
14801 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
14802 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
14803 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
14804
14805 </div>
14806 <div class="tags">
14807
14808
14809 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>.
14810
14811
14812 </div>
14813 </div>
14814 <div class="padding"></div>
14815
14816 <div class="entry">
14817 <div class="title">
14818 <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>
14819 </div>
14820 <div class="date">
14821 17th January 2009
14822 </div>
14823 <div class="body">
14824 <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
14825 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
14826 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording. Putting a
14827 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
14828 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy. I hope this
14829 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
14830 browsers, but I am not sure. We provide the recordings in several
14831 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
14832 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
14833 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
14834 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
14835 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
14836 the &lt;applet&gt; tag. All of these take a lot of options, and
14837 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
14838
14839 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
14840 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
14841 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
14842 I was not very impressed. The browser start by fetching a picture
14843 from the video stream. Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
14844 definitely very early in the recording. So far, so good. Next,
14845 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
14846 of it, but do not start to play the video. This mean I have to wait
14847 for several minutes for the downloading to finish. When the download
14848 is done, the playing of the video do not start! Waiting for the
14849 download, but I do not get to see the video? Some testing later, I
14850 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
14851 to get a play button to pres to start the video. Adding
14852 autoplay="true" did not help. I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
14853 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
14854 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
14855 playing when the download is done.</p>
14856
14857 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
14858 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
14859 from the nuug site</a>. Will have to test it with the new Firefox
14860 too.</p>
14861
14862 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature. I was unable
14863 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
14864 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video. I
14865 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
14866
14867 </div>
14868 <div class="tags">
14869
14870
14871 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>.
14872
14873
14874 </div>
14875 </div>
14876 <div class="padding"></div>
14877
14878 <div class="entry">
14879 <div class="title">
14880 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
14881 </div>
14882 <div class="date">
14883 28th December 2008
14884 </div>
14885 <div class="body">
14886 <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
14887 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
14888 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
14889 directly with the video stream. For this, we use the
14890 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
14891 the Debian video team. As this require quite one computer per video
14892 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
14893 borrow laptops. And to avoid having to install extra software on
14894 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
14895 bootable USB stick. The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
14896 source, sink and mixer applications and
14897 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>. To allow this setup to
14898 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
14899 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
14900 together. And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
14901 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
14902 with USB sources. We have not yet tested this setup in a production
14903 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
14904 video mixer in a very short time frame. We will need it for
14905 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
14906
14907 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
14908 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
14909 larger stick as well.</p>
14910
14911 </div>
14912 <div class="tags">
14913
14914
14915 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>.
14916
14917
14918 </div>
14919 </div>
14920 <div class="padding"></div>
14921
14922 <div class="entry">
14923 <div class="title">
14924 <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>
14925 </div>
14926 <div class="date">
14927 7th December 2008
14928 </div>
14929 <div class="body">
14930 <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
14931 Oslo. Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
14932 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
14933 LTSP installation. LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
14934 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
14935 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box. Was working on getting the
14936 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
14937 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
14938
14939 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
14940 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
14941 development gathering. Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
14942 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
14943 of these cards.</p>
14944
14945 </div>
14946 <div class="tags">
14947
14948
14949 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>.
14950
14951
14952 </div>
14953 </div>
14954 <div class="padding"></div>
14955
14956 <div class="entry">
14957 <div class="title">
14958 <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>
14959 </div>
14960 <div class="date">
14961 25th November 2008
14962 </div>
14963 <div class="body">
14964 <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
14965 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
14966 default in Debian Edu. We need an embedded video playing plugin with
14967 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
14968 all the multimedia content available on the web. The test results and
14969 notes are available on
14970 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
14971 Debian wiki</a>. I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
14972 fill this need. My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
14973 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages. A lot of the MIME
14974 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
14975 video/ogg), just do not work. And simple formats like the
14976 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
14977 totem and vlc plugins. I hope the situation will improve soon. No
14978 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
14979
14980 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin. It seem to
14981 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
14982
14983 </div>
14984 <div class="tags">
14985
14986
14987 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>.
14988
14989
14990 </div>
14991 </div>
14992 <div class="padding"></div>
14993
14994 <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>
14995 <div id="sidebar">
14996
14997
14998
14999 <h2>Archive</h2>
15000 <ul>
15001
15002 <li>2013
15003 <ul>
15004
15005 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
15006
15007 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
15008
15009 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
15010
15011 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
15012
15013 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
15014
15015 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (2)</a></li>
15016
15017 </ul></li>
15018
15019 <li>2012
15020 <ul>
15021
15022 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
15023
15024 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
15025
15026 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
15027
15028 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
15029
15030 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
15031
15032 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
15033
15034 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
15035
15036 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
15037
15038 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
15039
15040 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
15041
15042 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
15043
15044 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
15045
15046 </ul></li>
15047
15048 <li>2011
15049 <ul>
15050
15051 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
15052
15053 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
15054
15055 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
15056
15057 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
15058
15059 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
15060
15061 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
15062
15063 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
15064
15065 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
15066
15067 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
15068
15069 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
15070
15071 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
15072
15073 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
15074
15075 </ul></li>
15076
15077 <li>2010
15078 <ul>
15079
15080 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
15081
15082 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
15083
15084 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
15085
15086 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
15087
15088 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
15089
15090 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
15091
15092 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
15093
15094 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
15095
15096 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
15097
15098 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
15099
15100 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
15101
15102 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
15103
15104 </ul></li>
15105
15106 <li>2009
15107 <ul>
15108
15109 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
15110
15111 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
15112
15113 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
15114
15115 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
15116
15117 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
15118
15119 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
15120
15121 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
15122
15123 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
15124
15125 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
15126
15127 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
15128
15129 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
15130
15131 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
15132
15133 </ul></li>
15134
15135 <li>2008
15136 <ul>
15137
15138 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
15139
15140 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
15141
15142 </ul></li>
15143
15144 </ul>
15145
15146
15147
15148 <h2>Tags</h2>
15149 <ul>
15150
15151 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
15152
15153 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
15154
15155 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
15156
15157 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
15158
15159 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (7)</a></li>
15160
15161 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
15162
15163 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
15164
15165 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (76)</a></li>
15166
15167 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (129)</a></li>
15168
15169 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
15170
15171 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (9)</a></li>
15172
15173 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
15174
15175 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (195)</a></li>
15176
15177 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
15178
15179 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
15180
15181 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (11)</a></li>
15182
15183 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
15184
15185 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (34)</a></li>
15186
15187 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (6)</a></li>
15188
15189 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
15190
15191 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
15192
15193 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (6)</a></li>
15194
15195 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
15196
15197 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
15198
15199 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (234)</a></li>
15200
15201 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (152)</a></li>
15202
15203 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (8)</a></li>
15204
15205 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
15206
15207 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (44)</a></li>
15208
15209 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (65)</a></li>
15210
15211 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
15212
15213 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
15214
15215 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
15216
15217 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (7)</a></li>
15218
15219 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
15220
15221 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
15222
15223 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
15224
15225 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (29)</a></li>
15226
15227 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
15228
15229 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
15230
15231 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (43)</a></li>
15232
15233 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
15234
15235 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (7)</a></li>
15236
15237 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (15)</a></li>
15238
15239 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
15240
15241 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (7)</a></li>
15242
15243 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (38)</a></li>
15244
15245 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
15246
15247 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (26)</a></li>
15248
15249 </ul>
15250
15251
15252 </div>
15253 <p style="text-align: right">
15254 Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
15255 </p>
15256
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