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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/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html">The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         25th November 2008
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
  32 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
  33 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
  34 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
  35 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
  36 notes are available on
  37 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
  38 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
  39 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
  40 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
  41 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
  42 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
  43 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
  44 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
  45 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
  46
  47 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
  48 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
  49
  50       </div>
  51       <div class="tags">
  52
  53
  54         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>.
  55
  56
  57       </div>
  58     </div>
  59     <div class="padding"></div>
  60
  61     <div class="entry">
  62       <div class="title">
  63         <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>
  64       </div>
  65       <div class="date">
  66          7th December 2008
  67       </div>
  68       <div class="body">
  69         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
  70 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
  71 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
  72 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
  73 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
  74 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
  75 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
  76 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
  77
  78 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
  79 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
  80 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
  81 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
  82 of these cards.</p>
  83
  84       </div>
  85       <div class="tags">
  86
  87
  88         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>.
  89
  90
  91       </div>
  92     </div>
  93     <div class="padding"></div>
  94
  95     <div class="entry">
  96       <div class="title">
  97         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
  98       </div>
  99       <div class="date">
 100         28th December 2008
 101       </div>
 102       <div class="body">
 103         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
 104 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
 105 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
 106 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
 107 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
 108 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
 109 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
 110 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
 111 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
 112 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
 113 source, sink and mixer applications and
 114 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
 115 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
 116 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
 117 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
 118 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
 119 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
 120 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
 121 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
 122 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
 123
 124 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
 125 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
 126 larger stick as well.</p>
 127
 128       </div>
 129       <div class="tags">
 130
 131
 132         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>.
 133
 134
 135       </div>
 136     </div>
 137     <div class="padding"></div>
 138
 139     <div class="entry">
 140       <div class="title">
 141         <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>
 142       </div>
 143       <div class="date">
 144         17th January 2009
 145       </div>
 146       <div class="body">
 147         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
 148 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
 149 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
 150 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
 151 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
 152 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
 153 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
 154 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
 155 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
 156 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
 157 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
 158 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
 159 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
 160 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
 161
 162 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
 163 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
 164 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
 165 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
 166 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
 167 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
 168 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
 169 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
 170 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
 171 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
 172 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
 173 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
 174 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
 175 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
 176 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
 177 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
 178 playing when the download is done.</p>
 179
 180 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
 181 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
 182 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
 183 too.</p>
 184
 185 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
 186 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
 187 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
 188 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
 189
 190       </div>
 191       <div class="tags">
 192
 193
 194         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>.
 195
 196
 197       </div>
 198     </div>
 199     <div class="padding"></div>
 200
 201     <div class="entry">
 202       <div class="title">
 203         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
 204       </div>
 205       <div class="date">
 206         20th February 2009
 207       </div>
 208       <div class="body">
 209         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
 210 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
 211 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
 212 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
 213 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
 214 the "missing" computer.</p>
 215
 216 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
 217 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
 218 code blocks as defined in the
 219 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
 220 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
 221 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
 222 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
 223 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
 224 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
 225 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
 226 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
 227 codes.</p>
 228
 229 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
 230 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
 231 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
 232 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
 233 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
 234 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
 235
 236 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
 237 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
 238 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
 239 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
 240 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
 241 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
 242 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
 243 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
 244 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
 245 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
 246
 247 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
 248 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
 249 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
 250
 251       </div>
 252       <div class="tags">
 253
 254
 255         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>.
 256
 257
 258       </div>
 259     </div>
 260     <div class="padding"></div>
 261
 262     <div class="entry">
 263       <div class="title">
 264         <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>
 265       </div>
 266       <div class="date">
 267         28th February 2009
 268       </div>
 269       <div class="body">
 270         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
 271 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
 272 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
 273 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
 274 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
 275 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
 276 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
 277 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
 278 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
 279 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
 280 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
 281 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
 282 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
 283 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
 284 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
 285 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
 286 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
 287 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
 288 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
 289 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
 290 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
 291 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
 292 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
 293 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
 294 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
 295 machine.</p>
 296
 297 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
 298 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
 299 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
 300 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
 301 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
 302 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
 303 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
 304
 305 <pre>
 306 use LWP::Simple;
 307 use POSIX;
 308 use WWW::Mechanize;
 309 use Date::Parse;
 310 [...]
 311 sub get_support_info {
 312     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
 313     my $str;
 314
 315     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
 316         # fetch website from Dell support
 317         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";
 318         my $webpage = get($url);
 319         return undef unless ($webpage);
 320
 321         my $daysleft = -1;
 322         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
 323         foreach my $line (@lines) {
 324             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
 325             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
 326             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
 327
 328             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
 329             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
 330             my $lastend = "";
 331             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
 332                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
 333
 334                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
 335                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
 336                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
 337                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
 338                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
 339                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
 340                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
 341             }
 342             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
 343             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
 344                 if ($lastend lt $today);
 345         }
 346     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
 347         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
 348         my $url =
 349             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
 350         $mech->get($url);
 351         my $fields = {
 352             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
 353             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
 354             'country' => 'NO',
 355             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
 356             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
 357         };
 358         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
 359                             fields      => $fields );
 360         # Next step is screen scraping
 361         my $content = $mech->content();
 362
 363         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
 364         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
 365         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
 366         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
 367
 368         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
 369
 370         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
 371             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
 372                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
 373             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
 374             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
 375                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
 376             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
 377                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
 378
 379             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
 380
 381             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
 382                 if ($end lt $today);
 383         }
 384     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
 385         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
 386         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
 387         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
 388             my $content =
 389                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
 390             if ($content) {
 391                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
 392                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
 393                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
 394                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
 395
 396                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
 397                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
 398
 399                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
 400
 401                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
 402                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
 403                     if ($end lt $today);
 404             }
 405         }
 406     }
 407     return $str;
 408 }
 409 </pre>
 410
 411 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
 412 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
 413 from dmidecode.</p>
 414
 415 <pre>
 416 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
 417                        "447707-B21");
 418 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
 419 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
 420                        "1234567");
 421 </pre>
 422
 423 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
 424 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
 425
 426 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
 427 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
 428 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
 429 do so.</p>
 430
 431       </div>
 432       <div class="tags">
 433
 434
 435         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>.
 436
 437
 438       </div>
 439     </div>
 440     <div class="padding"></div>
 441
 442     <div class="entry">
 443       <div class="title">
 444         <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>
 445       </div>
 446       <div class="date">
 447         29th March 2009
 448       </div>
 449       <div class="body">
 450         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
 451 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
 452 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
 453 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
 454 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
 455 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
 456
 457 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
 458 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
 459 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
 460 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
 461 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
 462 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
 463 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
 464 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
 465 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
 466 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
 467 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
 468 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
 469 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
 470
 471 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
 472 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
 473 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
 474 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
 475
 476 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
 477 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
 478
 479 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
 480 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
 481 new IETF work group?</p>
 482
 483       </div>
 484       <div class="tags">
 485
 486
 487         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>.
 488
 489
 490       </div>
 491     </div>
 492     <div class="padding"></div>
 493
 494     <div class="entry">
 495       <div class="title">
 496         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
 497       </div>
 498       <div class="date">
 499         29th March 2009
 500       </div>
 501       <div class="body">
 502         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
 503 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
 504 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
 505 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
 506 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
 507 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
 508 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
 509 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
 510 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
 511 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
 512 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
 513 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
 514 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
 515 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
 516 now. :)</p>
 517
 518       </div>
 519       <div class="tags">
 520
 521
 522         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>.
 523
 524
 525       </div>
 526     </div>
 527     <div class="padding"></div>
 528
 529     <div class="entry">
 530       <div class="title">
 531         <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>
 532       </div>
 533       <div class="date">
 534         30th March 2009
 535       </div>
 536       <div class="body">
 537         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
 538 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
 539 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
 540 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
 541 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
 542 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
 543 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
 544 application.</p>
 545
 546 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
 547 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
 548 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
 549 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
 550 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
 551 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
 552 blocked from doing so.</p>
 553
 554 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
 555 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
 556 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
 557 requirements change.</p>
 558
 559 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
 560 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
 561 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</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/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>.
 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/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
 577       </div>
 578       <div class="date">
 579          5th April 2009
 580       </div>
 581       <div class="body">
 582         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
 583 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
 584 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
 585 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
 586 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
 587 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
 588 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
 589 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
 590
 591 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
 592 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
 593 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
 594   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
 595   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
 596
 597 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
 598 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
 599 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
 600 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
 601
 602 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
 603 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
 604 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
 605 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
 606
 607 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
 608 set -e
 609 URL="$1"
 610 SAVEFILE="$2"
 611 DURATION="$3"
 612 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
 613   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
 614   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
 615 pid=$!
 616 sleep $DURATION
 617 kill $pid
 618 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
 619
 620       </div>
 621       <div class="tags">
 622
 623
 624         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>.
 625
 626
 627       </div>
 628     </div>
 629     <div class="padding"></div>
 630
 631     <div class="entry">
 632       <div class="title">
 633         <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>
 634       </div>
 635       <div class="date">
 636         28th April 2009
 637       </div>
 638       <div class="body">
 639         <p>Julien Blache
 640 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
 641 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
 642 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
 643 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
 644 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
 645 properties.</p>
 646
 647       </div>
 648       <div class="tags">
 649
 650
 651         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>.
 652
 653
 654       </div>
 655     </div>
 656     <div class="padding"></div>
 657
 658     <div class="entry">
 659       <div class="title">
 660         <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>
 661       </div>
 662       <div class="date">
 663          2nd May 2009
 664       </div>
 665       <div class="body">
 666         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
 667 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
 668 do not yet know them.</p>
 669
 670 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
 671 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
 672 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
 673 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
 674 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
 675 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
 676 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
 677 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
 678 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
 679 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
 680 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
 681
 682 <p>The second one is
 683 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
 684 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
 685 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
 686 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
 687 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
 688 and the company behind it is running
 689 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
 690 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
 691 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
 692 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
 693 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
 694 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
 695 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
 696 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
 697
 698 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
 699 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
 700 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
 701 surrounded by today.</p>
 702
 703       </div>
 704       <div class="tags">
 705
 706
 707         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>.
 708
 709
 710       </div>
 711     </div>
 712     <div class="padding"></div>
 713
 714     <div class="entry">
 715       <div class="title">
 716         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
 717       </div>
 718       <div class="date">
 719         24th June 2009
 720       </div>
 721       <div class="body">
 722         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
 723 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
 724 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
 725 funded
 726 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
 727 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
 728 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
 729 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
 730 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
 731 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
 732
 733 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
 734 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
 735 boot:</p>
 736
 737 <ul>
 738
 739 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
 740
 741 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
 742    clock is in UTC.</li>
 743
 744 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
 745    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
 746    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
 747
 748 </ul>
 749
 750 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
 751 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
 752 Villegas</a>.
 753
 754 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
 755 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
 756 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
 757 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
 758 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
 759 using this.</p>
 760
 761 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
 762 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
 763 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
 764 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
 765 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
 766 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
 767 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
 768
 769       </div>
 770       <div class="tags">
 771
 772
 773         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>.
 774
 775
 776       </div>
 777     </div>
 778     <div class="padding"></div>
 779
 780     <div class="entry">
 781       <div class="title">
 782         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
 783       </div>
 784       <div class="date">
 785         22nd July 2009
 786       </div>
 787       <div class="body">
 788         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
 789 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
 790 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
 791 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
 792 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
 793 the package up to date.</p>
 794
 795 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
 796 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
 797 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
 798 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
 799 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
 800 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
 801 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
 802 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
 803 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
 804 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
 805 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
 806 working on the future release.</p>
 807
 808 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
 809 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
 810
 811       </div>
 812       <div class="tags">
 813
 814
 815         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>.
 816
 817
 818       </div>
 819     </div>
 820     <div class="padding"></div>
 821
 822     <div class="entry">
 823       <div class="title">
 824         <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>
 825       </div>
 826       <div class="date">
 827         27th July 2009
 828       </div>
 829       <div class="body">
 830         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
 831 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
 832 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
 833 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
 834 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
 835 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
 836 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
 837
 838 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
 839 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
 840 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
 841
 842       </div>
 843       <div class="tags">
 844
 845
 846         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>.
 847
 848
 849       </div>
 850     </div>
 851     <div class="padding"></div>
 852
 853     <div class="entry">
 854       <div class="title">
 855         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
 856       </div>
 857       <div class="date">
 858          8th August 2009
 859       </div>
 860       <div class="body">
 861         <p>According to <a
 862 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
 863 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
 864 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
 865 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
 866 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
 867 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
 868 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
 869 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
 870 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
 871 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
 872
 873 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
 874 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
 875 seminar this autumn.</p>
 876
 877       </div>
 878       <div class="tags">
 879
 880
 881         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>.
 882
 883
 884       </div>
 885     </div>
 886     <div class="padding"></div>
 887
 888     <div class="entry">
 889       <div class="title">
 890         <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>
 891       </div>
 892       <div class="date">
 893         12th August 2009
 894       </div>
 895       <div class="body">
 896         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
 897 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
 898 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
 899 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
 900
 901 <table>
 902 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
 903 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
 904 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
 905 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
 906 </table>
 907
 908 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
 909 got these numbers:</p>
 910
 911 <table>
 912 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
 913 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
 914 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
 915 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
 916 </table>
 917
 918 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
 919
 920 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
 921 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
 922 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
 923 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
 924 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
 925
 926
 927 <table>
 928 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
 929 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
 930 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
 931 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
 932 </table>
 933
 934 <p>And with 'site:no':
 935
 936 <table>
 937 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
 938 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
 939 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
 940 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
 941 </table>
 942
 943 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
 944 numbers.</p>
 945
 946       </div>
 947       <div class="tags">
 948
 949
 950         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>.
 951
 952
 953       </div>
 954     </div>
 955     <div class="padding"></div>
 956
 957     <div class="entry">
 958       <div class="title">
 959         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
 960       </div>
 961       <div class="date">
 962         27th January 2010
 963       </div>
 964       <div class="body">
 965         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
 966 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
 967 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
 968 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
 969 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
 970 further.</p>
 971
 972 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
 973 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
 974 configured to be a server for the
 975 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
 976 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
 977 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
 978 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
 979 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
 980 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
 981 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
 982 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
 983 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
 984 and Nagios configuration.</p>
 985
 986 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
 987 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
 988 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
 989 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
 990
 991 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
 992 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
 993 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
 994 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
 995 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
 996 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
 997 the machine.</p>
 998
 999 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
1000 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
1001 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
1002 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
1003
1004 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
1005 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
1006 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
1007 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
1008 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
1009 everything is taken care of.</p>
1010
1011       </div>
1012       <div class="tags">
1013
1014
1015         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>.
1016
1017
1018       </div>
1019     </div>
1020     <div class="padding"></div>
1021
1022     <div class="entry">
1023       <div class="title">
1024         <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>
1025       </div>
1026       <div class="date">
1027         11th February 2010
1028       </div>
1029       <div class="body">
1030         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
1031 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
1032 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
1033 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
1034 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
1035 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
1036 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
1037
1038 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
1039
1040 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
1041 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
1042 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
1043 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
1044
1045       </div>
1046       <div class="tags">
1047
1048
1049         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>.
1050
1051
1052       </div>
1053     </div>
1054     <div class="padding"></div>
1055
1056     <div class="entry">
1057       <div class="title">
1058         <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>
1059       </div>
1060       <div class="date">
1061          6th March 2010
1062       </div>
1063       <div class="body">
1064         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
1065 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
1066 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
1067 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
1068 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
1069 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
1070
1071 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
1072 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
1073 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
1074 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
1075
1076 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
1077 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
1078 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
1079 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
1080 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
1081 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
1082
1083       </div>
1084       <div class="tags">
1085
1086
1087         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>.
1088
1089
1090       </div>
1091     </div>
1092     <div class="padding"></div>
1093
1094     <div class="entry">
1095       <div class="title">
1096         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
1097       </div>
1098       <div class="date">
1099         14th April 2010
1100       </div>
1101       <div class="body">
1102         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
1103 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
1104 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
1105 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
1106 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
1107 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
1108 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
1109 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
1110 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
1111
1112 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
1113 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
1114 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
1115 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
1116 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
1117
1118 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
1119 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
1120
1121 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
1122 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
1123 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
1124 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
1125 to work properly.</p>
1126
1127 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
1128 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
1129 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
1130 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
1131 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
1132 time.</p>
1133
1134 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
1135 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
1136 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
1137 up in a few days.</p>
1138
1139       </div>
1140       <div class="tags">
1141
1142
1143         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>.
1144
1145
1146       </div>
1147     </div>
1148     <div class="padding"></div>
1149
1150     <div class="entry">
1151       <div class="title">
1152         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
1153       </div>
1154       <div class="date">
1155         19th April 2010
1156       </div>
1157       <div class="body">
1158         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
1159 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
1160 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
1161 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
1162 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
1163 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
1164 restrictions on the web, for example from
1165 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
1166 epub-version from
1167 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
1168 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
1169 strongly recommend this book.</p>
1170
1171       </div>
1172       <div class="tags">
1173
1174
1175         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>.
1176
1177
1178       </div>
1179     </div>
1180     <div class="padding"></div>
1181
1182     <div class="entry">
1183       <div class="title">
1184         <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>
1185       </div>
1186       <div class="date">
1187         28th April 2010
1188       </div>
1189       <div class="body">
1190         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
1191 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
1192 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
1193 and go.</p>
1194
1195 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
1196 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
1197 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
1198 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
1199
1200 <ul>
1201
1202  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
1203    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
1204    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
1205    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
1206    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
1207    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
1208    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
1209    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
1210    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
1211    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
1212    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
1213    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
1214
1215  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
1216    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
1217    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
1218    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
1219    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
1220    or the Fedora developed
1221    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
1222    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
1223
1224  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
1225    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
1226    directory, using unison.</li>
1227
1228  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
1229    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
1230    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
1231    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
1232    implemented.</li>
1233
1234  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
1235    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
1236
1237  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
1238    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
1239    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
1240
1241 </ul>
1242
1243 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
1244 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
1245 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
1246 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
1247 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
1248 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
1249 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
1250 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
1251 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
1252
1253 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
1254 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
1255
1256       </div>
1257       <div class="tags">
1258
1259
1260         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>.
1261
1262
1263       </div>
1264     </div>
1265     <div class="padding"></div>
1266
1267     <div class="entry">
1268       <div class="title">
1269         <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>
1270       </div>
1271       <div class="date">
1272          2nd May 2010
1273       </div>
1274       <div class="body">
1275         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
1276 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
1277 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
1278
1279 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
1280 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
1281 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
1282 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
1283 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
1284
1285 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
1286 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
1287
1288 <blockquote><pre>
1289 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
1290 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
1291 Password expires                                        : never
1292 Password inactive                                       : never
1293 Account expires                                         : never
1294 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
1295 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
1296 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
1297 root@tjener:~#
1298 </pre></blockquote>
1299
1300 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
1301 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
1302 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
1303 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
1304 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
1305 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
1306
1307 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
1308 intended:</p>
1309
1310 <blockquote><pre>
1311 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
1312 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
1313 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
1314 Password expires                                        : never
1315 Password inactive                                       : never
1316 Account expires                                         : never
1317 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
1318 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
1319 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
1320 root@tjener:~#
1321 </pre></blockquote>
1322
1323 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
1324 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
1325 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
1326
1327 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
1328 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
1329
1330 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
1331 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
1332
1333 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
1334 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
1335 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
1336 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
1337 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
1338 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
1339 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
1340
1341 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
1342 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
1343 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
1344 change.</p>
1345
1346       </div>
1347       <div class="tags">
1348
1349
1350         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>.
1351
1352
1353       </div>
1354     </div>
1355     <div class="padding"></div>
1356
1357     <div class="entry">
1358       <div class="title">
1359         <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>
1360       </div>
1361       <div class="date">
1362          6th May 2010
1363       </div>
1364       <div class="body">
1365         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
1366 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
1367 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
1368 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
1369 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
1370 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
1371 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
1372
1373 <blockquote><pre>
1374 CONCURRENCY=makefile
1375 </pre></blockquote>
1376
1377 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
1378 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
1379 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
1380 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
1381 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
1382 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
1383 make this happen.</p>
1384
1385 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
1386 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
1387 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
1388 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
1389 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
1390
1391 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
1392 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
1393 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
1394 fix the remaining issues.</p>
1395
1396 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
1397 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
1398 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
1399 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
1400
1401       </div>
1402       <div class="tags">
1403
1404
1405         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>.
1406
1407
1408       </div>
1409     </div>
1410     <div class="padding"></div>
1411
1412     <div class="entry">
1413       <div class="title">
1414         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
1415       </div>
1416       <div class="date">
1417         13th May 2010
1418       </div>
1419       <div class="body">
1420         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
1421 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
1422 has been
1423 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
1424
1425 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
1426 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
1427 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
1428 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
1429 based boot system.  Tollef is
1430 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
1431 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
1432 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
1433 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
1434 at the moment do not.</p>
1435
1436 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
1437 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
1438 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
1439 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
1440 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
1441 way forward.</p>
1442
1443 <p>In the mean time, based on the
1444 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
1445 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
1446 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
1447 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
1448 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
1449 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
1450 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
1451 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
1452
1453       </div>
1454       <div class="tags">
1455
1456
1457         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>.
1458
1459
1460       </div>
1461     </div>
1462     <div class="padding"></div>
1463
1464     <div class="entry">
1465       <div class="title">
1466         <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>
1467       </div>
1468       <div class="date">
1469         14th May 2010
1470       </div>
1471       <div class="body">
1472         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
1473 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
1474 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
1475 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
1476 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
1477 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
1478 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
1479 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
1480
1481 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
1482 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
1483 this on the collector host:</p>
1484
1485 <blockquote><pre>
1486 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
1487 </pre></blockquote>
1488
1489 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
1490 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
1491
1492 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
1493 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
1494 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
1495 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
1496 written yet.</p>
1497
1498       </div>
1499       <div class="tags">
1500
1501
1502         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>.
1503
1504
1505       </div>
1506     </div>
1507     <div class="padding"></div>
1508
1509     <div class="entry">
1510       <div class="title">
1511         <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>
1512       </div>
1513       <div class="date">
1514         14th May 2010
1515       </div>
1516       <div class="body">
1517         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
1518 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
1519 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
1520 expected, if I am to believe the
1521 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
1522 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
1523 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
1524 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
1525 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
1526 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
1527 version.</p>
1528
1529 More information about
1530 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
1531 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
1532 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
1533 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
1534
1535 <blockquote><pre>
1536 CONCURRENCY=none
1537 </pre></blockquote>
1538
1539 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
1540 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
1541 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
1542 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
1543
1544       </div>
1545       <div class="tags">
1546
1547
1548         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>.
1549
1550
1551       </div>
1552     </div>
1553     <div class="padding"></div>
1554
1555     <div class="entry">
1556       <div class="title">
1557         <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>
1558       </div>
1559       <div class="date">
1560         19th May 2010
1561       </div>
1562       <div class="body">
1563         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
1564 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
1565 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
1566 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
1567 into unstable.  The
1568 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
1569 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
1570 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
1571 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
1572 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
1573 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
1574 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
1575
1576 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
1577 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
1578 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
1579 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
1580 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
1581 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
1582 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
1583 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
1584
1585 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
1586 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
1587 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
1588 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
1589 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
1590 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
1591 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
1592
1593 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
1594 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
1595 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
1596 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
1597 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
1598 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
1599 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
1600 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
1601 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
1602 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
1603 on the home directory servers.</p>
1604
1605 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
1606 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
1607 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
1608 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
1609 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
1610 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
1611
1612 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
1613 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
1614
1615       </div>
1616       <div class="tags">
1617
1618
1619         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>.
1620
1621
1622       </div>
1623     </div>
1624     <div class="padding"></div>
1625
1626     <div class="entry">
1627       <div class="title">
1628         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
1629       </div>
1630       <div class="date">
1631         22nd May 2010
1632       </div>
1633       <div class="body">
1634         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
1635 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
1636 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
1637 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
1638
1639 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
1640 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
1641 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
1642 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
1643 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
1644 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
1645 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
1646 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
1647 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
1648 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
1649 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
1650 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
1651 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
1652 going to work.</p>
1653
1654 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
1655 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
1656 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
1657 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
1658 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
1659 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
1660 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
1661 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
1662 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
1663 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
1664 Edu.</p>
1665
1666 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
1667 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
1668 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
1669 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
1670 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
1671 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
1672
1673 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
1674 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
1675
1676       </div>
1677       <div class="tags">
1678
1679
1680         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>.
1681
1682
1683       </div>
1684     </div>
1685     <div class="padding"></div>
1686
1687     <div class="entry">
1688       <div class="title">
1689         <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>
1690       </div>
1691       <div class="date">
1692         27th May 2010
1693       </div>
1694       <div class="body">
1695         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
1696 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
1697 issues are known and should be solved:
1698
1699 <p><ul>
1700
1701 <li>The wicd package seen to
1702 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
1703 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
1704 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
1705 seem to be on the case.</li>
1706
1707 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
1708 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
1709 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
1710 maintainer is on the case.</li>
1711
1712 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
1713 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
1714 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
1715 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
1716 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
1717 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
1718 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
1719 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
1720
1721 </ul></p>
1722
1723 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
1724 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
1725 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
1726 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
1727
1728 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
1729 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
1730 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
1731 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
1732
1733 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
1734
1735       </div>
1736       <div class="tags">
1737
1738
1739         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>.
1740
1741
1742       </div>
1743     </div>
1744     <div class="padding"></div>
1745
1746     <div class="entry">
1747       <div class="title">
1748         <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>
1749       </div>
1750       <div class="date">
1751          1st June 2010
1752       </div>
1753       <div class="body">
1754         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
1755 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
1756 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
1757 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
1758 wait.</p>
1759
1760 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
1761 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
1762 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
1763 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
1764 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
1765 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
1766
1767 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
1768 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
1769 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
1770 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
1771 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
1772 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
1773 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
1774 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
1775
1776 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
1777
1778       </div>
1779       <div class="tags">
1780
1781
1782         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>.
1783
1784
1785       </div>
1786     </div>
1787     <div class="padding"></div>
1788
1789     <div class="entry">
1790       <div class="title">
1791         <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>
1792       </div>
1793       <div class="date">
1794          3rd June 2010
1795       </div>
1796       <div class="body">
1797         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
1798 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
1799 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
1800 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
1801 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
1802
1803 <blockquote><pre>
1804 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
1805   vendor                    count
1806   Dell Computer Corporation     1
1807     PowerEdge 1750              1
1808   IBM                           1
1809     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
1810   Intel                         2
1811   [no-dmi-info]                 3
1812 maintainer:~#
1813 </pre></blockquote>
1814
1815 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
1816 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
1817 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
1818 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
1819 option to list the individual machines.</p>
1820
1821 <p>A larger list is
1822 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
1823 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
1824 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
1825 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
1826 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
1827 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
1828 collector.</p>
1829
1830       </div>
1831       <div class="tags">
1832
1833
1834         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>.
1835
1836
1837       </div>
1838     </div>
1839     <div class="padding"></div>
1840
1841     <div class="entry">
1842       <div class="title">
1843         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
1844       </div>
1845       <div class="date">
1846          6th June 2010
1847       </div>
1848       <div class="body">
1849         <p>Via the
1850 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
1851 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
1852 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
1853 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
1854 following the standards wars of today.</p>
1855
1856       </div>
1857       <div class="tags">
1858
1859
1860         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>.
1861
1862
1863       </div>
1864     </div>
1865     <div class="padding"></div>
1866
1867     <div class="entry">
1868       <div class="title">
1869         <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>
1870       </div>
1871       <div class="date">
1872          6th June 2010
1873       </div>
1874       <div class="body">
1875         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
1876 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
1877 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
1878 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
1879 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
1880 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
1881 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
1882
1883 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
1884 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
1885 COLUMNS):</p>
1886
1887 <blockquote><pre>
1888 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
1889 previous=N
1890 PREVLEVEL=
1891 RUNLEVEL=
1892 runlevel=S
1893 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
1894 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
1895 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
1896 </pre></blockquote>
1897
1898 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
1899 script.</p>
1900
1901 <blockquote><pre>
1902 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
1903 previous=N
1904 PREVLEVEL=N
1905 RUNLEVEL=S
1906 runlevel=S
1907 </pre></blockquote>
1908
1909 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
1910 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
1911 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
1912
1913 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
1914 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
1915 choice.</p>
1916
1917       </div>
1918       <div class="tags">
1919
1920
1921         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>.
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/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
1931       </div>
1932       <div class="date">
1933         11th June 2010
1934       </div>
1935       <div class="body">
1936         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
1937 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
1938 have been discovered and reported in the process
1939 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
1940 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
1941 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
1942 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
1943 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
1944
1945 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
1946 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
1947 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
1948 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
1949 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
1950 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
1951
1952 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
1953 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
1954 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
1955 is created.  The bug report
1956 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
1957 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
1958 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
1959 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
1960 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
1961 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
1962 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
1963 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
1964 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
1965 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
1966 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
1967 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
1968 Debian Squeeze.</p>
1969
1970 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
1971 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
1972 trick:</p>
1973
1974 <blockquote><pre>
1975 #!/bin/sh
1976 set -ex
1977
1978 if [ "$1" ] ; then
1979     desktop=$1
1980 else
1981     desktop=gnome
1982 fi
1983
1984 from=lenny
1985 to=squeeze
1986
1987 exec &lt; /dev/null
1988 unset LANG
1989 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
1990 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
1991 fuser -mv .
1992 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
1993 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
1994 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
1995 #!/bin/sh
1996 exit 101
1997 EOF
1998 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
1999 exit_cleanup() {
2000     umount $tmpdir/proc
2001 }
2002 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
2003 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
2004 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
2005
2006 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
2007
2008 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
2009 # to return the correct answers.
2010 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
2011     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
2012
2013 # Include the desktop and laptop task
2014 for test in desktop laptop ; do
2015     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
2016 #!/bin/sh
2017 exit 2
2018 EOF
2019     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
2020 done
2021
2022 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
2023 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
2024 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
2025 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
2026
2027 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
2028 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
2029 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
2030 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
2031 fuser -mv
2032 </pre></blockquote>
2033
2034 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
2035 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
2036 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
2037 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
2038 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
2039 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
2040
2041 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
2042 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
2043 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
2044 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
2045 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
2046 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
2047 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
2048
2049 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
2050 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
2051 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
2052 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
2053 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
2054 packages.</p>
2055
2056       </div>
2057       <div class="tags">
2058
2059
2060         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>.
2061
2062
2063       </div>
2064     </div>
2065     <div class="padding"></div>
2066
2067     <div class="entry">
2068       <div class="title">
2069         <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>
2070       </div>
2071       <div class="date">
2072         13th June 2010
2073       </div>
2074       <div class="body">
2075         <p>My
2076 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
2077 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
2078 finally made the upgrade logs available from
2079 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
2080 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
2081 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
2082 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
2083
2084 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
2085 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
2086 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
2087 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
2088 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
2089 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
2090 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
2091 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
2092
2093 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
2094 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
2095 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
2096 too surprising.</p>
2097
2098 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
2099 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
2100 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
2101 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
2102 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
2103 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
2104 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
2105 continue.</p>
2106
2107 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
2108 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
2109   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
2110   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
2111   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
2112   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
2113   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
2114   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
2115   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
2116   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
2117   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
2118   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
2119   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
2120   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
2121   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
2122   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
2123   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
2124   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
2125   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
2126   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
2127   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
2128   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
2129   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
2130   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
2131   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
2132   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
2133   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
2134   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
2135   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
2136   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
2137
2138 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
2139
2140 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
2141   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
2142   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
2143   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
2144   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
2145   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
2146   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
2147   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
2148   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
2149   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
2150   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
2151   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
2152   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
2153   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
2154   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
2155   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
2156   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
2157   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
2158   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
2159   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
2160   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
2161   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
2162   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
2163   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
2164   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
2165   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
2166   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
2167   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
2168   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
2169   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
2170   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
2171   zip</p>
2172
2173 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
2174
2175 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
2176   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
2177   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
2178   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
2179   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
2180   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
2181   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
2182   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
2183   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
2184   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
2185   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
2186   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
2187   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
2188   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
2189   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
2190   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
2191   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
2192   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
2193   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
2194   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
2195   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
2196   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
2197   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
2198   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
2199   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
2200   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
2201   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
2202   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
2203
2204 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
2205 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
2206   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
2207   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
2208   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
2209   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
2210   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
2211   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
2212   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
2213   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
2214   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
2215   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
2216   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
2217   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
2218   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
2219   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
2220   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
2221   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
2222   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
2223   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
2224   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
2225   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
2226   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
2227   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
2228   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
2229   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
2230   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
2231   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
2232   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
2233   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
2234   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
2235   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
2236   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
2237   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
2238   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
2239   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
2240   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
2241   xulrunner-1.9</p>
2242
2243
2244       </div>
2245       <div class="tags">
2246
2247
2248         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>.
2249
2250
2251       </div>
2252     </div>
2253     <div class="padding"></div>
2254
2255     <div class="entry">
2256       <div class="title">
2257         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
2258       </div>
2259       <div class="date">
2260         13th June 2010
2261       </div>
2262       <div class="body">
2263         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
2264 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
2265 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
2266 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
2267 pages.</p>
2268
2269 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
2270 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
2271 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
2272 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
2273 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
2274 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
2275 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
2276 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
2277 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
2278 see how the project is doing.</p>
2279
2280 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
2281 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
2282 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
2283 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
2284 Windows.  This is great.</p>
2285
2286       </div>
2287       <div class="tags">
2288
2289
2290         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>.
2291
2292
2293       </div>
2294     </div>
2295     <div class="padding"></div>
2296
2297     <div class="entry">
2298       <div class="title">
2299         <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>
2300       </div>
2301       <div class="date">
2302         16th June 2010
2303       </div>
2304       <div class="body">
2305         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
2306 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
2307 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
2308 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
2309 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
2310 this:
2311
2312 <blockquote><pre>
2313 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
2314 tasksel --new-install
2315 </pre></blockquote>
2316
2317 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
2318 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
2319 any output what so ever.
2320
2321 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
2322 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
2323 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
2324 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
2325 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
2326 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
2327 code like this:
2328
2329 <blockquote><pre>
2330 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
2331 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
2332 $cmd
2333 </pre></blockquote>
2334
2335 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
2336 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
2337 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
2338 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
2339 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
2340 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
2341 installation.</p>
2342
2343 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
2344 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
2345 like this.</p>
2346
2347       </div>
2348       <div class="tags">
2349
2350
2351         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>.
2352
2353
2354       </div>
2355     </div>
2356     <div class="padding"></div>
2357
2358     <div class="entry">
2359       <div class="title">
2360         <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>
2361       </div>
2362       <div class="date">
2363         24th June 2010
2364       </div>
2365       <div class="body">
2366         <p>A while back, I
2367 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
2368 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
2369 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
2370 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
2371
2372 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
2373 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
2374 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
2375 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
2376
2377 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
2378 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
2379 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
2380 Debian Edu.</p>
2381
2382 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
2383 the
2384 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
2385 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
2386 available today from IETF.</p>
2387
2388 <pre>
2389 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
2390 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
2391 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
2392  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
2393         NAME 'dhcpHost'
2394         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
2395 -       SUP top
2396 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
2397         MUST cn
2398         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
2399         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
2400 </pre>
2401
2402 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
2403 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
2404 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
2405
2406 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
2407 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
2408
2409       </div>
2410       <div class="tags">
2411
2412
2413         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>.
2414
2415
2416       </div>
2417     </div>
2418     <div class="padding"></div>
2419
2420     <div class="entry">
2421       <div class="title">
2422         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
2423       </div>
2424       <div class="date">
2425         28th June 2010
2426       </div>
2427       <div class="body">
2428         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
2429 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
2430 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
2431 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
2432 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
2433 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
2434 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
2435 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
2436 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
2437 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
2438
2439 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
2440 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
2441 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
2442 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
2443 released.</p>
2444
2445 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
2446 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
2447 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
2448 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
2449
2450 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
2451 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
2452
2453 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
2454 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
2455 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
2456 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
2457 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
2458
2459       </div>
2460       <div class="tags">
2461
2462
2463         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>.
2464
2465
2466       </div>
2467     </div>
2468     <div class="padding"></div>
2469
2470     <div class="entry">
2471       <div class="title">
2472         <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>
2473       </div>
2474       <div class="date">
2475          1st July 2010
2476       </div>
2477       <div class="body">
2478         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
2479 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
2480 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
2481 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
2482 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
2483 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
2484 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
2485 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
2486 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
2487
2488 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
2489
2490 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
2491 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
2492 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
2493 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
2494 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
2495 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
2496 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
2497 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
2498 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
2499 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
2500 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
2501 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
2502 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
2503 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
2504 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
2505
2506 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
2507
2508 <blockquote><pre>
2509 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
2510 </pre></blockquote>
2511
2512 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
2513 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
2514 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
2515 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
2516 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
2517 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
2518 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
2519 on how to get this working.</p>
2520
2521 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
2522 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
2523 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
2524 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
2525 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
2526 instructions I found in the
2527 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
2528 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
2529
2530 <blockquote><pre>
2531         debug-level             0
2532         reload-count            unlimited
2533         paranoia                no
2534
2535         enable-cache            passwd          yes
2536         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
2537         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
2538         suggested-size          passwd          211
2539         check-files             passwd          yes
2540         persistent              passwd          yes
2541         shared                  passwd          yes
2542         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
2543         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
2544
2545         enable-cache            group           yes
2546         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
2547         negative-time-to-live   group           20
2548         suggested-size          group           211
2549         check-files             group           yes
2550         persistent              group           yes
2551         shared                  group           yes
2552         max-db-size             group           33554432
2553         auto-propagate          group           yes
2554
2555         enable-cache            hosts           no
2556         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
2557         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
2558         suggested-size          hosts           211
2559         check-files             hosts           yes
2560         persistent              hosts           yes
2561         shared                  hosts           yes
2562         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
2563
2564         enable-cache            services        yes
2565         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
2566         negative-time-to-live   services        20
2567         suggested-size          services        211
2568         check-files             services        yes
2569         persistent              services        yes
2570         shared                  services        yes
2571         max-db-size             services        33554432
2572 </pre></blockquote>
2573
2574 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
2575 automatically like the one provided in
2576 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
2577 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
2578 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
2579 look like this:</p>
2580
2581 <blockquote><pre>
2582 passwd:         files ldap
2583 group:          files ldap
2584 shadow:         files ldap
2585 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
2586 networks:       files
2587 protocols:      files
2588 services:       files
2589 ethers:         files
2590 rpc:            files
2591 netgroup:       files ldap
2592 </pre></blockquote>
2593
2594 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
2595 shadow and netgroup.</p>
2596
2597 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
2598 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
2599 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
2600 attributes cached.
2601
2602 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
2603   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
2604
2605 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
2606 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
2607 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
2608 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
2609 discovered sssd.</p>
2610
2611 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
2612
2613 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
2614 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
2615 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
2616 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
2617 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
2618 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
2619 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
2620 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
2621 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
2622 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
2623 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
2624 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
2625 version 1.2 is now in testing.
2626
2627 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
2628 roaming setup I want</p>
2629
2630 <blockquote><pre>
2631 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
2632 </pre></blockquote>
2633
2634 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
2635 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
2636
2637 <blockquote><pre>
2638 [sssd]
2639 config_file_version = 2
2640 reconnection_retries = 3
2641 sbus_timeout = 30
2642 services = nss, pam
2643 domains = INTERN
2644
2645 [nss]
2646 filter_groups = root
2647 filter_users = root
2648 reconnection_retries = 3
2649
2650 [pam]
2651 reconnection_retries = 3
2652
2653 [domain/INTERN]
2654 enumerate = false
2655 cache_credentials = true
2656
2657 id_provider = ldap
2658 auth_provider = ldap
2659 chpass_provider = ldap
2660
2661 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
2662 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2663 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
2664 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
2665 </pre></blockquote>
2666
2667 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
2668 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
2669
2670 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
2671 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
2672 modify it manually.</p>
2673
2674 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
2675 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
2676
2677       </div>
2678       <div class="tags">
2679
2680
2681         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>.
2682
2683
2684       </div>
2685     </div>
2686     <div class="padding"></div>
2687
2688     <div class="entry">
2689       <div class="title">
2690         <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>
2691       </div>
2692       <div class="date">
2693          3rd July 2010
2694       </div>
2695       <div class="body">
2696         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
2697 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
2698 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
2699 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
2700 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
2701 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
2702 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
2703 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
2704
2705 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
2706 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
2707 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
2708 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
2709 publish the difference.</p>
2710
2711 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2712
2713 <blockquote><p>
2714   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
2715   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
2716   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
2717   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
2718   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
2719   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
2720   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
2721   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
2722 </p></blockquote>
2723
2724 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
2725
2726 <blockquote><p>
2727   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
2728   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
2729   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
2730   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
2731   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
2732   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
2733   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
2734   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
2735   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
2736   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
2737   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
2738   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
2739   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
2740   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
2741   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
2742   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
2743   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
2744   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
2745   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
2746   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
2747 </p></blockquote>
2748
2749 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
2750
2751 <blockquote><p>
2752   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
2753   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
2754   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
2755   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
2756   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
2757   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
2758   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
2759   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
2760   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
2761   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
2762   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
2763   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
2764   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
2765   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
2766   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
2767   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
2768   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
2769   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
2770   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
2771   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
2772   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
2773 </p></blockquote>
2774
2775 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
2776
2777 <blockquote><p>
2778   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
2779   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
2780   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
2781 </p></blockquote>
2782
2783 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
2784 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
2785 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
2786 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
2787 the difference somewhat.
2788
2789       </div>
2790       <div class="tags">
2791
2792
2793         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>.
2794
2795
2796       </div>
2797     </div>
2798     <div class="padding"></div>
2799
2800     <div class="entry">
2801       <div class="title">
2802         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
2803       </div>
2804       <div class="date">
2805          9th July 2010
2806       </div>
2807       <div class="body">
2808         <p>Since
2809 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
2810 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
2811 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
2812 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
2813 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
2814 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
2815 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
2816 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
2817 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
2818 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
2819 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
2820 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
2821 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
2822
2823       </div>
2824       <div class="tags">
2825
2826
2827         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>.
2828
2829
2830       </div>
2831     </div>
2832     <div class="padding"></div>
2833
2834     <div class="entry">
2835       <div class="title">
2836         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
2837       </div>
2838       <div class="date">
2839         11th July 2010
2840       </div>
2841       <div class="body">
2842         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
2843 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
2844 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
2845 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
2846
2847 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
2848 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
2849 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
2850 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
2851 LTSP clients.</p>
2852
2853 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
2854 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
2855 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
2856
2857 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
2858 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
2859 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
2860
2861 <blockquote><pre>
2862 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
2863 #
2864 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
2865 #
2866 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
2867 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
2868 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
2869 #
2870 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
2871 # existence of attribute names.
2872 #
2873 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
2874 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
2875 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
2876 #
2877 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
2878 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
2879 #
2880 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
2881 #     SUP top
2882 #     AUXILIARY
2883 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
2884
2885 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
2886 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
2887     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
2888     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
2889         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
2890         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
2891             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
2892             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
2893             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
2894             # bass value on to clients
2895             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
2896         done
2897     done
2898 fi
2899 </pre></blockquote>
2900
2901 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
2902 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
2903 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
2904 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
2905 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
2906
2907 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
2908 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
2909
2910 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
2911 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
2912 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
2913 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
2914 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
2915 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
2916
2917       </div>
2918       <div class="tags">
2919
2920
2921         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>.
2922
2923
2924       </div>
2925     </div>
2926     <div class="padding"></div>
2927
2928     <div class="entry">
2929       <div class="title">
2930         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
2931       </div>
2932       <div class="date">
2933         14th July 2010
2934       </div>
2935       <div class="body">
2936         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
2937 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
2938 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
2939 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
2940 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
2941
2942 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
2943 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
2944
2945 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
2946 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
2947 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
2948 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
2949 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
2950 to a slave DNS server.</p>
2951
2952 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
2953 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
2954 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
2955 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
2956 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
2957 seem to work.</p>
2958
2959 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
2960 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
2961 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
2962 this:</p>
2963
2964 <blockquote><pre>
2965   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2966   cn: hostname
2967   objectClass: dhcphost
2968   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2969   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
2970   associateddomain: hostname.intern
2971   arecord: 10.11.12.13
2972   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
2973   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
2974   ldapconfigsound: Y
2975 </pre></blockquote>
2976
2977 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
2978 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
2979 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
2980 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
2981
2982 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
2983 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
2984 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
2985 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
2986 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
2987 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
2988 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
2989 might be a good place to put it.</p>
2990
2991 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
2992 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
2993
2994       </div>
2995       <div class="tags">
2996
2997
2998         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>.
2999
3000
3001       </div>
3002     </div>
3003     <div class="padding"></div>
3004
3005     <div class="entry">
3006       <div class="title">
3007         <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>
3008       </div>
3009       <div class="date">
3010         17th July 2010
3011       </div>
3012       <div class="body">
3013         <p>This is a
3014 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
3015 on my
3016 <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
3017 work</a> on
3018 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
3019 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
3020
3021 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
3022 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
3023 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
3024 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
3025
3026 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
3027 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
3028 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
3029
3030 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
3031
3032 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
3033 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
3034 the web.
3035
3036 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
3037 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
3038 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
3039 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
3040 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
3041 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
3042
3043 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
3044 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
3045 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
3046 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
3047 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
3048 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
3049 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
3050 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
3051 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
3052 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
3053 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
3054 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
3055 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
3056 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
3057 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
3058 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
3059
3060 <blockquote><pre>
3061 ldapsearch -h ldap \
3062   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
3063   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
3064   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
3065   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
3066   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
3067   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
3068
3069 ldapsearch -h ldap \
3070   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
3071   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
3072   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
3073   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
3074   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
3075 </pre></blockquote>
3076
3077 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
3078 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
3079 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
3080 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3081 also exist.</p>
3082
3083 <blockquote><pre>
3084 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3085 objectclass: top
3086 objectclass: dnsdomain
3087 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3088 dc: tjener
3089 arecord: 10.0.2.2
3090 associateddomain: tjener.intern
3091
3092 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3093 objectclass: top
3094 objectclass: dnsdomain2
3095 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3096 dc: 2
3097 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
3098 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
3099 </pre></blockquote>
3100
3101 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
3102 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
3103 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
3104 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
3105 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
3106 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
3107 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
3108 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
3109 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
3110 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
3111 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
3112 instead.</p>
3113
3114 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
3115 like this:</p>
3116
3117 <blockquote><pre>
3118 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
3119   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
3120   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
3121   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
3122   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
3123   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
3124
3125 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
3126   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
3127 </pre></blockquote>
3128
3129 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
3130 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
3131 reverse lookups.</p>
3132
3133 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
3134 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
3135 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
3136 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
3137
3138 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
3139 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
3140 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
3141
3142 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
3143 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
3144 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
3145 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
3146 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
3147
3148 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
3149 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
3150 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
3151 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
3152 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
3153
3154 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
3155 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
3156 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
3157 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
3158 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
3159 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
3160
3161 <blockquote><pre>
3162 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
3163     SUP top
3164     AUXILIARY
3165     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
3166           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
3167           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
3168           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
3169           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
3170     ))
3171 </pre></blockquote>
3172
3173 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
3174 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
3175 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
3176 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
3177 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
3178 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
3179
3180 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
3181
3182 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
3183 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
3184 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
3185 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
3186 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
3187
3188 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
3189 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
3190 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
3191 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
3192
3193 <blockquote><pre>
3194 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
3195 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
3196 </pre></blockquote>
3197
3198 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
3199 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
3200 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
3201 search result is this entry:</p>
3202
3203 <blockquote><pre>
3204 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3205 cn: dhcp
3206 objectClass: top
3207 objectClass: dhcpServer
3208 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3209 </pre></blockquote>
3210
3211 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
3212 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
3213 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
3214 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
3215 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
3216 The search result is this entry:</p>
3217
3218 <blockquote><pre>
3219 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3220 cn: DHCP Config
3221 objectClass: top
3222 objectClass: dhcpService
3223 objectClass: dhcpOptions
3224 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3225 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
3226 dhcpStatements: authoritative
3227 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
3228 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
3229 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
3230 </pre></blockquote>
3231
3232 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
3233 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
3234 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
3235 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
3236 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
3237 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
3238 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
3239 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
3240 related computer objects.</p>
3241
3242 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
3243 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
3244 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
3245 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
3246 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
3247 like:</p>
3248
3249 <blockquote><pre>
3250 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3251 cn: hostname
3252 objectClass: top
3253 objectClass: dhcpHost
3254 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
3255 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
3256 </pre></blockquote>
3257
3258 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
3259 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
3260 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
3261 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
3262 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
3263 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
3264 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
3265 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
3266 structural object class.
3267
3268 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
3269
3270 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
3271 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
3272 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
3273 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
3274 in the configuration.</p>
3275
3276 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
3277 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
3278 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
3279 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
3280 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
3281 structure.</p>
3282
3283 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
3284 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
3285
3286 <blockquote><pre>
3287 ou=services
3288   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
3289     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
3290     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
3291       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
3292         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
3293     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
3294       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
3295         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
3296     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
3297       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
3298 </pre></blockquote>
3299
3300 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
3301 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
3302 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
3303 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
3304
3305 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
3306 like this:</p>
3307
3308 <blockquote><pre>
3309 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3310 dc: hostname
3311 objectClass: top
3312 objectClass: dhcpHost
3313 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3314 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
3315 associateddomain: hostname.intern
3316 arecord: 10.11.12.13
3317 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
3318 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
3319 </pre></blockquote>
3320
3321 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
3322 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
3323 auxiliary object class.</p>
3324
3325       </div>
3326       <div class="tags">
3327
3328
3329         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>.
3330
3331
3332       </div>
3333     </div>
3334     <div class="padding"></div>
3335
3336     <div class="entry">
3337       <div class="title">
3338         <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>
3339       </div>
3340       <div class="date">
3341         18th July 2010
3342       </div>
3343       <div class="body">
3344         <p>Thanks to
3345 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
3346 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
3347 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
3348 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
3349 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
3350 only available from the development server, until more experience is
3351 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
3352
3353 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
3354 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
3355 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
3356 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
3357 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
3358 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
3359 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
3360
3361       </div>
3362       <div class="tags">
3363
3364
3365         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>.
3366
3367
3368       </div>
3369     </div>
3370     <div class="padding"></div>
3371
3372     <div class="entry">
3373       <div class="title">
3374         <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>
3375       </div>
3376       <div class="date">
3377         25th July 2010
3378       </div>
3379       <div class="body">
3380         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
3381 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
3382 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
3383 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
3384 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
3385
3386 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
3387 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
3388 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
3389 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
3390 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
3391 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
3392 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
3393
3394 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
3395 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
3396 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
3397 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
3398 up. :)</p>
3399
3400 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
3401 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
3402 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
3403
3404 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
3405 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
3406 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
3407 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
3408 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
3409 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
3410 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
3411 release another day.</p>
3412
3413 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
3414 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
3415
3416       </div>
3417       <div class="tags">
3418
3419
3420         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>.
3421
3422
3423       </div>
3424     </div>
3425     <div class="padding"></div>
3426
3427     <div class="entry">
3428       <div class="title">
3429         <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>
3430       </div>
3431       <div class="date">
3432         27th July 2010
3433       </div>
3434       <div class="body">
3435         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
3436 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
3437 completed.</p>
3438
3439 <blockquote>
3440 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
3441 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
3442 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
3443 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
3444 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
3445 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
3446 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
3447 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
3448
3449 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
3450 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
3451 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
3452
3453 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
3454 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
3455 much.</p>
3456
3457 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
3458
3459 <ul>
3460 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
3461 <ul>
3462   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
3463          combination with some new artwork
3464   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
3465   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
3466   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
3467   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
3468   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
3469   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
3470   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
3471   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
3472   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
3473 </ul></li>
3474 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
3475     Enabled for:
3476 <ul>
3477   <li>PAM
3478   <li>LDAP
3479   <li>IMAP
3480   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
3481 </ul>
3482 </li>
3483 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
3484 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
3485     fetched from LDAP.</li>
3486 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
3487 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
3488 </ul>
3489 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
3490
3491 <ul>
3492 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
3493     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
3494     for testing.</li>
3495 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
3496     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
3497     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
3498 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
3499 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
3500 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
3501 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
3502     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
3503 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
3504     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
3505     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
3506 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
3507     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
3508     and help out with translations.</li>
3509 </ul>
3510
3511 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
3512
3513 <ul>
3514 <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>
3515 <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>
3516 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
3517 </ul>
3518 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
3519
3520 <ul>
3521 <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>
3522 <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>
3523 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
3524 </ul>
3525
3526 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
3527 get closer to the final release.</p>
3528
3529 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
3530
3531 <ul>
3532 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
3533 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
3534 </ul>
3535
3536 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
3537 <ul>
3538 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
3539 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
3540 </ul>
3541 <p>How to report bugs:
3542 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
3543
3544 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
3545 </blockquote>
3546
3547       </div>
3548       <div class="tags">
3549
3550
3551         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>.
3552
3553
3554       </div>
3555     </div>
3556     <div class="padding"></div>
3557
3558     <div class="entry">
3559       <div class="title">
3560         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
3561       </div>
3562       <div class="date">
3563         27th July 2010
3564       </div>
3565       <div class="body">
3566         <p>I discovered this while doing
3567 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
3568 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
3569 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
3570 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
3571 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
3572
3573 <p>An example is from todays
3574 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
3575 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
3576 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
3577 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
3578 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
3579 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
3580 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
3581
3582 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
3583
3584 <blockquote><pre>
3585 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
3586  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
3587   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
3588 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
3589  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
3590 </pre></blockquote>
3591
3592 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
3593 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
3594 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
3595 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
3596 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
3597 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
3598 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
3599 of dependency loops.</p>
3600
3601 <p>Thanks to
3602 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
3603 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
3604 dependencies
3605 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
3606 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
3607
3608 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
3609 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
3610 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
3611 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
3612 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
3613 it.</p>
3614
3615       </div>
3616       <div class="tags">
3617
3618
3619         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>.
3620
3621
3622       </div>
3623     </div>
3624     <div class="padding"></div>
3625
3626     <div class="entry">
3627       <div class="title">
3628         <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>
3629       </div>
3630       <div class="date">
3631          3rd August 2010
3632       </div>
3633       <div class="body">
3634         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
3635 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
3636 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
3637 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
3638 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
3639 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
3640 servers.</p>
3641
3642 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
3643 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
3644 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
3645 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
3646 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
3647 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
3648 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
3649 .uio.no.</p>
3650
3651 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
3652 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
3653 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
3654 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
3655 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
3656 university servers.</p>
3657
3658 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
3659 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
3660 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
3661 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
3662 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
3663 uses.</p>
3664
3665       </div>
3666       <div class="tags">
3667
3668
3669         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>.
3670
3671
3672       </div>
3673     </div>
3674     <div class="padding"></div>
3675
3676     <div class="entry">
3677       <div class="title">
3678         <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>
3679       </div>
3680       <div class="date">
3681          7th August 2010
3682       </div>
3683       <div class="body">
3684         <p>A few days ago, I
3685 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
3686 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
3687 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
3688 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
3689 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
3690 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
3691 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
3692 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
3693 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
3694
3695 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
3696 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
3697 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
3698 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
3699 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
3700 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
3701 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
3702 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
3703 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
3704 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
3705 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
3706 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
3707 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
3708 gave it a IP address.</p>
3709
3710 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
3711 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
3712 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
3713 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
3714 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
3715 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
3716 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
3717 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
3718
3719 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
3720 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
3721 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
3722 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
3723 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
3724 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
3725
3726 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
3727 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
3728 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
3729 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
3730 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
3731 with UID and GID values.</p>
3732
3733 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
3734 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
3735
3736       </div>
3737       <div class="tags">
3738
3739
3740         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>.
3741
3742
3743       </div>
3744     </div>
3745     <div class="padding"></div>
3746
3747     <div class="entry">
3748       <div class="title">
3749         <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>
3750       </div>
3751       <div class="date">
3752          8th August 2010
3753       </div>
3754       <div class="body">
3755         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
3756 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
3757 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
3758 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
3759 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
3760 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
3761 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
3762
3763 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
3764 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
3765 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
3766 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
3767 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
3768 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
3769 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
3770
3771 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
3772 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
3773 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
3774 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
3775 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
3776
3777 <pre>
3778 /*
3779  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
3780  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
3781  * directory.
3782  * License: GPL v2 or later
3783  *
3784  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
3785  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
3786 */
3787
3788 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
3789 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
3790 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
3791
3792 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
3793
3794 #include &lt;errno.h>
3795 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
3796 #include &lt;stdio.h>
3797 #include &lt;string.h>
3798 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
3799 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
3800 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
3801 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
3802 #include &lt;unistd.h>
3803
3804 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
3805 /*
3806  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
3807  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
3808  * below.
3809  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
3810  */
3811 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
3812 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
3813   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
3814 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
3815   char *zErrMsg;
3816   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
3817   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
3818   unlink(name);
3819   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
3820   if( rc ){
3821     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
3822     sqlite3_close(db);
3823     return -1;
3824   }
3825
3826   /* create tables */
3827   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
3828   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
3829     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
3830     sqlite3_close(db);
3831     return -1;
3832   }
3833   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
3834   sqlite3_close(db);
3835   return 0;
3836 }
3837 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
3838
3839 /*
3840  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
3841  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
3842  * done in the sqlite3 library.
3843  * See also
3844  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
3845  * POSIX specification
3846  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
3847  */
3848 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
3849   struct flock fl;
3850   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
3851   unlink(name);
3852   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
3853   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
3854
3855   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
3856   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
3857   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
3858   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
3859   fl.l_len    = 1;
3860   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
3861   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
3862
3863   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
3864   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
3865   fl.l_len    = 510;
3866   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
3867   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
3868
3869   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
3870   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
3871   fl.l_len    = 1;
3872   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
3873   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
3874
3875   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
3876   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
3877   fl.l_len    = 1;
3878   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
3879   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
3880
3881   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
3882   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
3883   fl.l_len    = 510;
3884   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
3885
3886   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
3887   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
3888   fl.l_len    = 2;
3889   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
3890   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
3891
3892   close(fd);
3893   return 0;
3894 }
3895
3896 /*
3897  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
3898  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
3899  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
3900  * slowing down file operations.
3901  */
3902 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
3903 #define LEVELS 5
3904   char *path = strdup("test");
3905   char *dirs[LEVELS];
3906   int level;
3907   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
3908   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
3909     char *newpath = NULL;
3910     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
3911       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
3912              path, strerror(errno));
3913       break;
3914     }
3915     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
3916     free(path);
3917     path = newpath;
3918   }
3919   return 0;
3920 }
3921
3922 /*
3923  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
3924  * KDE.
3925  */
3926 int test_symlinks(void) {
3927   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
3928   unlink("symlink");
3929   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
3930     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
3931   return 0;
3932 }
3933
3934 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
3935   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
3936   test_symlinks();
3937   test_subdirectory_creation();
3938 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
3939   test_sqlite_open();
3940 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
3941   test_gcompris_locking();
3942   return 0;
3943 }
3944 </pre>
3945
3946 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
3947 this:</p>
3948
3949 <pre>
3950 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
3951 info: testing symlink creation
3952 info: testing subdirectory creation
3953 info: sqlite worked
3954 info: testing fcntl locking
3955   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
3956   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
3957   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
3958   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
3959   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
3960   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
3961 </pre>
3962
3963 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
3964 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
3965 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
3966 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
3967 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
3968 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
3969 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
3970 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
3971
3972 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
3973 it. :)</p>
3974
3975 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
3976 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
3977 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
3978
3979       </div>
3980       <div class="tags">
3981
3982
3983         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>.
3984
3985
3986       </div>
3987     </div>
3988     <div class="padding"></div>
3989
3990     <div class="entry">
3991       <div class="title">
3992         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
3993       </div>
3994       <div class="date">
3995          9th August 2010
3996       </div>
3997       <div class="body">
3998         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
3999 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
4000 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
4001 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
4002 generated configuration.</p>
4003
4004 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
4005 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
4006 without any manual configuration.</p>
4007
4008 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
4009 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
4010 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
4011 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
4012 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
4013 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
4014 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
4015 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
4016 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
4017 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
4018 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
4019 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
4020 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
4021 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
4022 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
4023 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
4024 use.</p>
4025
4026 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
4027 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
4028 working properly out of the box:</p>
4029
4030 <ul>
4031 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
4032 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
4033 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
4034 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
4035 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
4036 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
4037 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
4038 </ul>
4039
4040 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
4041
4042 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
4043 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
4044 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
4045 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
4046 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
4047
4048 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
4049 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
4050 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
4051 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
4052 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
4053 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
4054 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
4055 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
4056
4057 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
4058 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
4059 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
4060 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
4061 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
4062 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
4063 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
4064 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
4065 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
4066 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
4067 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
4068 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
4069 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
4070 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
4071 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
4072 current DNS domain is used.</p>
4073
4074 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
4075 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
4076 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
4077 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
4078 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
4079 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
4080 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
4081 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
4082 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
4083 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
4084 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
4085 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
4086 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
4087
4088 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
4089 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
4090 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
4091 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
4092 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
4093 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
4094 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
4095 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
4096 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
4097 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
4098 do for now. :)</p>
4099
4100 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
4101 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
4102 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
4103 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
4104 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
4105 yet.</p>
4106
4107 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
4108 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
4109
4110 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
4111 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
4112 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
4113 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
4114
4115       </div>
4116       <div class="tags">
4117
4118
4119         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>.
4120
4121
4122       </div>
4123     </div>
4124     <div class="padding"></div>
4125
4126     <div class="entry">
4127       <div class="title">
4128         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
4129       </div>
4130       <div class="date">
4131         15th August 2010
4132       </div>
4133       <div class="body">
4134         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
4135 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
4136 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
4137 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
4138 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
4139 long time.</p>
4140
4141       </div>
4142       <div class="tags">
4143
4144
4145         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>.
4146
4147
4148       </div>
4149     </div>
4150     <div class="padding"></div>
4151
4152     <div class="entry">
4153       <div class="title">
4154         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
4155       </div>
4156       <div class="date">
4157         26th August 2010
4158       </div>
4159       <div class="body">
4160         <p>My file system sematics program
4161 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
4162 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
4163 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
4164 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
4165 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
4166 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
4167 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
4168 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
4169 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
4170 script:</p>
4171
4172 <pre>
4173 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
4174   mode_t retval = 0;
4175   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
4176   if (-1 != fd) {
4177     unlink(name);
4178     struct stat statbuf;
4179     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
4180       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
4181     }
4182     close(fd);
4183   }
4184   return retval;
4185 }
4186
4187 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
4188 int test_umask(void) {
4189   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
4190
4191   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
4192   mode_t newmode;
4193   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
4194     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
4195            newmode);
4196   }
4197   umask(007);
4198   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
4199     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
4200            newmode);
4201   }
4202
4203   umask (orig_umask);
4204   return 0;
4205 }
4206
4207 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
4208   [...]
4209   test_umask();
4210   return 0;
4211 }
4212 </pre>
4213
4214 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
4215
4216 <pre>
4217 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
4218 info: testing symlink creation
4219 info: testing subdirectory creation
4220 info: testing fcntl locking
4221   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
4222   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
4223   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
4224   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
4225   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
4226   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
4227 info: testing umask effect on file creation
4228 </pre>
4229
4230 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
4231 result:</p>
4232
4233 <pre>
4234 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
4235 info: testing symlink creation
4236 info: testing subdirectory creation
4237 info: testing fcntl locking
4238   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
4239   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
4240   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
4241   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
4242   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
4243   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
4244 info: testing umask effect on file creation
4245   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
4246   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
4247 </pre>
4248
4249 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
4250 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
4251 directory.</p>
4252
4253 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
4254 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
4255
4256 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
4257 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
4258 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
4259
4260       </div>
4261       <div class="tags">
4262
4263
4264         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>.
4265
4266
4267       </div>
4268     </div>
4269     <div class="padding"></div>
4270
4271     <div class="entry">
4272       <div class="title">
4273         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
4274       </div>
4275       <div class="date">
4276         30th August 2010
4277       </div>
4278       <div class="body">
4279         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
4280 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
4281 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
4282 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
4283 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
4284 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
4285 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
4286
4287 <pre>
4288 % ln foo bar
4289 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
4290 %
4291 </pre>
4292
4293 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
4294 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
4295 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
4296 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
4297 nevertheless. :)</p>
4298
4299 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
4300 git from
4301 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
4302
4303       </div>
4304       <div class="tags">
4305
4306
4307         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>.
4308
4309
4310       </div>
4311     </div>
4312     <div class="padding"></div>
4313
4314     <div class="entry">
4315       <div class="title">
4316         <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>
4317       </div>
4318       <div class="date">
4319          1st September 2010
4320       </div>
4321       <div class="body">
4322         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
4323 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
4324 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
4325 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
4326 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
4327 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
4328 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
4329 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
4330 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
4331 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
4332 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
4333 drive around.</p>
4334
4335 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
4336 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
4337
4338 <p><pre>
4339 use Spykee;
4340 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
4341 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
4342 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
4343 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
4344 $spykee->left();
4345 sleep 2;
4346 $spykee->right();
4347 sleep 2;
4348 $spykee->forward();
4349 sleep 2;
4350 $spykee->back();
4351 sleep 2;
4352 $spykee->stop();
4353 </pre></p>
4354
4355 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
4356 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
4357 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
4358 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
4359 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
4360 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
4361 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
4362 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
4363 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
4364 going. :).</p>
4365
4366 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
4367 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
4368 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
4369 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
4370
4371       </div>
4372       <div class="tags">
4373
4374
4375         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>.
4376
4377
4378       </div>
4379     </div>
4380     <div class="padding"></div>
4381
4382     <div class="entry">
4383       <div class="title">
4384         <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>
4385       </div>
4386       <div class="date">
4387          4th September 2010
4388       </div>
4389       <div class="body">
4390         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
4391 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
4392 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
4393 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
4394 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
4395 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
4396 installed.</p>
4397
4398 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
4399 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
4400 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
4401 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
4402 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
4403 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
4404 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
4405 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
4406 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
4407
4408 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
4409 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
4410 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
4411 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
4412 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
4413 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
4414 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
4415 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
4416 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
4417 pages they want to visit.</p>
4418
4419 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
4420 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
4421 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
4422 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
4423 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
4424 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
4425 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
4426 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
4427 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
4428 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
4429 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
4430
4431       </div>
4432       <div class="tags">
4433
4434
4435         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>.
4436
4437
4438       </div>
4439     </div>
4440     <div class="padding"></div>
4441
4442     <div class="entry">
4443       <div class="title">
4444         <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>
4445       </div>
4446       <div class="date">
4447          9th September 2010
4448       </div>
4449       <div class="body">
4450         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
4451 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
4452 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
4453 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
4454 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
4455 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
4456 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
4457 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
4458 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
4459
4460 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
4461 written:</p>
4462
4463 <blockquote>
4464 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
4465 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
4466 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
4467 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
4468 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
4469
4470 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
4471 standard.</p>
4472 </blockquote>
4473
4474 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
4475 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
4476 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
4477 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
4478
4479 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
4480 read
4481 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
4482 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
4483 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
4484 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
4485 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
4486 the issue.  The solution is to support the
4487 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
4488 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
4489 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
4490
4491       </div>
4492       <div class="tags">
4493
4494
4495         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>.
4496
4497
4498       </div>
4499     </div>
4500     <div class="padding"></div>
4501
4502     <div class="entry">
4503       <div class="title">
4504         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
4505       </div>
4506       <div class="date">
4507          3rd October 2010
4508       </div>
4509       <div class="body">
4510         <p><ul>
4511
4512 <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
4513 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
4514
4515 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
4516 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
4517 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
4518
4519 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
4520 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
4521 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
4522 simple setup.
4523
4524 </ul></p>
4525
4526       </div>
4527       <div class="tags">
4528
4529
4530         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>.
4531
4532
4533       </div>
4534     </div>
4535     <div class="padding"></div>
4536
4537     <div class="entry">
4538       <div class="title">
4539         <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>
4540       </div>
4541       <div class="date">
4542          9th October 2010
4543       </div>
4544       <div class="body">
4545         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
4546 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
4547 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
4548 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
4549 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
4550 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
4551 robots.</p>
4552
4553 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
4554 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
4555 a few less important features too.</p>
4556
4557 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
4558 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
4559 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
4560 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
4561
4562 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
4563 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
4564 source or binary package:</p>
4565
4566 <p><ul>
4567 <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>
4568 <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>
4569 <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>
4570 </ul></p>
4571
4572 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
4573 please let me know.</p>
4574
4575       </div>
4576       <div class="tags">
4577
4578
4579         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>.
4580
4581
4582       </div>
4583     </div>
4584     <div class="padding"></div>
4585
4586     <div class="entry">
4587       <div class="title">
4588         <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>
4589       </div>
4590       <div class="date">
4591         19th October 2010
4592       </div>
4593       <div class="body">
4594         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
4595 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
4596 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
4597 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
4598 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
4599 AVM2 flash files.</p>
4600
4601 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
4602 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
4603 following text:</P>
4604
4605 <p><blockquote>
4606
4607   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
4608   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
4609
4610   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
4611
4612   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
4613
4614   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
4615   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
4616   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
4617   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
4618   days. The project web page is available from
4619   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
4620   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
4621   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
4622
4623   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
4624   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
4625   to get this to happen.</p>
4626
4627   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
4628   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
4629
4630 </blockquote></p>
4631
4632 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
4633 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
4634 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
4635 :)</p>
4636
4637       </div>
4638       <div class="tags">
4639
4640
4641         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>.
4642
4643
4644       </div>
4645     </div>
4646     <div class="padding"></div>
4647
4648     <div class="entry">
4649       <div class="title">
4650         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
4651       </div>
4652       <div class="date">
4653         24th October 2010
4654       </div>
4655       <div class="body">
4656         <p>Some updates.</p>
4657
4658 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
4659 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
4660 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
4661 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
4662 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
4663 :)</p>
4664
4665 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
4666 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
4667 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
4668 It is called
4669 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
4670 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
4671 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
4672 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
4673 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
4674 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
4675
4676 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
4677 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
4678 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
4679 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
4680 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
4681 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
4682 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
4683 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
4684 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
4685 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
4686
4687       </div>
4688       <div class="tags">
4689
4690
4691         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>.
4692
4693
4694       </div>
4695     </div>
4696     <div class="padding"></div>
4697
4698     <div class="entry">
4699       <div class="title">
4700         <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>
4701       </div>
4702       <div class="date">
4703          7th November 2010
4704       </div>
4705       <div class="body">
4706         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
4707 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
4708 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
4709 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
4710 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
4711 working using this DVD.</p>
4712
4713 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
4714 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
4715 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
4716 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
4717 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
4718 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
4719 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
4720
4721 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
4722 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
4723 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
4724 Debian archive.</p>
4725
4726 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
4727 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
4728 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
4729 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
4730 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
4731 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
4732 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
4733 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
4734 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
4735 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
4736 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
4737 free X driver should work.</p>
4738
4739 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
4740 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
4741 DVD more useful again.</p>
4742
4743       </div>
4744       <div class="tags">
4745
4746
4747         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>.
4748
4749
4750       </div>
4751     </div>
4752     <div class="padding"></div>
4753
4754     <div class="entry">
4755       <div class="title">
4756         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
4757       </div>
4758       <div class="date">
4759          9th November 2010
4760       </div>
4761       <div class="body">
4762         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
4763
4764 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
4765 3D linked in from
4766 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
4767 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
4768
4769       </div>
4770       <div class="tags">
4771
4772
4773         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>.
4774
4775
4776       </div>
4777     </div>
4778     <div class="padding"></div>
4779
4780     <div class="entry">
4781       <div class="title">
4782         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
4783       </div>
4784       <div class="date">
4785         20th November 2010
4786       </div>
4787       <div class="body">
4788         <p>Answering
4789 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
4790 call from the Gnash project</a> for
4791 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
4792 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
4793 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
4794 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
4795 releases out more often.</p>
4796
4797 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
4798 I have considered setting up a <a
4799 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
4800 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
4801 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
4802 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
4803 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
4804 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
4805 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
4806 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
4807 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
4808 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
4809 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
4810 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
4811
4812       </div>
4813       <div class="tags">
4814
4815
4816         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>.
4817
4818
4819       </div>
4820     </div>
4821     <div class="padding"></div>
4822
4823     <div class="entry">
4824       <div class="title">
4825         <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>
4826       </div>
4827       <div class="date">
4828         20th November 2010
4829       </div>
4830       <div class="body">
4831         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
4832 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
4833 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
4834 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
4835
4836 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
4837 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
4838 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
4839
4840 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
4841
4842 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
4843
4844 <blockquote><p>
4845   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
4846   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
4847   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
4848   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
4849   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
4850   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
4851   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
4852   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
4853   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
4854   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
4855   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
4856   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
4857   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
4858   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
4859   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
4860   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
4861   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
4862   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
4863   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
4864   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
4865   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
4866   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
4867   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
4868   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
4869   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
4870   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
4871   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
4872   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
4873   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
4874   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
4875   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
4876   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
4877   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
4878   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
4879   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
4880   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
4881   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
4882   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
4883   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
4884   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
4885   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
4886   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
4887   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
4888   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
4889   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
4890   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
4891   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
4892   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
4893   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
4894   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
4895   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
4896   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
4897   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
4898   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
4899   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
4900   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
4901   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
4902   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
4903   zip
4904 </p></blockquote>
4905
4906 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
4907
4908 <blockquote><p>
4909   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
4910   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
4911   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
4912   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
4913   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
4914   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
4915   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
4916   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
4917   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
4918   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
4919   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
4920   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
4921   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
4922   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
4923   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
4924   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
4925   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
4926   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
4927   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
4928   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
4929   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
4930   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
4931   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
4932   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
4933   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
4934   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
4935   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
4936   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
4937   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
4938 </p></blockquote>
4939
4940 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
4941
4942 <blockquote><p>
4943   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
4944 </p></blockquote>
4945
4946 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
4947
4948 <blockquote><p>
4949 [nothing]
4950 </p></blockquote>
4951
4952 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
4953
4954 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
4955
4956 <blockquote><p>
4957   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
4958   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
4959   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
4960   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
4961   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
4962   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
4963   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
4964   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
4965   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
4966   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
4967   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
4968   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
4969   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
4970   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
4971   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
4972   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
4973   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
4974   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
4975   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
4976   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
4977   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
4978   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
4979   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
4980   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
4981   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
4982   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
4983   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
4984   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
4985   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
4986   ttf-sazanami-gothic
4987 </p></blockquote>
4988
4989 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
4990
4991 <blockquote><p>
4992   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
4993   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
4994   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
4995   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
4996   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
4997   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
4998   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
4999   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
5000   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
5001   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
5002   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
5003   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
5004   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
5005   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
5006   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
5007   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
5008   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
5009   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
5010   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
5011   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
5012   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
5013   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
5014   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
5015   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
5016   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
5017   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
5018   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
5019   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
5020   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
5021   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
5022   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
5023   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
5024   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
5025 </p></blockquote>
5026
5027 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
5028
5029 <blockquote><p>
5030   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
5031   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
5032   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
5033   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
5034   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
5035   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
5036   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
5037 </p></blockquote>
5038
5039 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
5040
5041 <blockquote><p>
5042   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
5043 </p></blockquote>
5044
5045       </div>
5046       <div class="tags">
5047
5048
5049         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>.
5050
5051
5052       </div>
5053     </div>
5054     <div class="padding"></div>
5055
5056     <div class="entry">
5057       <div class="title">
5058         <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>
5059       </div>
5060       <div class="date">
5061         22nd November 2010
5062       </div>
5063       <div class="body">
5064         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
5065 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
5066 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
5067 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
5068 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
5069 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
5070 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
5071 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
5072 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
5073
5074 <p>I found
5075 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
5076 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
5077 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
5078 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
5079 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
5080 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
5081
5082 <pre>
5083 #!/bin/sh
5084
5085 # Based on
5086 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
5087
5088 set -e
5089 set -x
5090
5091 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
5092     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
5093     exit 1
5094 else
5095     host="$1"
5096 fi
5097
5098 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
5099     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
5100     exit 1
5101 fi
5102
5103 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
5104 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
5105 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
5106 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
5107
5108 img=$host.img
5109 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
5110 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
5111
5112 parted $img mklabel msdos
5113 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
5114 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
5115 parted $img set 1 boot on
5116
5117 modprobe dm-mod
5118 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
5119 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
5120
5121 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
5122 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
5123 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
5124
5125 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
5126 losetup -d /dev/loop0
5127 </pre>
5128
5129 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
5130 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
5131
5132 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
5133 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
5134 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
5135 seem to work just fine.</p>
5136
5137       </div>
5138       <div class="tags">
5139
5140
5141         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>.
5142
5143
5144       </div>
5145     </div>
5146     <div class="padding"></div>
5147
5148     <div class="entry">
5149       <div class="title">
5150         <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>
5151       </div>
5152       <div class="date">
5153         22nd November 2010
5154       </div>
5155       <div class="body">
5156         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
5157 upgrade testing of the
5158 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
5159 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
5160 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
5161 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
5162
5163 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
5164
5165 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
5166
5167 <blockquote><p>
5168   apache2.2-bin
5169   aptdaemon
5170   baobab
5171   binfmt-support
5172   browser-plugin-gnash
5173   cheese-common
5174   cli-common
5175   cups-pk-helper
5176   dmz-cursor-theme
5177   empathy
5178   empathy-common
5179   freedesktop-sound-theme
5180   freeglut3
5181   gconf-defaults-service
5182   gdm-themes
5183   gedit-plugins
5184   geoclue
5185   geoclue-hostip
5186   geoclue-localnet
5187   geoclue-manual
5188   geoclue-yahoo
5189   gnash
5190   gnash-common
5191   gnome
5192   gnome-backgrounds
5193   gnome-cards-data
5194   gnome-codec-install
5195   gnome-core
5196   gnome-desktop-environment
5197   gnome-disk-utility
5198   gnome-screenshot
5199   gnome-search-tool
5200   gnome-session-canberra
5201   gnome-system-log
5202   gnome-themes-extras
5203   gnome-themes-more
5204   gnome-user-share
5205   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
5206   gstreamer0.10-tools
5207   gtk2-engines
5208   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
5209   gtk2-engines-smooth
5210   hamster-applet
5211   libapache2-mod-dnssd
5212   libapr1
5213   libaprutil1
5214   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
5215   libaprutil1-ldap
5216   libart2.0-cil
5217   libboost-date-time1.42.0
5218   libboost-python1.42.0
5219   libboost-thread1.42.0
5220   libchamplain-0.4-0
5221   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
5222   libcheese-gtk18
5223   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
5224   libcryptui0
5225   libdiscid0
5226   libelf1
5227   libepc-1.0-2
5228   libepc-common
5229   libepc-ui-1.0-2
5230   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
5231   libfreerdp0
5232   libgconf2.0-cil
5233   libgdata-common
5234   libgdata7
5235   libgdu-gtk0
5236   libgee2
5237   libgeoclue0
5238   libgexiv2-0
5239   libgif4
5240   libglade2.0-cil
5241   libglib2.0-cil
5242   libgmime2.4-cil
5243   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
5244   libgnome2.24-cil
5245   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
5246   libgpod-common
5247   libgpod4
5248   libgtk2.0-cil
5249   libgtkglext1
5250   libgtksourceview2.0-common
5251   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
5252   libmono-addins0.2-cil
5253   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
5254   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
5255   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
5256   libmono-posix2.0-cil
5257   libmono-security2.0-cil
5258   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
5259   libmono-system2.0-cil
5260   libmtp8
5261   libmusicbrainz3-6
5262   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
5263   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
5264   libopal3.6.8
5265   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
5266   libpt2.6.7
5267   libpython2.6
5268   librpm1
5269   librpmio1
5270   libsdl1.2debian
5271   libsrtp0
5272   libssh-4
5273   libtelepathy-farsight0
5274   libtelepathy-glib0
5275   libtidy-0.99-0
5276   media-player-info
5277   mesa-utils
5278   mono-2.0-gac
5279   mono-gac
5280   mono-runtime
5281   nautilus-sendto
5282   nautilus-sendto-empathy
5283   p7zip-full
5284   pkg-config
5285   python-aptdaemon
5286   python-aptdaemon-gtk
5287   python-axiom
5288   python-beautifulsoup
5289   python-bugbuddy
5290   python-clientform
5291   python-coherence
5292   python-configobj
5293   python-crypto
5294   python-cupshelpers
5295   python-elementtree
5296   python-epsilon
5297   python-evolution
5298   python-feedparser
5299   python-gdata
5300   python-gdbm
5301   python-gst0.10
5302   python-gtkglext1
5303   python-gtksourceview2
5304   python-httplib2
5305   python-louie
5306   python-mako
5307   python-markupsafe
5308   python-mechanize
5309   python-nevow
5310   python-notify
5311   python-opengl
5312   python-openssl
5313   python-pam
5314   python-pkg-resources
5315   python-pyasn1
5316   python-pysqlite2
5317   python-rdflib
5318   python-serial
5319   python-tagpy
5320   python-twisted-bin
5321   python-twisted-conch
5322   python-twisted-core
5323   python-twisted-web
5324   python-utidylib
5325   python-webkit
5326   python-xdg
5327   python-zope.interface
5328   remmina
5329   remmina-plugin-data
5330   remmina-plugin-rdp
5331   remmina-plugin-vnc
5332   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
5333   rhythmbox-plugins
5334   rpm-common
5335   rpm2cpio
5336   seahorse-plugins
5337   shotwell
5338   software-center
5339   system-config-printer-udev
5340   telepathy-gabble
5341   telepathy-mission-control-5
5342   telepathy-salut
5343   tomboy
5344   totem
5345   totem-coherence
5346   totem-mozilla
5347   totem-plugins
5348   transmission-common
5349   xdg-user-dirs
5350   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
5351   xserver-xephyr
5352 </p></blockquote>
5353
5354 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
5355
5356 <blockquote><p>
5357   cheese
5358   ekiga
5359   eog
5360   epiphany-extensions
5361   evolution-exchange
5362   fast-user-switch-applet
5363   file-roller
5364   gcalctool
5365   gconf-editor
5366   gdm
5367   gedit
5368   gedit-common
5369   gnome-games
5370   gnome-games-data
5371   gnome-nettool
5372   gnome-system-tools
5373   gnome-themes
5374   gnuchess
5375   gucharmap
5376   guile-1.8-libs
5377   libavahi-ui0
5378   libdmx1
5379   libgalago3
5380   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
5381   libgtksourceview2.0-0
5382   liblircclient0
5383   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
5384   libspeexdsp1
5385   libsvga1
5386   rhythmbox
5387   seahorse
5388   sound-juicer
5389   system-config-printer
5390   totem-common
5391   transmission-gtk
5392   vinagre
5393   vino
5394 </p></blockquote>
5395
5396 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
5397
5398 <blockquote><p>
5399   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
5400 </p></blockquote>
5401
5402 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
5403
5404 <blockquote><p>
5405 [nothing]
5406 </p></blockquote>
5407
5408 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
5409
5410 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
5411
5412 <blockquote><p>
5413   ksmserver
5414 </p></blockquote>
5415
5416 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
5417
5418 <blockquote><p>
5419   kwin
5420   network-manager-kde
5421 </p></blockquote>
5422
5423 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
5424
5425 <blockquote><p>
5426   arts
5427   dolphin
5428   freespacenotifier
5429   google-gadgets-gst
5430   google-gadgets-xul
5431   kappfinder
5432   kcalc
5433   kcharselect
5434   kde-core
5435   kde-plasma-desktop
5436   kde-standard
5437   kde-window-manager
5438   kdeartwork
5439   kdeartwork-emoticons
5440   kdeartwork-style
5441   kdeartwork-theme-icon
5442   kdebase
5443   kdebase-apps
5444   kdebase-workspace
5445   kdebase-workspace-bin
5446   kdebase-workspace-data
5447   kdeeject
5448   kdelibs
5449   kdeplasma-addons
5450   kdeutils
5451   kdewallpapers
5452   kdf
5453   kfloppy
5454   kgpg
5455   khelpcenter4
5456   kinfocenter
5457   konq-plugins-l10n
5458   konqueror-nsplugins
5459   kscreensaver
5460   kscreensaver-xsavers
5461   ktimer
5462   kwrite
5463   libgle3
5464   libkde4-ruby1.8
5465   libkonq5
5466   libkonq5-templates
5467   libnetpbm10
5468   libplasma-ruby
5469   libplasma-ruby1.8
5470   libqt4-ruby1.8
5471   marble-data
5472   marble-plugins
5473   netpbm
5474   nuvola-icon-theme
5475   plasma-dataengines-workspace
5476   plasma-desktop
5477   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
5478   plasma-runners-addons
5479   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
5480   plasma-scriptengine-python
5481   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
5482   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
5483   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
5484   plasma-scriptengines
5485   plasma-wallpapers-addons
5486   plasma-widget-folderview
5487   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
5488   ruby
5489   sweeper
5490   update-notifier-kde
5491   xscreensaver-data-extra
5492   xscreensaver-gl
5493   xscreensaver-gl-extra
5494   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
5495 </p></blockquote>
5496
5497 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
5498
5499 <blockquote><p>
5500   ark
5501   google-gadgets-common
5502   google-gadgets-qt
5503   htdig
5504   kate
5505   kdebase-bin
5506   kdebase-data
5507   kdepasswd
5508   kfind
5509   klipper
5510   konq-plugins
5511   konqueror
5512   ksysguard
5513   ksysguardd
5514   libarchive1
5515   libcln6
5516   libeet1
5517   libeina-svn-06
5518   libggadget-1.0-0b
5519   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
5520   libgps19
5521   libkdecorations4
5522   libkephal4
5523   libkonq4
5524   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
5525   libkscreensaver5
5526   libksgrd4
5527   libksignalplotter4
5528   libkunitconversion4
5529   libkwineffects1a
5530   libmarblewidget4
5531   libntrack-qt4-1
5532   libntrack0
5533   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
5534   libplasmaclock4a
5535   libplasmagenericshell4
5536   libprocesscore4a
5537   libprocessui4a
5538   libqalculate5
5539   libqedje0a
5540   libqtruby4shared2
5541   libqzion0a
5542   libruby1.8
5543   libscim8c2a
5544   libsmokekdecore4-3
5545   libsmokekdeui4-3
5546   libsmokekfile3
5547   libsmokekhtml3
5548   libsmokekio3
5549   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
5550   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
5551   libsmokekparts3
5552   libsmokektexteditor3
5553   libsmokekutils3
5554   libsmokenepomuk3
5555   libsmokephonon3
5556   libsmokeplasma3
5557   libsmokeqtcore4-3
5558   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
5559   libsmokeqtgui4-3
5560   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
5561   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
5562   libsmokeqtscript4-3
5563   libsmokeqtsql4-3
5564   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
5565   libsmokeqttest4-3
5566   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
5567   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
5568   libsmokeqtxml4-3
5569   libsmokesolid3
5570   libsmokesoprano3
5571   libtaskmanager4a
5572   libtidy-0.99-0
5573   libweather-ion4a
5574   libxklavier16
5575   libxxf86misc1
5576   okteta
5577   oxygencursors
5578   plasma-dataengines-addons
5579   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
5580   plasma-widget-lancelot
5581   plasma-widgets-addons
5582   plasma-widgets-workspace
5583   polkit-kde-1
5584   ruby1.8
5585   systemsettings
5586   update-notifier-common
5587 </p></blockquote>
5588
5589 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
5590 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
5591 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
5592 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
5593
5594       </div>
5595       <div class="tags">
5596
5597
5598         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>.
5599
5600
5601       </div>
5602     </div>
5603     <div class="padding"></div>
5604
5605     <div class="entry">
5606       <div class="title">
5607         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
5608       </div>
5609       <div class="date">
5610         27th November 2010
5611       </div>
5612       <div class="body">
5613         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
5614 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
5615 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
5616 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
5617 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
5618 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
5619 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
5620 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
5621
5622 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
5623 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
5624 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
5625 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
5626 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
5627 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
5628 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
5629 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
5630 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
5631 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
5632 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
5633
5634 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
5635 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
5636 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
5637 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
5638 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
5639 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
5640 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
5641 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
5642 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
5643 what is going on.</p>
5644
5645       </div>
5646       <div class="tags">
5647
5648
5649         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>.
5650
5651
5652       </div>
5653     </div>
5654     <div class="padding"></div>
5655
5656     <div class="entry">
5657       <div class="title">
5658         <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>
5659       </div>
5660       <div class="date">
5661         29th November 2010
5662       </div>
5663       <div class="body">
5664         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5665 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
5666 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
5667 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
5668 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
5669 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
5670
5671 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
5672 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
5673 will hold its
5674 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
5675 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
5676 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
5677 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
5678 vote this year.</p>
5679
5680       </div>
5681       <div class="tags">
5682
5683
5684         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>.
5685
5686
5687       </div>
5688     </div>
5689     <div class="padding"></div>
5690
5691     <div class="entry">
5692       <div class="title">
5693         <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>
5694       </div>
5695       <div class="date">
5696          9th December 2010
5697       </div>
5698       <div class="body">
5699         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
5700 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
5701 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
5702 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
5703 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
5704 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
5705 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
5706 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
5707 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
5708 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
5709 operational.</p>
5710
5711 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
5712 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
5713 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
5714 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
5715 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
5716 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
5717 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
5718
5719       </div>
5720       <div class="tags">
5721
5722
5723         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>.
5724
5725
5726       </div>
5727     </div>
5728     <div class="padding"></div>
5729
5730     <div class="entry">
5731       <div class="title">
5732         <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>
5733       </div>
5734       <div class="date">
5735         10th December 2010
5736       </div>
5737       <div class="body">
5738         <p>With this weeks lawless
5739 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
5740 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
5741 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
5742 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
5743 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
5744 A blog post from
5745 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
5746 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
5747 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
5748 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
5749 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
5750 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
5751 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
5752
5753 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
5754 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
5755 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
5756 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
5757 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
5758 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
5759 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
5760 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
5761 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
5762 Debian</a> soon.</p>
5763
5764 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
5765 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
5766 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
5767 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
5768 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
5769 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
5770 you can even get
5771 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
5772 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
5773 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
5774 on the current exchange rates.</p>
5775
5776 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
5777 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
5778 donations to the address
5779 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
5780
5781       </div>
5782       <div class="tags">
5783
5784
5785         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>.
5786
5787
5788       </div>
5789     </div>
5790     <div class="padding"></div>
5791
5792     <div class="entry">
5793       <div class="title">
5794         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
5795       </div>
5796       <div class="date">
5797         11th December 2010
5798       </div>
5799       <div class="body">
5800         <p>As I continue to explore
5801 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
5802 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
5803 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
5804
5805 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
5806 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
5807 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
5808 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
5809 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
5810 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
5811 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
5812 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
5813 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
5814 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
5815 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
5816 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
5817 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
5818 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
5819 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
5820 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
5821 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
5822 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
5823 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
5824 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
5825
5826 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
5827 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
5828 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
5829 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
5830 If the Skolelinux foundation
5831 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
5832 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
5833 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
5834 Given that it is impossible to know if money can across the border or
5835 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
5836 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
5837 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
5838 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
5839
5840 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
5841 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
5842 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
5843 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
5844 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
5845 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
5846 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
5847 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
5848 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
5849 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
5850 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
5851 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
5852 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
5853 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
5854 currencies.</p>
5855
5856 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
5857 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
5858 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
5859 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
5860 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
5861 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
5862 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
5863 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
5864 BitCoins.  Check out
5865 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
5866 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
5867 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
5868 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
5869 yet.</p>
5870
5871 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
5872 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
5873 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
5874 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
5875 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
5876
5877       </div>
5878       <div class="tags">
5879
5880
5881         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>.
5882
5883
5884       </div>
5885     </div>
5886     <div class="padding"></div>
5887
5888     <div class="entry">
5889       <div class="title">
5890         <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>
5891       </div>
5892       <div class="date">
5893         22nd December 2010
5894       </div>
5895       <div class="body">
5896         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
5897 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
5898 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
5899 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
5900 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
5901 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
5902 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
5903 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
5904 university.</p>
5905
5906 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
5907 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
5908 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
5909 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
5910 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
5911 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
5912 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
5913 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
5914
5915 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
5916 I perform on a new model.</p>
5917
5918 <ul>
5919
5920 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
5921 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
5922 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
5923
5924 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
5925 installation, X.org is working.</li>
5926
5927 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
5928 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
5929 reported by the program.</li>
5930
5931 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
5932 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
5933 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
5934 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
5935 normally test this by playing
5936 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
5937 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
5938
5939 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
5940 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
5941
5942 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
5943 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
5944
5945 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
5946 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
5947
5948 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
5949 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
5950 few.</li>
5951
5952 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
5953 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
5954 notice this.</li>
5955
5956 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
5957 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
5958 resume.</li>
5959
5960 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
5961 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
5962 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
5963 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
5964 not.</li>
5965
5966 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
5967 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
5968 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
5969 existence.</li>
5970
5971 </ul>
5972
5973 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
5974 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
5975 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
5976 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
5977 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
5978 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
5979 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
5980 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
5981
5982       </div>
5983       <div class="tags">
5984
5985
5986         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>.
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/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
5996       </div>
5997       <div class="date">
5998         25th December 2010
5999       </div>
6000       <div class="body">
6001         <p>Half a year ago I
6002 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
6003 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
6004 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
6005 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
6006
6007 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
6008 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
6009 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
6010 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
6011 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
6012 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
6013 got such a great test tool available.</p>
6014
6015       </div>
6016       <div class="tags">
6017
6018
6019         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>.
6020
6021
6022       </div>
6023     </div>
6024     <div class="padding"></div>
6025
6026     <div class="entry">
6027       <div class="title">
6028         <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>
6029       </div>
6030       <div class="date">
6031         25th December 2010
6032       </div>
6033       <div class="body">
6034         <p>A few days ago
6035 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
6036 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
6037 2.0 of
6038 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
6039 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
6040 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
6041 Nothing very surprising there, given
6042 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
6043 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
6044 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
6045 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
6046 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
6047 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
6048 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
6049 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
6050 standard definition from its content.</p>
6051
6052 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
6053 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
6054 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
6055 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
6056 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
6057 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
6058 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
6059 background information about that story is available in
6060 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
6061 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
6062
6063 <blockquote>
6064 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
6065 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
6066 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
6067
6068 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
6069
6070 <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>
6071
6072 <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>
6073
6074 <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>
6075
6076 <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>
6077
6078 <p>
6079 <ul>
6080 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
6081 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
6082 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
6083 </ul>
6084 </p>
6085
6086 <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>
6087
6088 <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>
6089
6090 <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>
6091
6092 <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>
6093
6094 <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>
6095
6096
6097 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
6098 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
6099 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
6100 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
6101 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
6102 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
6103
6104 </p>
6105
6106 <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>
6107
6108 <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>
6109
6110 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
6111
6112 <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>
6113
6114 <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>
6115
6116 <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>
6117
6118 <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>
6119
6120 <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>
6121
6122 <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>
6123
6124 <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>
6125
6126 <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>
6127
6128 <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>
6129
6130 <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>
6131
6132 <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>
6133
6134 <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>
6135
6136 <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>
6137
6138 <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>
6139
6140 <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>
6141
6142 <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>
6143
6144 <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>
6145
6146 <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>
6147
6148 <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>
6149
6150 <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>
6151
6152 <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>
6153
6154 <p>On security:</p>
6155
6156 <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>
6157
6158 <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>
6159
6160 <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>
6161
6162 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
6163
6164 <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>
6165
6166 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
6167
6168 <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>
6169
6170 <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>
6171
6172 <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>
6173
6174 <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>
6175
6176 <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>
6177
6178 <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>
6179
6180 <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>
6181
6182 <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>
6183
6184 <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>
6185
6186 <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>
6187
6188 <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>
6189
6190 <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>
6191
6192 <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>
6193
6194 <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>
6195
6196 <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>
6197
6198 <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>
6199
6200 <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>
6201
6202 <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>
6203
6204 <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>
6205
6206 <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>
6207
6208 <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>
6209
6210 <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>
6211
6212 <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>
6213
6214 <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>
6215
6216 <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>
6217
6218 <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>
6219
6220 <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>
6221
6222 <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>
6223
6224 <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>
6225
6226 <p>Cordially,<br>
6227 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
6228 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
6229 </blockquote>
6230
6231       </div>
6232       <div class="tags">
6233
6234
6235         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>.
6236
6237
6238       </div>
6239     </div>
6240     <div class="padding"></div>
6241
6242     <div class="entry">
6243       <div class="title">
6244         <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>
6245       </div>
6246       <div class="date">
6247         25th December 2010
6248       </div>
6249       <div class="body">
6250         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
6251 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
6252
6253 <blockquote>
6254
6255 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
6256 as follows:</p>
6257
6258 <ol>
6259
6260 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
6261 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
6262 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
6263
6264 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
6265 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
6266 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
6267 parties.</li>
6268
6269 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
6270 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
6271 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
6272
6273 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
6274 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
6275
6276 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
6277
6278 </ol>
6279
6280 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
6281 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
6282 products based on the standard.</p>
6283 </blockquote>
6284
6285 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
6286 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
6287 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
6288 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
6289 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
6290 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
6291 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
6292 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
6293
6294 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
6295
6296 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
6297 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
6298 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
6299 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
6300 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
6301 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
6302 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
6303 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
6304 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
6305 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
6306 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
6307 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
6308 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
6309 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
6310
6311 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
6312
6313 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
6314 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
6315 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
6316 documentation indicating this.</p>
6317
6318 <p>According to
6319 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
6320 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
6321 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
6322 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
6323 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
6324 report is correct.</p>
6325
6326 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
6327
6328 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
6329 container format</a> and both the
6330 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
6331 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
6332 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
6333
6334 <blockquote>
6335
6336 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
6337 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
6338 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
6339 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
6340 specification compliance.
6341
6342 </blockquote>
6343
6344 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
6345 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
6346 this is the term:<p>
6347
6348 <blockquote>
6349
6350 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
6351 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
6352 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
6353 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
6354 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
6355 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
6356 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
6357 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
6358 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
6359 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
6360 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
6361 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
6362
6363 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
6364 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
6365 </blockquote>
6366
6367 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
6368 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
6369 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
6370 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
6371 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
6372
6373 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
6374
6375 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
6376 Theora format.
6377 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
6378 and
6379 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
6380 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
6381 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
6382 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
6383 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
6384 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
6385 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
6386 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
6387
6388 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
6389
6390 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
6391
6392 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
6393
6394 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
6395 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
6396 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
6397 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
6398 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
6399 this.</p>
6400
6401 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
6402 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
6403
6404       </div>
6405       <div class="tags">
6406
6407
6408         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>.
6409
6410
6411       </div>
6412     </div>
6413     <div class="padding"></div>
6414
6415     <div class="entry">
6416       <div class="title">
6417         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
6418       </div>
6419       <div class="date">
6420         27th December 2010
6421       </div>
6422       <div class="body">
6423         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
6424 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
6425 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
6426 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
6427 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
6428 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
6429 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
6430 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
6431
6432 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
6433 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
6434 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
6435 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
6436 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
6437 page</a>.</p>
6438
6439 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
6440 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
6441 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
6442 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
6443 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
6444 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
6445 specification on equal terms.</p>
6446
6447 <blockquote>
6448
6449 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
6450 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
6451 open standard:</p>
6452
6453 <ul>
6454
6455 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
6456 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
6457 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
6458 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
6459
6460 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
6461 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
6462 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
6463 nominal fee.</li>
6464
6465 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
6466 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
6467 free basis.</li>
6468
6469 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
6470
6471 </ul>
6472 </blockquote>
6473
6474 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
6475 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
6476 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
6477 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
6478 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
6479 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
6480 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
6481
6482 <blockquote>
6483
6484 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
6485
6486 <ol>
6487
6488 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
6489 tilgængelig.</li>
6490
6491 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
6492 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
6493
6494 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
6495 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
6496
6497 </ol>
6498
6499 </blockquote>
6500
6501 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
6502 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
6503
6504 <blockquote>
6505
6506 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
6507
6508 <ol>
6509
6510 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
6511 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
6512
6513 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
6514 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
6515 Standard themselves;</li>
6516
6517 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
6518 any party or in any business model;</li>
6519
6520 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
6521 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
6522 parties;</li>
6523
6524 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
6525 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
6526 parties.</li>
6527
6528 </ol>
6529
6530 </blockquote>
6531
6532 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
6533 its
6534 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
6535 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
6536
6537 <blockquote>
6538 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
6539
6540 <ul>
6541
6542 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
6543   democratic:
6544
6545          <ul>
6546
6547          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
6548             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
6549             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
6550             and managed.</li>
6551
6552          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
6553             method, can be changed through input from all
6554             participants.</li>
6555
6556          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
6557             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
6558
6559          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
6560             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
6561
6562          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
6563             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
6564             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
6565
6566          </ul>
6567
6568 </li>
6569
6570 </ul>
6571
6572 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
6573 <ul>
6574
6575 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
6576   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
6577   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
6578   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
6579   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
6580
6581 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
6582   a technical or economic barriers</li>
6583
6584 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
6585   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
6586   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
6587   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
6588   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
6589   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
6590   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
6591   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
6592   intended to function.</li>
6593
6594 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
6595   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
6596   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
6597
6598 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
6599   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
6600   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
6601   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
6602   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
6603   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
6604   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
6605   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
6606
6607       <ul>
6608
6609       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
6610         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
6611         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
6612
6613       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
6614         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
6615         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
6616         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
6617
6618       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
6619         licensor</li>
6620
6621       </ul>
6622 </li>
6623
6624 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
6625   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
6626   or restricted licensing terms</li>
6627
6628 </ul>
6629
6630 </blockquote>
6631
6632 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
6633 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
6634 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
6635 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
6636 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
6637 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
6638 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
6639 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
6640 Standards.</p>
6641
6642       </div>
6643       <div class="tags">
6644
6645
6646         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>.
6647
6648
6649       </div>
6650     </div>
6651     <div class="padding"></div>
6652
6653     <div class="entry">
6654       <div class="title">
6655         <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>
6656       </div>
6657       <div class="date">
6658         30th December 2010
6659       </div>
6660       <div class="body">
6661         <p>After trying to
6662 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
6663 Ogg Theora</a> to
6664 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
6665 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
6666 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
6667 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
6668 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
6669 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
6670 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
6671
6672 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
6673 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
6674 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
6675 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
6676 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
6677 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
6678 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
6679
6680 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
6681 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
6682
6683       </div>
6684       <div class="tags">
6685
6686
6687         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>.
6688
6689
6690       </div>
6691     </div>
6692     <div class="padding"></div>
6693
6694     <div class="entry">
6695       <div class="title">
6696         <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>
6697       </div>
6698       <div class="date">
6699         12th January 2011
6700       </div>
6701       <div class="body">
6702         <p>Today I discovered
6703 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
6704 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
6705 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
6706 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
6707 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
6708 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
6709 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
6710 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
6711 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
6712 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
6713 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
6714 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
6715 on the Google announcement is available from
6716 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
6717 A good read. :)</p>
6718
6719 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
6720 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
6721 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
6722 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
6723 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
6724 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
6725 browsers support H.264, and others support
6726 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
6727 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
6728 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
6729 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
6730 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
6731 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
6732 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
6733 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
6734
6735 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
6736 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
6737 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
6738 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
6739 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
6740 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
6741 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
6742
6743 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
6744 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
6745 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
6746 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
6747 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
6748 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
6749 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
6750
6751 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
6752 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
6753 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
6754 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
6755 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
6756 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
6757 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
6758
6759 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
6760 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
6761 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
6762 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
6763 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
6764 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
6765 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
6766 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
6767 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
6768 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
6769 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
6770 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
6771 I guess time will tell.</p>
6772
6773 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
6774 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
6775 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
6776
6777       </div>
6778       <div class="tags">
6779
6780
6781         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>.
6782
6783
6784       </div>
6785     </div>
6786     <div class="padding"></div>
6787
6788     <div class="entry">
6789       <div class="title">
6790         <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>
6791       </div>
6792       <div class="date">
6793         16th January 2011
6794       </div>
6795       <div class="body">
6796         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
6797 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
6798 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
6799 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
6800 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
6801 the Wikipedia article on
6802 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
6803 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
6804 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
6805 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
6806 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
6807 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
6808 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
6809 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
6810 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
6811 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
6812 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
6813 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
6814
6815 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
6816 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
6817 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
6818 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
6819 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
6820 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
6821 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
6822 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
6823 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
6824 from last week</a>.</p>
6825
6826 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
6827 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
6828 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
6829 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
6830 was without royalties and license terms, check out
6831 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
6832 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
6833
6834 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
6835 available from
6836 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
6837 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
6838 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
6839
6840 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
6841 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
6842 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
6843 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
6844
6845       </div>
6846       <div class="tags">
6847
6848
6849         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>.
6850
6851
6852       </div>
6853     </div>
6854     <div class="padding"></div>
6855
6856     <div class="entry">
6857       <div class="title">
6858         <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>
6859       </div>
6860       <div class="date">
6861         23rd January 2011
6862       </div>
6863       <div class="body">
6864         <p>In the
6865 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
6866 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
6867 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
6868 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
6869 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
6870 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
6871 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
6872 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
6873 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
6874 one of my machines like this:</p>
6875
6876 <pre>
6877 loaded modules:
6878 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
6879 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
6880 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
6881 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
6882 10de:03ec pata_amd
6883 10de:03f6 sata_nv
6884 1022:1103 k8temp
6885 109e:036e bttv
6886 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
6887 11ab:4364 sky2
6888 </pre>
6889
6890 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
6891 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
6892
6893 <pre>
6894 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
6895     echo loaded pci modules:
6896     (
6897         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
6898         for address in * ; do
6899             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6900                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6901                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6902                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6903                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
6904                     echo "$id $module"
6905                 fi
6906             fi
6907         done
6908     )
6909     echo
6910 fi
6911 </pre>
6912
6913 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
6914 mappings:</p>
6915
6916 <pre>
6917 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
6918     echo loaded usb modules:
6919     (
6920         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
6921         for address in * ; do
6922             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6923                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6924                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6925                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6926                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
6927                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
6928                         echo "$id $module"
6929                     fi
6930                 fi
6931             fi
6932         done
6933     )
6934     echo
6935 fi
6936 </pre>
6937
6938 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
6939 well.</p>
6940
6941       </div>
6942       <div class="tags">
6943
6944
6945         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>.
6946
6947
6948       </div>
6949     </div>
6950     <div class="padding"></div>
6951
6952     <div class="entry">
6953       <div class="title">
6954         <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>
6955       </div>
6956       <div class="date">
6957         28th January 2011
6958       </div>
6959       <div class="body">
6960         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
6961 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
6962 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
6963 available on the Internet, and check our locally
6964 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
6965 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
6966 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
6967 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
6968 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
6969 out which security holes were present in our free software
6970 collection.</p>
6971
6972 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
6973 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
6974 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
6975 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
6976 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
6977 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
6978 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
6979 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
6980 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
6981 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
6982 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
6983 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
6984 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
6985 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
6986 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
6987 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
6988
6989 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
6990 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
6991 check out, one could look up
6992 <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
6993 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
6994 The most recent one is
6995 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
6996 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
6997 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
6998
6999 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
7000 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
7001 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
7002 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
7003 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
7004 security issues out.</p>
7005
7006 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
7007 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
7008 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
7009 RHEL is providing
7010 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
7011 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
7012 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
7013
7014 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
7015 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
7016 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
7017 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
7018 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
7019 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
7020 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
7021 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
7022 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
7023 established soon.</p>
7024
7025 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
7026 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
7027 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
7028 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
7029 for their packages.</p>
7030
7031       </div>
7032       <div class="tags">
7033
7034
7035         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>.
7036
7037
7038       </div>
7039     </div>
7040     <div class="padding"></div>
7041
7042     <div class="entry">
7043       <div class="title">
7044         <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>
7045       </div>
7046       <div class="date">
7047          3rd April 2011
7048       </div>
7049       <div class="body">
7050         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
7051 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
7052 update in English.</p>
7053
7054 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
7055 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
7056 of the British service
7057 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
7058 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
7059 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
7060 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
7061 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
7062 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
7063 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
7064 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
7065 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
7066 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
7067 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
7068 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
7069 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
7070
7071 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
7072 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
7073 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
7074 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
7075 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
7076 public infrastructure.</p>
7077
7078 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
7079 such service?</p>
7080
7081       </div>
7082       <div class="tags">
7083
7084
7085         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>.
7086
7087
7088       </div>
7089     </div>
7090     <div class="padding"></div>
7091
7092     <div class="entry">
7093       <div class="title">
7094         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
7095       </div>
7096       <div class="date">
7097          6th April 2011
7098       </div>
7099       <div class="body">
7100         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
7101 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
7102 A few days ago the project
7103 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
7104 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
7105 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
7106 into Gnash.</p>
7107
7108       </div>
7109       <div class="tags">
7110
7111
7112         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>.
7113
7114
7115       </div>
7116     </div>
7117     <div class="padding"></div>
7118
7119     <div class="entry">
7120       <div class="title">
7121         <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>
7122       </div>
7123       <div class="date">
7124         29th April 2011
7125       </div>
7126       <div class="body">
7127         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
7128 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
7129 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
7130 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
7131 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
7132 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
7133 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
7134 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
7135 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
7136 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
7137 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
7138 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
7139 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
7140
7141 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
7142 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
7143 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
7144 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
7145 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
7146 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
7147 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
7148 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
7149 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
7150 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
7151 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
7152 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
7153 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
7154
7155 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
7156 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
7157 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
7158 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
7159 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
7160 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
7161 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
7162 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
7163 it.</p>
7164
7165 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
7166 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
7167 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
7168 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
7169 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
7170 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
7171 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
7172
7173 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
7174 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
7175 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
7176 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
7177 and range= options.</p>
7178
7179 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
7180 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
7181 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
7182 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
7183 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
7184 to best handle this.  I've noticed
7185 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
7186 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
7187 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
7188 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
7189
7190 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
7191 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
7192 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
7193 discussions instead of only
7194 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
7195 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
7196 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
7197 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
7198 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
7199 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
7200
7201       </div>
7202       <div class="tags">
7203
7204
7205         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>.
7206
7207
7208       </div>
7209     </div>
7210     <div class="padding"></div>
7211
7212     <div class="entry">
7213       <div class="title">
7214         <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>
7215       </div>
7216       <div class="date">
7217         30th April 2011
7218       </div>
7219       <div class="body">
7220         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
7221 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
7222 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
7223 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
7224 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
7225 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
7226 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
7227 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
7228 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
7229 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
7230
7231 <p>Where is it?  Visit
7232 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
7233 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
7234 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
7235 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
7236
7237       </div>
7238       <div class="tags">
7239
7240
7241         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>.
7242
7243
7244       </div>
7245     </div>
7246     <div class="padding"></div>
7247
7248     <div class="entry">
7249       <div class="title">
7250         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
7251       </div>
7252       <div class="date">
7253         20th June 2011
7254       </div>
7255       <div class="body">
7256         <p>Reading
7257 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
7258 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
7259 parts of the
7260 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
7261 and
7262 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
7263 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
7264 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
7265 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
7266
7267       </div>
7268       <div class="tags">
7269
7270
7271         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>.
7272
7273
7274       </div>
7275     </div>
7276     <div class="padding"></div>
7277
7278     <div class="entry">
7279       <div class="title">
7280         <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>
7281       </div>
7282       <div class="date">
7283         26th July 2011
7284       </div>
7285       <div class="body">
7286         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
7287 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
7288 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
7289 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
7290 security support for a few years.</p>
7291
7292 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
7293 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
7294 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
7295 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
7296 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
7297 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
7298 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
7299 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
7300 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
7301 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
7302 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
7303 easier in the future.</p>
7304
7305 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
7306 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
7307 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
7308 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
7309 do not have time for.</p>
7310
7311       </div>
7312       <div class="tags">
7313
7314
7315         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>.
7316
7317
7318       </div>
7319     </div>
7320     <div class="padding"></div>
7321
7322     <div class="entry">
7323       <div class="title">
7324         <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>
7325       </div>
7326       <div class="date">
7327         29th July 2011
7328       </div>
7329       <div class="body">
7330         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
7331 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
7332 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
7333 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
7334 issues.</p>
7335
7336 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
7337 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
7338 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
7339
7340 <ol>
7341
7342 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
7343 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
7344 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
7345 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
7346 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
7347 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
7348 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
7349 Debian.</li>
7350
7351 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
7352 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
7353 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
7354 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
7355 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
7356 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
7357 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
7358 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
7359 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
7360 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
7361 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
7362 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
7363 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
7364
7365 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
7366 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
7367 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
7368 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
7369 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
7370 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
7371 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
7372 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
7373 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
7374 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
7375
7376 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
7377 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
7378 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
7379 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
7380 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
7381 latter behaviour.</li>
7382
7383 </ol>
7384
7385 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
7386 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
7387 it do not matter much.</p>
7388
7389 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
7390 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
7391 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
7392
7393       </div>
7394       <div class="tags">
7395
7396
7397         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>.
7398
7399
7400       </div>
7401     </div>
7402     <div class="padding"></div>
7403
7404     <div class="entry">
7405       <div class="title">
7406         <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>
7407       </div>
7408       <div class="date">
7409         30th July 2011
7410       </div>
7411       <div class="body">
7412         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
7413 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
7414 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
7415 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
7416 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
7417 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
7418 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
7419 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
7420 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
7421 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
7422 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
7423 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
7424 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
7425
7426 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
7427 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
7428 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
7429 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
7430 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
7431 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
7432 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
7433 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
7434 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
7435
7436 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
7437 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
7438 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
7439 is presented.</p>
7440
7441 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
7442 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
7443 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
7444 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
7445 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
7446 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
7447 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
7448 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
7449 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
7450 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
7451 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
7452 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
7453 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
7454 find time to push this forward.</p>
7455
7456       </div>
7457       <div class="tags">
7458
7459
7460         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>.
7461
7462
7463       </div>
7464     </div>
7465     <div class="padding"></div>
7466
7467     <div class="entry">
7468       <div class="title">
7469         <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>
7470       </div>
7471       <div class="date">
7472          4th August 2011
7473       </div>
7474       <div class="body">
7475         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
7476 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
7477 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
7478 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
7479 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
7480 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
7481 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
7482 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
7483 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
7484
7485 <p><blockquote>
7486 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
7487 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
7488 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
7489 </blockquote></p>
7490
7491 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
7492 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
7493 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
7494 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
7495 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
7496 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
7497 hard to explain.</p>
7498
7499 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
7500 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
7501 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
7502 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
7503 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
7504 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
7505 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
7506 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
7507 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
7508 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
7509 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
7510 mode).</p>
7511
7512 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
7513 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
7514 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
7515 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
7516 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
7517 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
7518 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
7519 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
7520 after visiting single user mode.</p>
7521
7522 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
7523 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
7524 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
7525 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
7526 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
7527 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
7528 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
7529 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
7530
7531 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
7532 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
7533 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
7534
7535       </div>
7536       <div class="tags">
7537
7538
7539         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>.
7540
7541
7542       </div>
7543     </div>
7544     <div class="padding"></div>
7545
7546     <div class="entry">
7547       <div class="title">
7548         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
7549       </div>
7550       <div class="date">
7551         17th September 2011
7552       </div>
7553       <div class="body">
7554         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
7555 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
7556 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
7557 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
7558 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
7559 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
7560 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
7561 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
7562
7563 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
7564
7565 <blockquote><pre>
7566 #!/bin/sh
7567 # apt-get install lsdvd
7568 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
7569 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
7570 </pre></blockquote>
7571
7572 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
7573 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
7574 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
7575 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
7576
7577 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
7578 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
7579 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
7580 back as an ISO.
7581
7582 <blockquote><pre>
7583 #!/bin/sh
7584 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
7585 set -e
7586 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
7587 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
7588 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
7589 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
7590 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
7591 </pre></blockquote>
7592
7593 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
7594
7595 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
7596 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
7597 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
7598 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
7599 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
7600
7601 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
7602 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
7603 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
7604 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
7605 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
7606 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
7607
7608       </div>
7609       <div class="tags">
7610
7611
7612         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>.
7613
7614
7615       </div>
7616     </div>
7617     <div class="padding"></div>
7618
7619     <div class="entry">
7620       <div class="title">
7621         <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>
7622       </div>
7623       <div class="date">
7624          7th October 2011
7625       </div>
7626       <div class="body">
7627         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
7628 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
7629 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
7630 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
7631 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
7632 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
7633 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
7634 models.</p>
7635
7636 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
7637 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
7638 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
7639 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
7640
7641 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
7642 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
7643 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
7644 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (abount
7645 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
7646 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
7647 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
7648 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
7649 distributed.</p>
7650
7651 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
7652
7653 <ul>
7654
7655 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
7656   other relevant equipment.</li>
7657
7658 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
7659
7660 </ul>
7661
7662 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
7663 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
7664 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
7665 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
7666 books available.</p>
7667
7668 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
7669 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
7670 libraries. :)</p>
7671
7672       </div>
7673       <div class="tags">
7674
7675
7676         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>.
7677
7678
7679       </div>
7680     </div>
7681     <div class="padding"></div>
7682
7683     <div class="entry">
7684       <div class="title">
7685         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
7686       </div>
7687       <div class="date">
7688         21st November 2011
7689       </div>
7690       <div class="body">
7691         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
7692 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
7693 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
7694 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
7695 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
7696 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
7697 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
7698 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
7699 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
7700 the tools to do so.</p>
7701
7702 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
7703 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
7704 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
7705 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
7706
7707 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
7708 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
7709 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
7710 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
7711 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
7712 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
7713 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
7714 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
7715
7716 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
7717 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
7718 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
7719
7720 <p><pre>
7721 #!/usr/bin/perl
7722 use strict;
7723 use warnings;
7724 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
7725 BEGIN {
7726     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
7727     my %rhelmodules = (
7728         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
7729         );
7730     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
7731         eval "use $module;";
7732         if ($@) {
7733             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
7734             system("yum install -y $pkg");
7735             eval "use $module;";
7736         }
7737     }
7738 }
7739 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
7740
7741 upgrade_dell();
7742
7743 exit 0;
7744
7745 sub run_firmware_script {
7746     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
7747     unless ($script) {
7748         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
7749         exit 1
7750     }
7751     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
7752
7753     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
7754         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
7755     } else {
7756         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
7757     }
7758 }
7759
7760 sub run_firmware_scripts {
7761     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
7762     # Run firmware packages
7763     for my $dir (@dirs) {
7764         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
7765         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
7766         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
7767             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
7768             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
7769         }
7770         closedir $dh;
7771     }
7772 }
7773
7774 sub download {
7775     my $url = shift;
7776     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
7777     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
7778 }
7779
7780 sub upgrade_dell {
7781     my @dirs;
7782     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
7783     chomp $product;
7784
7785     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
7786
7787         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
7788         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
7789
7790         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
7791             CLEANUP => 1
7792             );
7793         chdir($tmpdir);
7794         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
7795         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
7796         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
7797         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
7798         my $fwopts = "-q";
7799         if (@paths) {
7800             for my $url (@paths) {
7801                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
7802             }
7803             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
7804         } else {
7805             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
7806             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
7807         }
7808         chdir('/');
7809     } else {
7810         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
7811         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
7812     }
7813 }
7814
7815 sub fetch_dell_fw {
7816     my $path = shift;
7817     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
7818     download($url);
7819 }
7820
7821 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
7822 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
7823 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
7824 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
7825     my $filename = shift;
7826
7827     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
7828     chomp $product;
7829     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
7830
7831     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
7832
7833     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
7834     my @paths;
7835     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
7836         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
7837         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
7838         my $oscode;
7839         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
7840             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
7841         } else {
7842             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
7843         }
7844         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
7845         {
7846             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
7847         }
7848     }
7849     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
7850         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
7851
7852         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
7853         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
7854
7855         my $cpath = $component->{path};
7856         for my $path (@paths) {
7857             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
7858                 push(@paths, $cpath);
7859             }
7860         }
7861     }
7862     return @paths;
7863 }
7864 </pre>
7865
7866 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
7867 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
7868 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
7869 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
7870 outdated.</p>
7871
7872       </div>
7873       <div class="tags">
7874
7875
7876         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>.
7877
7878
7879       </div>
7880     </div>
7881     <div class="padding"></div>
7882
7883     <div class="entry">
7884       <div class="title">
7885         <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>
7886       </div>
7887       <div class="date">
7888          3rd January 2012
7889       </div>
7890       <div class="body">
7891         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
7892 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
7893 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
7894 interesting.</p>
7895
7896 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
7897 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
7898 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
7899 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
7900 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
7901 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
7902 wrap up its tasks.</p>
7903
7904 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
7905 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
7906 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
7907 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
7908 because I was typing.</P>
7909
7910 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
7911 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
7912 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
7913 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
7914 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
7915 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
7916 generate entropy.</p>
7917
7918 <p>The fix is in
7919 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
7920 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
7921 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
7922 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
7923
7924       </div>
7925       <div class="tags">
7926
7927
7928         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>.
7929
7930
7931       </div>
7932     </div>
7933     <div class="padding"></div>
7934
7935     <div class="entry">
7936       <div class="title">
7937         <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>
7938       </div>
7939       <div class="date">
7940          7th January 2012
7941       </div>
7942       <div class="body">
7943         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
7944 the second beta version of
7945 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
7946 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
7947 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
7948 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
7949 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
7950 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
7951 on the project announcement list.</p>
7952
7953       </div>
7954       <div class="tags">
7955
7956
7957         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>.
7958
7959
7960       </div>
7961     </div>
7962     <div class="padding"></div>
7963
7964     <div class="entry">
7965       <div class="title">
7966         <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>
7967       </div>
7968       <div class="date">
7969         10th January 2012
7970       </div>
7971       <div class="body">
7972         <p>In the Squeeze version of
7973 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
7974 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
7975 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
7976 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
7977 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
7978 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
7979 first time.</p>
7980
7981 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
7982 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
7983 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
7984 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
7985
7986 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
7987 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
7988 new setting.</p>
7989
7990 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
7991 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
7992 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
7993
7994       </div>
7995       <div class="tags">
7996
7997
7998         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>.
7999
8000
8001       </div>
8002     </div>
8003     <div class="padding"></div>
8004
8005     <div class="entry">
8006       <div class="title">
8007         <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>
8008       </div>
8009       <div class="date">
8010         25th January 2012
8011       </div>
8012       <div class="body">
8013         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
8014 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
8015 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
8016 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
8017 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
8018
8019 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
8020 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
8021 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
8022 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
8023 this is done, log on to the central server and run
8024 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
8025 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
8026 will look similar to this:</p>
8027
8028 <p><blockquote><pre>
8029 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
8030 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
8031 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.
8032
8033 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
8034
8035 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8036 enter password: *******
8037 %
8038 </pre></blockquote></p>
8039
8040 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
8041 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
8042 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
8043 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
8044 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
8045 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
8046 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
8047 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
8048 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
8049 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
8050 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
8051 automatically.</p>
8052
8053 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
8054 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
8055
8056 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
8057 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
8058 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
8059
8060       </div>
8061       <div class="tags">
8062
8063
8064         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
8065
8066
8067       </div>
8068     </div>
8069     <div class="padding"></div>
8070
8071     <div class="entry">
8072       <div class="title">
8073         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
8074       </div>
8075       <div class="date">
8076         27th January 2012
8077       </div>
8078       <div class="body">
8079         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
8080 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
8081 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
8082 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
8083 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
8084 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
8085 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
8086
8087 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
8088 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
8089 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
8090 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
8091 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
8092 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
8093 not taken care of by this.</p>
8094
8095 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
8096 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
8097 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
8098 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
8099 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
8100 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
8101 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
8102 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
8103 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
8104 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
8105 firmware packages.</p>
8106
8107 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
8108 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
8109 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
8110 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
8111 initrd with extra firmware, the
8112 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
8113 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
8114 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
8115
8116 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
8117 network cards working.  For this,
8118 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
8119 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
8120 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
8121
8122 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
8123 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
8124 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
8125
8126 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
8127 try.</p>
8128
8129       </div>
8130       <div class="tags">
8131
8132
8133         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>.
8134
8135
8136       </div>
8137     </div>
8138     <div class="padding"></div>
8139
8140     <div class="entry">
8141       <div class="title">
8142         <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>
8143       </div>
8144       <div class="date">
8145          4th February 2012
8146       </div>
8147       <div class="body">
8148         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
8149 publish the third beta version of
8150 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
8151 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
8152 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
8153 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
8154 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
8155 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
8156 on the project announcement list.</p>
8157
8158 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
8159 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
8160
8161 <ul>
8162
8163 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
8164   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
8165   the installation.</li>
8166
8167 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
8168   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
8169
8170 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
8171   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
8172   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
8173
8174 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
8175   for the local system administrator is created during installation
8176   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
8177   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
8178   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
8179   up to date on the system.</li>
8180
8181 </ul>
8182
8183 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
8184 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
8185 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
8186 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
8187
8188 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
8189 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
8190 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
8191 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
8192 will see you there?</p>
8193
8194       </div>
8195       <div class="tags">
8196
8197
8198         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>.
8199
8200
8201       </div>
8202     </div>
8203     <div class="padding"></div>
8204
8205     <div class="entry">
8206       <div class="title">
8207         <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>
8208       </div>
8209       <div class="date">
8210          5th February 2012
8211       </div>
8212       <div class="body">
8213         <p>Since the Lenny version of
8214 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
8215 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
8216 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
8217 in the morning.  This is done using the
8218 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
8219
8220 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
8221 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
8222 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
8223 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
8224 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
8225 the
8226 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
8227 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
8228 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
8229 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
8230 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
8231
8232 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
8233 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
8234 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
8235 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
8236 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
8237 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
8238 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
8239
8240 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
8241 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
8242 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
8243 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
8244 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
8245
8246       </div>
8247       <div class="tags">
8248
8249
8250         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8251
8252
8253       </div>
8254     </div>
8255     <div class="padding"></div>
8256
8257     <div class="entry">
8258       <div class="title">
8259         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
8260       </div>
8261       <div class="date">
8262         13th February 2012
8263       </div>
8264       <div class="body">
8265         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
8266 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
8267 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
8268 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
8269 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
8270 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
8271 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
8272 change the global proxy setting by editing
8273 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
8274 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
8275
8276 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
8277 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
8278 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
8279
8280 <blockquote><pre>
8281 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
8282 {
8283    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
8284        isPlainHostName(host) ||
8285        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
8286       return "DIRECT";
8287    else
8288       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
8289 }
8290 </pre></blockquote>
8291
8292 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
8293
8294 <blockquote><pre>
8295 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
8296 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
8297 </pre></blockquote>
8298
8299 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
8300 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
8301 would be used for
8302 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
8303 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
8304 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
8305 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
8306 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
8307 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
8308 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
8309 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
8310 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
8311 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
8312
8313 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
8314 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
8315 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
8316 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
8317 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
8318 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
8319
8320 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
8321 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
8322 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
8323 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
8324 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
8325 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
8326 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
8327 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
8328 the network setup changes.</p>
8329
8330 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
8331 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
8332 draft</a> and a
8333 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
8334 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
8335
8336       </div>
8337       <div class="tags">
8338
8339
8340         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>.
8341
8342
8343       </div>
8344     </div>
8345     <div class="padding"></div>
8346
8347     <div class="entry">
8348       <div class="title">
8349         <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>
8350       </div>
8351       <div class="date">
8352         14th February 2012
8353       </div>
8354       <div class="body">
8355         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
8356 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
8357 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
8358 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
8359 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
8360 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
8361 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
8362 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
8363 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
8364
8365 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
8366 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
8367 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
8368 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
8369 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
8370
8371 <blockquote><pre>
8372 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
8373 do
8374     printf "Failed disk $d: "
8375     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
8376 done
8377 </blockquote></pre>
8378
8379 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
8380 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
8381
8382 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
8383
8384 <blockquote><pre>
8385 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
8386 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
8387 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
8388 </blockquote></pre>
8389
8390 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
8391 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
8392 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
8393 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
8394 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
8395 mounted inside my box.</p>
8396
8397 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
8398 Software RAID in the
8399 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
8400 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
8401 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
8402 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
8403 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
8404 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
8405
8406       </div>
8407       <div class="tags">
8408
8409
8410         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>.
8411
8412
8413       </div>
8414     </div>
8415     <div class="padding"></div>
8416
8417     <div class="entry">
8418       <div class="title">
8419         <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>
8420       </div>
8421       <div class="date">
8422         19th February 2012
8423       </div>
8424       <div class="body">
8425         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
8426 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
8427 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
8428 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
8429 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
8430 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
8431 solution for your school.</p>
8432
8433       </div>
8434       <div class="tags">
8435
8436
8437         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>.
8438
8439
8440       </div>
8441     </div>
8442     <div class="padding"></div>
8443
8444     <div class="entry">
8445       <div class="title">
8446         <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>
8447       </div>
8448       <div class="date">
8449         27th February 2012
8450       </div>
8451       <div class="body">
8452         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
8453 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8454 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
8455 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
8456 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
8457 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
8458 need a software solution for your school.</p>
8459
8460       </div>
8461       <div class="tags">
8462
8463
8464         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>.
8465
8466
8467       </div>
8468     </div>
8469     <div class="padding"></div>
8470
8471     <div class="entry">
8472       <div class="title">
8473         <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>
8474       </div>
8475       <div class="date">
8476          3rd March 2012
8477       </div>
8478       <div class="body">
8479         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
8480 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
8481 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
8482 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
8483 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
8484 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
8485 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
8486 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
8487 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
8488 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
8489 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
8490 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
8491 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
8492 year...</p>
8493
8494 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
8495 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
8496 name,
8497 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
8498 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
8499 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
8500 mean). I've been following
8501 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
8502 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
8503 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
8504 Check it out. :)</p>
8505
8506       </div>
8507       <div class="tags">
8508
8509
8510         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>.
8511
8512
8513       </div>
8514     </div>
8515     <div class="padding"></div>
8516
8517     <div class="entry">
8518       <div class="title">
8519         <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>
8520       </div>
8521       <div class="date">
8522          4th March 2012
8523       </div>
8524       <div class="body">
8525         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
8526 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8527 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
8528 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
8529 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
8530 need a software solution for your school.</p>
8531
8532       </div>
8533       <div class="tags">
8534
8535
8536         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>.
8537
8538
8539       </div>
8540     </div>
8541     <div class="padding"></div>
8542
8543     <div class="entry">
8544       <div class="title">
8545         <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>
8546       </div>
8547       <div class="date">
8548          7th March 2012
8549       </div>
8550       <div class="body">
8551         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
8552
8553 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
8554 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
8555 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
8556 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
8557 download as a
8558 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
8559 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
8560
8561 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
8562   <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"' />
8563     <p>Download video as
8564       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
8565 </video></p>
8566
8567       </div>
8568       <div class="tags">
8569
8570
8571         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>.
8572
8573
8574       </div>
8575     </div>
8576     <div class="padding"></div>
8577
8578     <div class="entry">
8579       <div class="title">
8580         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
8581       </div>
8582       <div class="date">
8583          9th March 2012
8584       </div>
8585       <div class="body">
8586         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
8587 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
8588 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8589 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
8590 more international audience.</p>
8591
8592 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
8593 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
8594 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
8595 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
8596 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
8597 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
8598 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
8599
8600
8601 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8602
8603 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
8604 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
8605 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
8606 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
8607 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
8608 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
8609 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
8610 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
8611 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
8612 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
8613 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
8614
8615 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8616 project?</strong></p>
8617
8618 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
8619 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
8620 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
8621 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
8622 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
8623 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
8624 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
8625 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
8626 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
8627 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
8628 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
8629 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
8630 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
8631
8632 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8633 Edu?</strong></p>
8634
8635 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
8636 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
8637 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
8638 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
8639 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
8640 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
8641 Japan.</p>
8642
8643 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8644 Edu?</strong></p>
8645
8646 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
8647 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
8648 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
8649 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
8650 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
8651 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
8652 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
8653 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
8654 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
8655 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
8656 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
8657 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
8658 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
8659 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
8660 help.</p>
8661
8662 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8663
8664 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
8665 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
8666 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
8667 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
8668 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
8669 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
8670 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
8671 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
8672 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
8673 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
8674 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
8675
8676 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8677 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8678
8679 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
8680 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
8681 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
8682 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
8683 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
8684 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
8685 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
8686 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
8687 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
8688 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
8689 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
8690 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
8691
8692       </div>
8693       <div class="tags">
8694
8695
8696         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>.
8697
8698
8699       </div>
8700     </div>
8701     <div class="padding"></div>
8702
8703     <div class="entry">
8704       <div class="title">
8705         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
8706       </div>
8707       <div class="date">
8708         11th March 2012
8709       </div>
8710       <div class="body">
8711         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
8712 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
8713 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
8714 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
8715 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
8716 you have not done so already.</p>
8717
8718 <p>I plan to present the new version at
8719 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
8720 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
8721 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
8722
8723       </div>
8724       <div class="tags">
8725
8726
8727         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>.
8728
8729
8730       </div>
8731     </div>
8732     <div class="padding"></div>
8733
8734     <div class="entry">
8735       <div class="title">
8736         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
8737       </div>
8738       <div class="date">
8739         16th March 2012
8740       </div>
8741       <div class="body">
8742         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
8743 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
8744 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
8745 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
8746
8747 <ol>
8748
8749 <li>The documentation is written in a moinmoin wiki (see for example
8750 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
8751 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
8752 docbook XML.</li>
8753
8754 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
8755 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
8756 with the translated text.</li>
8757
8758 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
8759 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
8760 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
8761 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
8762 images.</li>
8763
8764 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
8765 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
8766
8767 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
8768 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
8769
8770 </ol>
8771
8772 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
8773 issue is that the docbook support in moinmoin is not actively
8774 maintained.  This make it hard to upgrade moinmoin.  The docbook
8775 support is also buggy, and our build system contain lots of
8776 workarounds to make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these
8777 bugs.</p>
8778
8779 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
8780 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
8781 package</a>.</p>
8782
8783       </div>
8784       <div class="tags">
8785
8786
8787         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>.
8788
8789
8790       </div>
8791     </div>
8792     <div class="padding"></div>
8793
8794     <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>
8795     <div id="sidebar">
8796
8797
8798
8799 <h2>Archive</h2>
8800 <ul>
8801
8802 <li>2012
8803 <ul>
8804
8805 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
8806
8807 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
8808
8809 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (10)</a></li>
8810
8811 </ul></li>
8812
8813 <li>2011
8814 <ul>
8815
8816 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
8817
8818 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
8819
8820 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
8821
8822 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
8823
8824 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
8825
8826 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
8827
8828 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
8829
8830 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
8831
8832 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
8833
8834 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
8835
8836 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
8837
8838 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
8839
8840 </ul></li>
8841
8842 <li>2010
8843 <ul>
8844
8845 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
8846
8847 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
8848
8849 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
8850
8851 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
8852
8853 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
8854
8855 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
8856
8857 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
8858
8859 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
8860
8861 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
8862
8863 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
8864
8865 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
8866
8867 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
8868
8869 </ul></li>
8870
8871 <li>2009
8872 <ul>
8873
8874 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
8875
8876 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
8877
8878 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
8879
8880 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
8881
8882 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
8883
8884 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
8885
8886 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
8887
8888 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
8889
8890 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
8891
8892 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
8893
8894 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
8895
8896 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
8897
8898 </ul></li>
8899
8900 <li>2008
8901 <ul>
8902
8903 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
8904
8905 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
8906
8907 </ul></li>
8908
8909 </ul>
8910
8911
8912
8913 <h2>Tags</h2>
8914 <ul>
8915
8916  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
8917
8918  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
8919
8920  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
8921
8922  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (2)</a></li>
8923
8924  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
8925
8926  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
8927
8928  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (54)</a></li>
8929
8930  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (88)</a></li>
8931
8932  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (7)</a></li>
8933
8934  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (115)</a></li>
8935
8936  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (14)</a></li>
8937
8938  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
8939
8940  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (18)</a></li>
8941
8942  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (15)</a></li>
8943
8944  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
8945
8946  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (4)</a></li>
8947
8948  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
8949
8950  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (14)</a></li>
8951
8952  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (151)</a></li>
8953
8954  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (120)</a></li>
8955
8956  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
8957
8958  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (24)</a></li>
8959
8960  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (46)</a></li>
8961
8962  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
8963
8964  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
8965
8966  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
8967
8968  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (4)</a></li>
8969
8970  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
8971
8972  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
8973
8974  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (23)</a></li>
8975
8976  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
8977
8978  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (24)</a></li>
8979
8980  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (1)</a></li>
8981
8982  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (3)</a></li>
8983
8984  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (9)</a></li>
8985
8986  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (6)</a></li>
8987
8988  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (23)</a></li>
8989
8990  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (1)</a></li>
8991
8992  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (18)</a></li>
8993
8994 </ul>
8995
8996
8997     </div>
8998     <p style="text-align: right">
8999  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.4</a>
9000 </p>
9001
9002   </body>
9003 </html>