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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 "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         17th May 2013
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
  32 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
  33 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
  34 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
  35 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
  36 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
  37 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
  38 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
  39 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
  40 donate some money</a>.
  41
  42 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
  43 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
  44 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
  45 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
  46 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
  47
  48 <p>The script,
  49 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
  50 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
  51 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
  52 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
  53
  54 <ol>
  55
  56 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
  57 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
  58 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
  59     our configuration.</li>
  60 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
  61     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
  62     according to the profile specified in the config above,
  63     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
  64 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
  65     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
  66 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
  67
  68 </ol>
  69
  70 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
  71 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
  72 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
  73 the needed packages.</p>
  74
  75 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
  76 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
  77 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
  78 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/‎">Rapbian</a> installation and
  79 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
  80 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
  81
  82 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
  83 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
  84 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
  85
  86 <p><pre>
  87 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
  88 DESKTOP="lxde"
  89 </pre></p>
  90
  91 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
  92 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
  93 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
  94 boot.</p>
  95
  96       </div>
  97       <div class="tags">
  98
  99
 100         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>.
 101
 102
 103       </div>
 104     </div>
 105     <div class="padding"></div>
 106
 107     <div class="entry">
 108       <div class="title">
 109         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
 110       </div>
 111       <div class="date">
 112         11th May 2013
 113       </div>
 114       <div class="body">
 115         <P>In January,
 116 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
 117 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
 118 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
 119 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
 120 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
 121 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
 122 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
 123 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
 124 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
 125 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
 126 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
 127 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
 128
 129 <p><table>
 130 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
 131 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
 132 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
 133 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
 134 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
 135 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
 136 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
 137 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
 138 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
 139 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
 140 </table></p>
 141
 142 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
 143 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
 144 available in experimental.</p>
 145
 146 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
 147 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
 148 for LEGO designers.</p>
 149
 150       </div>
 151       <div class="tags">
 152
 153
 154         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
 155
 156
 157       </div>
 158     </div>
 159     <div class="padding"></div>
 160
 161     <div class="entry">
 162       <div class="title">
 163         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
 164       </div>
 165       <div class="date">
 166          5th May 2013
 167       </div>
 168       <div class="body">
 169         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
 170 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
 171 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
 172 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
 173 soon.</p>
 174
 175 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
 176 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
 177 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
 178 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
 179 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
 180 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
 181 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
 182 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
 183 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
 184 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
 185 Edu.</a>
 186
 187 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
 188 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
 189 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
 190 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
 191 follow.<p>
 192
 193       </div>
 194       <div class="tags">
 195
 196
 197         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>.
 198
 199
 200       </div>
 201     </div>
 202     <div class="padding"></div>
 203
 204     <div class="entry">
 205       <div class="title">
 206         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
 207       </div>
 208       <div class="date">
 209          3rd April 2013
 210       </div>
 211       <div class="body">
 212         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
 213 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
 214 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
 215 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
 216
 217 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
 218 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
 219 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
 220 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
 221 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
 222 BTS. :)</p>
 223
 224       </div>
 225       <div class="tags">
 226
 227
 228         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 229
 230
 231       </div>
 232     </div>
 233     <div class="padding"></div>
 234
 235     <div class="entry">
 236       <div class="title">
 237         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
 238       </div>
 239       <div class="date">
 240          2nd February 2013
 241       </div>
 242       <div class="body">
 243         <p>My
 244 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
 245 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
 246 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
 247 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
 248 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
 249 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
 250 version too.</p>
 251
 252 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
 253 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
 254 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
 255 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
 256 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
 257 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
 258 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
 259 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
 260
 261 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
 262 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
 263 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
 264 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
 265 it. :)</p>
 266
 267 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 268 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 269 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 270
 271       </div>
 272       <div class="tags">
 273
 274
 275         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>.
 276
 277
 278       </div>
 279     </div>
 280     <div class="padding"></div>
 281
 282     <div class="entry">
 283       <div class="title">
 284         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
 285       </div>
 286       <div class="date">
 287         22nd January 2013
 288       </div>
 289       <div class="body">
 290         <p>Yesterday, I
 291 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
 292 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
 293 pluggable hardware devices, which I
 294 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
 295 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
 296 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
 297 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
 298 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
 299 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
 300 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
 301 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
 302 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
 303 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
 304
 305 <pre>
 306 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
 307 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
 308 </pre>
 309
 310 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
 311 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
 312 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
 313 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
 314
 315 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
 316 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
 317 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
 318 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
 319 word.</p>
 320
 321 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
 322 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
 323 process.</p>
 324
 325 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
 326 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
 327
 328       </div>
 329       <div class="tags">
 330
 331
 332         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 333
 334
 335       </div>
 336     </div>
 337     <div class="padding"></div>
 338
 339     <div class="entry">
 340       <div class="title">
 341         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
 342       </div>
 343       <div class="date">
 344         21st January 2013
 345       </div>
 346       <div class="body">
 347         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
 348 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
 349 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
 350 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
 351 it, fetch the
 352 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
 353 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
 354 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
 355 autostart script.</p>
 356
 357 <p>The design is simple:</p>
 358
 359 <ul>
 360
 361 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
 362 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
 363
 364 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
 365 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
 366 initially did.</li>
 367
 368 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
 369 the APT database, a database
 370 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
 371 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
 372
 373 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
 374 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
 375 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
 376 package or packages.</li>
 377
 378 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
 379 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
 380
 381 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
 382 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
 383
 384 </ul>
 385
 386 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
 387 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
 388 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
 389 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
 390
 391 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
 392 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
 393 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
 394 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
 395 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
 396
 397 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
 398 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
 399 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
 400 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
 401 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
 402 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
 403 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
 404 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
 405
 406 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
 407 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
 408 '<tt>svn checkout
 409 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
 410 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
 411 devscripts package.</p>
 412
 413 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
 414 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
 415 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
 416 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
 417 instructions</a> for details.</p>
 418
 419       </div>
 420       <div class="tags">
 421
 422
 423         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 424
 425
 426       </div>
 427     </div>
 428     <div class="padding"></div>
 429
 430     <div class="entry">
 431       <div class="title">
 432         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
 433       </div>
 434       <div class="date">
 435         19th January 2013
 436       </div>
 437       <div class="body">
 438         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
 439 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
 440 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
 441 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
 442 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
 443 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
 444 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
 445 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
 446 not a durable solution.
 447
 448 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
 449 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
 450
 451 <ul>
 452
 453 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
 454   than A4).</li>
 455 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
 456 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
 457 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
 458 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
 459 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
 460 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
 461 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
 462 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
 463 size).</li>
 464 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
 465   X.org packages.</li>
 466 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
 467   the time).
 468
 469 </ul>
 470
 471 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
 472 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
 473 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
 474 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
 475 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
 476 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
 477 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
 478 still be useful.</p>
 479
 480 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
 481 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
 482 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
 483 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
 484 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
 485 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
 486
 487       </div>
 488       <div class="tags">
 489
 490
 491         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>.
 492
 493
 494       </div>
 495     </div>
 496     <div class="padding"></div>
 497
 498     <div class="entry">
 499       <div class="title">
 500         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</a>
 501       </div>
 502       <div class="date">
 503         18th January 2013
 504       </div>
 505       <div class="body">
 506         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
 507 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
 508 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
 509 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
 510 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
 511 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
 512 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
 513
 514 <pre>
 515 #!/usr/bin/python
 516 import sys
 517 import apt
 518 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
 519     cache = apt.Cache()
 520     cache.open(None)
 521     thepkgs = []
 522     for pkg in cache:
 523         version = pkg.candidate
 524         if version is None:
 525             version = pkg.installed
 526         if version is None:
 527             continue
 528         record = version.record
 529         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
 530             continue
 531         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
 532         for t in mime_types:
 533             t = t.rstrip().strip()
 534             if t == mimetype:
 535                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
 536     return thepkgs
 537 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
 538 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
 539     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
 540 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
 541 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
 542     print "  %s" %pkg
 543 </pre>
 544
 545 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
 546
 547 <pre>
 548 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
 549 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
 550   gecko-mediaplayer
 551 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
 552 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
 553   browser-plugin-gnash
 554 %
 555 </pre>
 556
 557 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
 558 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
 559 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
 560 anyone working on adding it?</p>
 561
 562 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
 563 request for icweasel support for this feature is
 564 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
 565 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
 566 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
 567 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
 568
 569       </div>
 570       <div class="tags">
 571
 572
 573         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>.
 574
 575
 576       </div>
 577     </div>
 578     <div class="padding"></div>
 579
 580     <div class="entry">
 581       <div class="title">
 582         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
 583       </div>
 584       <div class="date">
 585         16th January 2013
 586       </div>
 587       <div class="body">
 588         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
 589 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
 590 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
 591 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
 592 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
 593 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
 594 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
 595 downloaded by the browser.</p>
 596
 597 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
 598 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
 599 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
 600 can be found on the
 601 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
 602 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
 603 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
 604 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
 605 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
 606
 607 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
 608
 609 <pre>
 610   count MIME type
 611   ----- -----------------------
 612      32 text/plain
 613      30 audio/mpeg
 614      29 image/png
 615      28 image/jpeg
 616      27 application/ogg
 617      26 audio/x-mp3
 618      25 image/tiff
 619      25 image/gif
 620      22 image/bmp
 621      22 audio/x-wav
 622      20 audio/x-flac
 623      19 audio/x-mpegurl
 624      18 video/x-ms-asf
 625      18 audio/x-musepack
 626      18 audio/x-mpeg
 627      18 application/x-ogg
 628      17 video/mpeg
 629      17 audio/x-scpls
 630      17 audio/ogg
 631      16 video/x-ms-wmv
 632 </pre>
 633
 634 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
 635
 636 <pre>
 637   count MIME type
 638   ----- -----------------------
 639      33 text/plain
 640      32 image/png
 641      32 image/jpeg
 642      29 audio/mpeg
 643      27 image/gif
 644      26 image/tiff
 645      26 application/ogg
 646      25 audio/x-mp3
 647      22 image/bmp
 648      21 audio/x-wav
 649      19 audio/x-mpegurl
 650      19 audio/x-mpeg
 651      18 video/mpeg
 652      18 audio/x-scpls
 653      18 audio/x-flac
 654      18 application/x-ogg
 655      17 video/x-ms-asf
 656      17 text/html
 657      17 audio/x-musepack
 658      16 image/x-xbitmap
 659 </pre>
 660
 661 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
 662
 663 <pre>
 664   count MIME type
 665   ----- -----------------------
 666      31 text/plain
 667      31 image/png
 668      31 image/jpeg
 669      29 audio/mpeg
 670      28 application/ogg
 671      27 image/gif
 672      26 image/tiff
 673      26 audio/x-mp3
 674      23 audio/x-wav
 675      22 image/bmp
 676      21 audio/x-flac
 677      20 audio/x-mpegurl
 678      19 audio/x-mpeg
 679      18 video/x-ms-asf
 680      18 video/mpeg
 681      18 audio/x-scpls
 682      18 application/x-ogg
 683      17 audio/x-musepack
 684      16 video/x-ms-wmv
 685      16 video/x-msvideo
 686 </pre>
 687
 688 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
 689 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
 690 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
 691 issues.</p>
 692
 693 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
 694 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
 695
 696       </div>
 697       <div class="tags">
 698
 699
 700         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>.
 701
 702
 703       </div>
 704     </div>
 705     <div class="padding"></div>
 706
 707     <div class="entry">
 708       <div class="title">
 709         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
 710       </div>
 711       <div class="date">
 712         15th January 2013
 713       </div>
 714       <div class="body">
 715         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
 716 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
 717 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
 718 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
 719 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
 720 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
 721 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
 722 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
 723 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
 724 packages.</p>
 725
 726 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
 727 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
 728 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
 729 modalias.</p>
 730
 731 <p><blockquote>
 732 Package: package-name
 733 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
 734 </blockquote></p>
 735
 736 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
 737 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
 738
 739 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
 740 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
 741
 742 <p><blockquote>
 743 Package: cheese
 744 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
 745 </blockquote></p>
 746
 747 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
 748 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
 749
 750 <p><blockquote>
 751 Package: pcmciautils
 752 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
 753 </blockquote></p>
 754
 755 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
 756 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
 757
 758 <p><blockquote>
 759 Package: colorhug-client
 760 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
 761 </blockquote></p>
 762
 763 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
 764 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
 765 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
 766
 767 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
 768 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
 769 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
 770 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
 771 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
 772 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
 773 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
 774 Raring.</p>
 775
 776 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
 777 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
 778 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
 779 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
 780 try the
 781 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
 782 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
 783 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
 784 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
 785
 786 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
 787 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
 788
 789 <p><blockquote>
 790 % ./hw-support-lookup
 791 <br>yubikey-personalization
 792 <br>%
 793 </blockquote></p>
 794
 795 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
 796 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
 797
 798 <p><blockquote>
 799 % ./hw-support-lookup
 800 <br>pcmciautils
 801 <br>%
 802 </blockquote></p>
 803
 804 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
 805 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
 806 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
 807
 808 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
 809 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
 810 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
 811 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
 812 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
 813 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
 814 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
 815 see if it work.</p>
 816
 817 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
 818 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
 819 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
 820 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
 821
 822       </div>
 823       <div class="tags">
 824
 825
 826         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 827
 828
 829       </div>
 830     </div>
 831     <div class="padding"></div>
 832
 833     <div class="entry">
 834       <div class="title">
 835         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
 836       </div>
 837       <div class="date">
 838         14th January 2013
 839       </div>
 840       <div class="body">
 841         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
 842 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
 843 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
 844 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
 845 in
 846 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
 847 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
 848
 849 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
 850
 851 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
 852 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
 853 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
 854 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
 855 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
 856 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
 857
 858 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
 859 this shell script:</p>
 860
 861 <pre>
 862 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
 863 </pre>
 864
 865 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
 866 using modinfo:</p>
 867
 868 <pre>
 869 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
 870 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
 871 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
 872 %
 873 </pre>
 874
 875 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
 876
 877 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
 878 Bridge memory controller:</p>
 879
 880 <p><blockquote>
 881 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
 882 </blockquote></p>
 883
 884 <p>This represent these values:</p>
 885
 886 <pre>
 887  v   00008086  (vendor)
 888  d   00002770  (device)
 889  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
 890  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
 891  bc  06        (bus class)
 892  sc  00        (bus subclass)
 893  i   00        (interface)
 894 </pre>
 895
 896 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
 897 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
 898 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
 899 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
 900
 901 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
 902 means.</p>
 903
 904 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
 905
 906 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
 907 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
 908
 909 <p><blockquote>
 910 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
 911 </blockquote></p>
 912
 913 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
 914
 915 <pre>
 916  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
 917  p    0001  (device product)
 918  d    0206  (bcddevice)
 919  dc     09  (device class)
 920  dsc    00  (device subclass)
 921  dp     00  (device protocol)
 922  ic     09  (interface class)
 923  isc    00  (interface subclass)
 924  ip     00  (interface protocol)
 925 </pre>
 926
 927 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
 928 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
 929 these alias entries show up:</p>
 930
 931 <p><blockquote>
 932 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
 933 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
 934 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
 935 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
 936 </blockquote></p>
 937
 938 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
 939 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
 940 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
 941
 942 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
 943
 944 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
 945 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
 946
 947 <p><blockquote>
 948 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
 949 </blockquote></p>
 950
 951 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
 952
 953 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
 954
 955 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
 956 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
 957 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
 958
 959 <p><blockquote>
 960 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
 961 </blockquote></p>
 962
 963 <p>The values present are</p>
 964
 965 <pre>
 966  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
 967  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
 968  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
 969  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
 970  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
 971  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
 972  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
 973  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
 974  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
 975  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
 976  ct   10             (chassis type)
 977  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
 978 </pre>
 979
 980 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
 981 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
 982
 983 <pre>
 984   3 Desktop
 985   4 Low Profile Desktop
 986   5 Pizza Box
 987   6 Mini Tower
 988   7 Tower
 989   8 Portable
 990   9 Laptop
 991  10 Notebook
 992  11 Hand Held
 993  12 Docking Station
 994  13 All In One
 995  14 Sub Notebook
 996  15 Space-saving
 997  16 Lunch Box
 998  17 Main Server Chassis
 999  18 Expansion Chassis
1000  19 Sub Chassis
1001  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
1002  21 Peripheral Chassis
1003  22 RAID Chassis
1004  23 Rack Mount Chassis
1005  24 Sealed-case PC
1006  25 Multi-system
1007  26 CompactPCI
1008  27 AdvancedTCA
1009  28 Blade
1010  29 Blade Enclosing
1011 </pre>
1012
1013 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
1014 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
1015 claim it is a desktop.</p>
1016
1017 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
1018
1019 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
1020 test machine:</p>
1021
1022 <p><blockquote>
1023 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
1024 </blockquote></p>
1025
1026 <p>The values present are</p>
1027
1028 <pre>
1029   ty  01  (type)
1030   pr  00  (prototype)
1031   id  00  (id)
1032   ex  00  (extra)
1033 </pre>
1034
1035 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
1036 the valid values are.</p>
1037
1038 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
1039
1040 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
1041 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
1042 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
1043 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
1044 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
1045 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
1046 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
1047
1048 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
1049
1050 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
1051 one can use the following shell script:</p>
1052
1053 <pre>
1054   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
1055     echo "$id" ; \
1056     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
1057   done
1058 </pre>
1059
1060 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
1061 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
1062
1063 <pre>
1064   acpi:ACPI0003:
1065     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
1066   acpi:device:
1067   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
1068   acpi:IBM0068:
1069     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
1070     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
1071     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
1072     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
1073   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
1074     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
1075     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
1076     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
1077   [...]
1078 </pre>
1079
1080 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
1081 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
1082 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
1083 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
1084
1085 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
1086 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
1087 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
1088
1089       </div>
1090       <div class="tags">
1091
1092
1093         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
1094
1095
1096       </div>
1097     </div>
1098     <div class="padding"></div>
1099
1100     <div class="entry">
1101       <div class="title">
1102         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
1103       </div>
1104       <div class="date">
1105         10th January 2013
1106       </div>
1107       <div class="body">
1108         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
1109 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
1110 Launcher and updated the Debian package
1111 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
1112 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
1113 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
1114 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
1115 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
1116 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
1117 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
1118 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
1119 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
1120 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
1121 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
1122 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
1123 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
1124 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
1125 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
1126
1127       </div>
1128       <div class="tags">
1129
1130
1131         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
1132
1133
1134       </div>
1135     </div>
1136     <div class="padding"></div>
1137
1138     <div class="entry">
1139       <div class="title">
1140         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
1141       </div>
1142       <div class="date">
1143          9th January 2013
1144       </div>
1145       <div class="body">
1146         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
1147 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
1148 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
1149 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
1150 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
1151 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
1152 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
1153 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
1154 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
1155 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
1156 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
1157
1158 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
1159 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
1160 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
1161 simple:
1162
1163 <ul>
1164
1165 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
1166   starting when a user log in.</li>
1167
1168 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
1169   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
1170
1171 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
1172   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
1173   packages.</li>
1174
1175 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
1176   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
1177
1178 </ul>
1179
1180 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
1181 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
1182 discover database to find packages and
1183 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
1184 packages.</p>
1185
1186 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
1187 draft package is now checked into
1188 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
1189 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
1190 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
1191 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
1192 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
1193 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
1194 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
1195 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
1196 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
1197 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
1198 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
1199 because of the freeze).</p>
1200
1201 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
1202 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
1203 inserted):</p>
1204
1205 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
1206
1207 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
1208 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
1209 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
1210
1211 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
1212 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
1213 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
1214 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
1215 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
1216 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
1217 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
1218
1219 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
1220 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
1221 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
1222 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
1223 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
1224 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
1225 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
1226 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
1227 not be installed?</p>
1228
1229 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
1230 please send me an email. :)</p>
1231
1232       </div>
1233       <div class="tags">
1234
1235
1236         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
1237
1238
1239       </div>
1240     </div>
1241     <div class="padding"></div>
1242
1243     <div class="entry">
1244       <div class="title">
1245         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
1246       </div>
1247       <div class="date">
1248          2nd January 2013
1249       </div>
1250       <div class="body">
1251         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
1252 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
1253 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
1254 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
1255 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
1256 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
1257 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
1258 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
1259 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
1260 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
1261
1262 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
1263 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
1264 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
1265
1266       </div>
1267       <div class="tags">
1268
1269
1270         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
1271
1272
1273       </div>
1274     </div>
1275     <div class="padding"></div>
1276
1277     <div class="entry">
1278       <div class="title">
1279         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</a>
1280       </div>
1281       <div class="date">
1282         25th December 2012
1283       </div>
1284       <div class="body">
1285         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
1286 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
1287
1288 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
1289 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
1290 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
1291 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
1292 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
1293 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
1294 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
1295 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
1296 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
1297 name.</p>
1298
1299 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
1300 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
1301 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
1302
1303 <blockquote><pre>
1304 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
1305 cd bitcoin
1306 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
1307 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
1308 </pre></blockquote>
1309
1310 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
1311 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
1312 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
1313 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
1314 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
1315 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
1316 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
1317 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
1318 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
1319
1320 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1321 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1322 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1323
1324       </div>
1325       <div class="tags">
1326
1327
1328         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>.
1329
1330
1331       </div>
1332     </div>
1333     <div class="padding"></div>
1334
1335     <div class="entry">
1336       <div class="title">
1337         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
1338       </div>
1339       <div class="date">
1340         21st December 2012
1341       </div>
1342       <div class="body">
1343         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
1344 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
1345 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
1346 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
1347 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
1348 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
1349 is now maintained by a
1350 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
1351 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
1352 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
1353 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
1354 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
1355 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
1356 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
1357 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
1358 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
1359 Corallo in a
1360 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
1361 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
1362 Debian package.</p>
1363
1364 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
1365 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
1366 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
1367 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
1368 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
1369 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
1370 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
1371 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
1372 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
1373 new version to unstable.
1374
1375 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
1376 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
1377 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
1378 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
1379 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
1380 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
1381 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
1382 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
1383 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
1384 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
1385 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
1386 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
1387 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
1388 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
1389 have not tested them.</p>
1390
1391 <p>My
1392 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
1393 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
1394 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
1395 years ago, as can be
1396 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
1397 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
1398 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
1399 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
1400 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
1401 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
1402 the same address as last time,
1403 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1404
1405       </div>
1406       <div class="tags">
1407
1408
1409         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>.
1410
1411
1412       </div>
1413     </div>
1414     <div class="padding"></div>
1415
1416     <div class="entry">
1417       <div class="title">
1418         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
1419       </div>
1420       <div class="date">
1421          7th September 2012
1422       </div>
1423       <div class="body">
1424         <p>As I
1425 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
1426 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
1427 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
1428 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
1429 repository for the project</a>.</p>
1430
1431 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
1432 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
1433 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
1434 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
1435
1436 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
1437 PostScript formats at
1438 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
1439 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
1440
1441       </div>
1442       <div class="tags">
1443
1444
1445         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>.
1446
1447
1448       </div>
1449     </div>
1450     <div class="padding"></div>
1451
1452     <div class="entry">
1453       <div class="title">
1454         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
1455       </div>
1456       <div class="date">
1457         16th August 2012
1458       </div>
1459       <div class="body">
1460         <p>I dag fyller
1461 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
1462 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
1463 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
1464
1465       </div>
1466       <div class="tags">
1467
1468
1469         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
1470
1471
1472       </div>
1473     </div>
1474     <div class="padding"></div>
1475
1476     <div class="entry">
1477       <div class="title">
1478         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
1479       </div>
1480       <div class="date">
1481         24th June 2012
1482       </div>
1483       <div class="body">
1484         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
1485 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
1486 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
1487 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
1488 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
1489 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
1490 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
1491 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
1492 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
1493 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
1494 missing in my book.</p>
1495
1496 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
1497 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
1498 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
1499 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
1500 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
1501 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
1502 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
1503
1504       </div>
1505       <div class="tags">
1506
1507
1508         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>.
1509
1510
1511       </div>
1512     </div>
1513     <div class="padding"></div>
1514
1515     <div class="entry">
1516       <div class="title">
1517         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
1518       </div>
1519       <div class="date">
1520         21st November 2011
1521       </div>
1522       <div class="body">
1523         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
1524 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
1525 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
1526 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
1527 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
1528 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
1529 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
1530 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
1531 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
1532 the tools to do so.</p>
1533
1534 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
1535 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
1536 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
1537 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
1538
1539 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
1540 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
1541 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
1542 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
1543 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
1544 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
1545 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
1546 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
1547
1548 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
1549 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
1550 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
1551
1552 <p><pre>
1553 #!/usr/bin/perl
1554 use strict;
1555 use warnings;
1556 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
1557 BEGIN {
1558     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
1559     my %rhelmodules = (
1560         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
1561         );
1562     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
1563         eval "use $module;";
1564         if ($@) {
1565             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
1566             system("yum install -y $pkg");
1567             eval "use $module;";
1568         }
1569     }
1570 }
1571 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
1572
1573 upgrade_dell();
1574
1575 exit 0;
1576
1577 sub run_firmware_script {
1578     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
1579     unless ($script) {
1580         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
1581         exit 1
1582     }
1583     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
1584
1585     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
1586         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
1587     } else {
1588         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
1589     }
1590 }
1591
1592 sub run_firmware_scripts {
1593     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
1594     # Run firmware packages
1595     for my $dir (@dirs) {
1596         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
1597         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
1598         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
1599             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
1600             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
1601         }
1602         closedir $dh;
1603     }
1604 }
1605
1606 sub download {
1607     my $url = shift;
1608     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
1609     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
1610 }
1611
1612 sub upgrade_dell {
1613     my @dirs;
1614     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
1615     chomp $product;
1616
1617     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
1618
1619         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
1620         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
1621
1622         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
1623             CLEANUP => 1
1624             );
1625         chdir($tmpdir);
1626         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
1627         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
1628         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
1629         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
1630         my $fwopts = "-q";
1631         if (@paths) {
1632             for my $url (@paths) {
1633                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
1634             }
1635             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
1636         } else {
1637             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
1638             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
1639         }
1640         chdir('/');
1641     } else {
1642         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
1643         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
1644     }
1645 }
1646
1647 sub fetch_dell_fw {
1648     my $path = shift;
1649     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
1650     download($url);
1651 }
1652
1653 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
1654 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
1655 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
1656 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
1657     my $filename = shift;
1658
1659     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
1660     chomp $product;
1661     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
1662
1663     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
1664
1665     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
1666     my @paths;
1667     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
1668         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
1669         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
1670         my $oscode;
1671         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
1672             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
1673         } else {
1674             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
1675         }
1676         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
1677         {
1678             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
1679         }
1680     }
1681     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
1682         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
1683
1684         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
1685         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
1686
1687         my $cpath = $component->{path};
1688         for my $path (@paths) {
1689             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
1690                 push(@paths, $cpath);
1691             }
1692         }
1693     }
1694     return @paths;
1695 }
1696 </pre>
1697
1698 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
1699 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
1700 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
1701 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
1702 outdated.</p>
1703
1704       </div>
1705       <div class="tags">
1706
1707
1708         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>.
1709
1710
1711       </div>
1712     </div>
1713     <div class="padding"></div>
1714
1715     <div class="entry">
1716       <div class="title">
1717         <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>
1718       </div>
1719       <div class="date">
1720          4th August 2011
1721       </div>
1722       <div class="body">
1723         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
1724 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
1725 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
1726 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
1727 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
1728 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
1729 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
1730 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
1731 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
1732
1733 <p><blockquote>
1734 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
1735 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
1736 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
1737 </blockquote></p>
1738
1739 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
1740 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
1741 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
1742 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
1743 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
1744 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
1745 hard to explain.</p>
1746
1747 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
1748 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
1749 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
1750 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
1751 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
1752 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
1753 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
1754 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
1755 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
1756 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
1757 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
1758 mode).</p>
1759
1760 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
1761 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
1762 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
1763 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
1764 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
1765 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
1766 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
1767 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
1768 after visiting single user mode.</p>
1769
1770 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
1771 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
1772 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
1773 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
1774 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
1775 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
1776 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
1777 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
1778
1779 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
1780 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
1781 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
1782
1783       </div>
1784       <div class="tags">
1785
1786
1787         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>.
1788
1789
1790       </div>
1791     </div>
1792     <div class="padding"></div>
1793
1794     <div class="entry">
1795       <div class="title">
1796         <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>
1797       </div>
1798       <div class="date">
1799         30th July 2011
1800       </div>
1801       <div class="body">
1802         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
1803 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
1804 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
1805 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
1806 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
1807 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
1808 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
1809 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
1810 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
1811 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
1812 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
1813 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
1814 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
1815
1816 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
1817 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
1818 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
1819 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
1820 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
1821 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
1822 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
1823 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
1824 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
1825
1826 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
1827 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
1828 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
1829 is presented.</p>
1830
1831 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
1832 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
1833 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
1834 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
1835 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
1836 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
1837 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
1838 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
1839 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
1840 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
1841 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
1842 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
1843 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
1844 find time to push this forward.</p>
1845
1846       </div>
1847       <div class="tags">
1848
1849
1850         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>.
1851
1852
1853       </div>
1854     </div>
1855     <div class="padding"></div>
1856
1857     <div class="entry">
1858       <div class="title">
1859         <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>
1860       </div>
1861       <div class="date">
1862         29th July 2011
1863       </div>
1864       <div class="body">
1865         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
1866 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
1867 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
1868 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
1869 issues.</p>
1870
1871 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
1872 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
1873 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
1874
1875 <ol>
1876
1877 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
1878 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
1879 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
1880 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
1881 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
1882 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
1883 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
1884 Debian.</li>
1885
1886 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
1887 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
1888 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
1889 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
1890 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
1891 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
1892 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
1893 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
1894 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
1895 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
1896 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
1897 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
1898 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
1899
1900 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
1901 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
1902 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
1903 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
1904 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
1905 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
1906 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
1907 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
1908 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
1909 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
1910
1911 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
1912 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
1913 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
1914 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
1915 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
1916 latter behaviour.</li>
1917
1918 </ol>
1919
1920 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
1921 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
1922 it do not matter much.</p>
1923
1924 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
1925 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
1926 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
1927
1928       </div>
1929       <div class="tags">
1930
1931
1932         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>.
1933
1934
1935       </div>
1936     </div>
1937     <div class="padding"></div>
1938
1939     <div class="entry">
1940       <div class="title">
1941         <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>
1942       </div>
1943       <div class="date">
1944         26th July 2011
1945       </div>
1946       <div class="body">
1947         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
1948 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
1949 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
1950 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
1951 security support for a few years.</p>
1952
1953 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
1954 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
1955 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
1956 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
1957 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
1958 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
1959 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
1960 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
1961 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
1962 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
1963 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
1964 easier in the future.</p>
1965
1966 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
1967 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
1968 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
1969 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
1970 do not have time for.</p>
1971
1972       </div>
1973       <div class="tags">
1974
1975
1976         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>.
1977
1978
1979       </div>
1980     </div>
1981     <div class="padding"></div>
1982
1983     <div class="entry">
1984       <div class="title">
1985         <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>
1986       </div>
1987       <div class="date">
1988          3rd April 2011
1989       </div>
1990       <div class="body">
1991         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
1992 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
1993 update in English.</p>
1994
1995 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
1996 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
1997 of the British service
1998 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
1999 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
2000 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
2001 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
2002 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
2003 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
2004 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
2005 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
2006 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
2007 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
2008 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
2009 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
2010 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
2011
2012 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
2013 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
2014 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
2015 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
2016 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
2017 public infrastructure.</p>
2018
2019 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
2020 such service?</p>
2021
2022       </div>
2023       <div class="tags">
2024
2025
2026         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>.
2027
2028
2029       </div>
2030     </div>
2031     <div class="padding"></div>
2032
2033     <div class="entry">
2034       <div class="title">
2035         <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>
2036       </div>
2037       <div class="date">
2038         28th January 2011
2039       </div>
2040       <div class="body">
2041         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
2042 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
2043 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
2044 available on the Internet, and check our locally
2045 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
2046 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
2047 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
2048 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
2049 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
2050 out which security holes were present in our free software
2051 collection.</p>
2052
2053 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
2054 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
2055 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
2056 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
2057 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
2058 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
2059 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
2060 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
2061 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
2062 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
2063 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
2064 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
2065 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
2066 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
2067 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
2068 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
2069
2070 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
2071 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
2072 check out, one could look up
2073 <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
2074 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
2075 The most recent one is
2076 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
2077 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
2078 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
2079
2080 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
2081 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
2082 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
2083 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
2084 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
2085 security issues out.</p>
2086
2087 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
2088 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
2089 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
2090 RHEL is providing
2091 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
2092 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
2093 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
2094
2095 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
2096 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
2097 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
2098 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
2099 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
2100 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
2101 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
2102 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
2103 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
2104 established soon.</p>
2105
2106 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
2107 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
2108 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
2109 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
2110 for their packages.</p>
2111
2112       </div>
2113       <div class="tags">
2114
2115
2116         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>.
2117
2118
2119       </div>
2120     </div>
2121     <div class="padding"></div>
2122
2123     <div class="entry">
2124       <div class="title">
2125         <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>
2126       </div>
2127       <div class="date">
2128         23rd January 2011
2129       </div>
2130       <div class="body">
2131         <p>In the
2132 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
2133 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
2134 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
2135 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
2136 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
2137 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
2138 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
2139 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
2140 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
2141 one of my machines like this:</p>
2142
2143 <pre>
2144 loaded modules:
2145 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
2146 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
2147 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
2148 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
2149 10de:03ec pata_amd
2150 10de:03f6 sata_nv
2151 1022:1103 k8temp
2152 109e:036e bttv
2153 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
2154 11ab:4364 sky2
2155 </pre>
2156
2157 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
2158 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
2159
2160 <pre>
2161 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
2162     echo loaded pci modules:
2163     (
2164         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
2165         for address in * ; do
2166             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
2167                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
2168                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
2169                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
2170                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
2171                     echo "$id $module"
2172                 fi
2173             fi
2174         done
2175     )
2176     echo
2177 fi
2178 </pre>
2179
2180 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
2181 mappings:</p>
2182
2183 <pre>
2184 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
2185     echo loaded usb modules:
2186     (
2187         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
2188         for address in * ; do
2189             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
2190                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
2191                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
2192                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
2193                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
2194                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
2195                         echo "$id $module"
2196                     fi
2197                 fi
2198             fi
2199         done
2200     )
2201     echo
2202 fi
2203 </pre>
2204
2205 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
2206 well.</p>
2207
2208       </div>
2209       <div class="tags">
2210
2211
2212         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>.
2213
2214
2215       </div>
2216     </div>
2217     <div class="padding"></div>
2218
2219     <div class="entry">
2220       <div class="title">
2221         <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>
2222       </div>
2223       <div class="date">
2224         22nd December 2010
2225       </div>
2226       <div class="body">
2227         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
2228 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
2229 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
2230 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
2231 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
2232 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
2233 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
2234 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
2235 university.</p>
2236
2237 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
2238 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
2239 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
2240 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
2241 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
2242 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
2243 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
2244 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
2245
2246 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
2247 I perform on a new model.</p>
2248
2249 <ul>
2250
2251 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
2252 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
2253 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
2254
2255 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
2256 installation, X.org is working.</li>
2257
2258 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
2259 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
2260 reported by the program.</li>
2261
2262 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
2263 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
2264 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
2265 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
2266 normally test this by playing
2267 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
2268 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
2269
2270 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
2271 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
2272
2273 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
2274 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
2275
2276 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
2277 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
2278
2279 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
2280 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
2281 few.</li>
2282
2283 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
2284 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
2285 notice this.</li>
2286
2287 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
2288 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
2289 resume.</li>
2290
2291 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
2292 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
2293 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
2294 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
2295 not.</li>
2296
2297 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
2298 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
2299 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
2300 existence.</li>
2301
2302 </ul>
2303
2304 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
2305 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
2306 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
2307 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
2308 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
2309 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
2310 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
2311 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
2312
2313       </div>
2314       <div class="tags">
2315
2316
2317         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>.
2318
2319
2320       </div>
2321     </div>
2322     <div class="padding"></div>
2323
2324     <div class="entry">
2325       <div class="title">
2326         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
2327       </div>
2328       <div class="date">
2329         11th December 2010
2330       </div>
2331       <div class="body">
2332         <p>As I continue to explore
2333 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
2334 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
2335 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
2336
2337 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
2338 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
2339 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
2340 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
2341 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
2342 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
2343 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
2344 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
2345 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
2346 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
2347 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
2348 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
2349 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
2350 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
2351 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
2352 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
2353 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
2354 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
2355 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
2356 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
2357
2358 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
2359 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
2360 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
2361 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
2362 If the Skolelinux foundation
2363 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
2364 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
2365 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
2366 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
2367 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
2368 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
2369 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
2370 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
2371
2372 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
2373 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
2374 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
2375 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
2376 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
2377 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
2378 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
2379 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
2380 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
2381 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
2382 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
2383 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
2384 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
2385 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
2386 currencies.</p>
2387
2388 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
2389 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
2390 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
2391 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
2392 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
2393 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
2394 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
2395 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
2396 BitCoins.  Check out
2397 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
2398 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
2399 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
2400 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
2401 yet.</p>
2402
2403 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
2404 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
2405 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
2406 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
2407 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
2408
2409       </div>
2410       <div class="tags">
2411
2412
2413         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>.
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/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</a>
2423       </div>
2424       <div class="date">
2425         10th December 2010
2426       </div>
2427       <div class="body">
2428         <p>With this weeks lawless
2429 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
2430 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
2431 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
2432 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
2433 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
2434 A blog post from
2435 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
2436 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
2437 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
2438 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
2439 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
2440 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
2441 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
2442
2443 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
2444 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
2445 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
2446 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
2447 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
2448 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
2449 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
2450 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
2451 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
2452 Debian</a> soon.</p>
2453
2454 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
2455 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
2456 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
2457 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
2458 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
2459 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
2460 you can even get
2461 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
2462 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
2463 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
2464 on the current exchange rates.</p>
2465
2466 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
2467 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
2468 donations to the address
2469 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
2470
2471       </div>
2472       <div class="tags">
2473
2474
2475         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>.
2476
2477
2478       </div>
2479     </div>
2480     <div class="padding"></div>
2481
2482     <div class="entry">
2483       <div class="title">
2484         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
2485       </div>
2486       <div class="date">
2487         27th November 2010
2488       </div>
2489       <div class="body">
2490         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
2491 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
2492 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
2493 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
2494 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
2495 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
2496 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
2497 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
2498
2499 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
2500 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
2501 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
2502 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
2503 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
2504 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
2505 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
2506 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
2507 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
2508 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
2509 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
2510
2511 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
2512 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
2513 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
2514 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
2515 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
2516 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
2517 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
2518 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
2519 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
2520 what is going on.</p>
2521
2522       </div>
2523       <div class="tags">
2524
2525
2526         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>.
2527
2528
2529       </div>
2530     </div>
2531     <div class="padding"></div>
2532
2533     <div class="entry">
2534       <div class="title">
2535         <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>
2536       </div>
2537       <div class="date">
2538         22nd November 2010
2539       </div>
2540       <div class="body">
2541         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
2542 upgrade testing of the
2543 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
2544 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
2545 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
2546 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
2547
2548 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
2549
2550 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2551
2552 <blockquote><p>
2553   apache2.2-bin
2554   aptdaemon
2555   baobab
2556   binfmt-support
2557   browser-plugin-gnash
2558   cheese-common
2559   cli-common
2560   cups-pk-helper
2561   dmz-cursor-theme
2562   empathy
2563   empathy-common
2564   freedesktop-sound-theme
2565   freeglut3
2566   gconf-defaults-service
2567   gdm-themes
2568   gedit-plugins
2569   geoclue
2570   geoclue-hostip
2571   geoclue-localnet
2572   geoclue-manual
2573   geoclue-yahoo
2574   gnash
2575   gnash-common
2576   gnome
2577   gnome-backgrounds
2578   gnome-cards-data
2579   gnome-codec-install
2580   gnome-core
2581   gnome-desktop-environment
2582   gnome-disk-utility
2583   gnome-screenshot
2584   gnome-search-tool
2585   gnome-session-canberra
2586   gnome-system-log
2587   gnome-themes-extras
2588   gnome-themes-more
2589   gnome-user-share
2590   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
2591   gstreamer0.10-tools
2592   gtk2-engines
2593   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
2594   gtk2-engines-smooth
2595   hamster-applet
2596   libapache2-mod-dnssd
2597   libapr1
2598   libaprutil1
2599   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
2600   libaprutil1-ldap
2601   libart2.0-cil
2602   libboost-date-time1.42.0
2603   libboost-python1.42.0
2604   libboost-thread1.42.0
2605   libchamplain-0.4-0
2606   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
2607   libcheese-gtk18
2608   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
2609   libcryptui0
2610   libdiscid0
2611   libelf1
2612   libepc-1.0-2
2613   libepc-common
2614   libepc-ui-1.0-2
2615   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
2616   libfreerdp0
2617   libgconf2.0-cil
2618   libgdata-common
2619   libgdata7
2620   libgdu-gtk0
2621   libgee2
2622   libgeoclue0
2623   libgexiv2-0
2624   libgif4
2625   libglade2.0-cil
2626   libglib2.0-cil
2627   libgmime2.4-cil
2628   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
2629   libgnome2.24-cil
2630   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
2631   libgpod-common
2632   libgpod4
2633   libgtk2.0-cil
2634   libgtkglext1
2635   libgtksourceview2.0-common
2636   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
2637   libmono-addins0.2-cil
2638   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
2639   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
2640   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
2641   libmono-posix2.0-cil
2642   libmono-security2.0-cil
2643   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
2644   libmono-system2.0-cil
2645   libmtp8
2646   libmusicbrainz3-6
2647   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
2648   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
2649   libopal3.6.8
2650   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
2651   libpt2.6.7
2652   libpython2.6
2653   librpm1
2654   librpmio1
2655   libsdl1.2debian
2656   libsrtp0
2657   libssh-4
2658   libtelepathy-farsight0
2659   libtelepathy-glib0
2660   libtidy-0.99-0
2661   media-player-info
2662   mesa-utils
2663   mono-2.0-gac
2664   mono-gac
2665   mono-runtime
2666   nautilus-sendto
2667   nautilus-sendto-empathy
2668   p7zip-full
2669   pkg-config
2670   python-aptdaemon
2671   python-aptdaemon-gtk
2672   python-axiom
2673   python-beautifulsoup
2674   python-bugbuddy
2675   python-clientform
2676   python-coherence
2677   python-configobj
2678   python-crypto
2679   python-cupshelpers
2680   python-elementtree
2681   python-epsilon
2682   python-evolution
2683   python-feedparser
2684   python-gdata
2685   python-gdbm
2686   python-gst0.10
2687   python-gtkglext1
2688   python-gtksourceview2
2689   python-httplib2
2690   python-louie
2691   python-mako
2692   python-markupsafe
2693   python-mechanize
2694   python-nevow
2695   python-notify
2696   python-opengl
2697   python-openssl
2698   python-pam
2699   python-pkg-resources
2700   python-pyasn1
2701   python-pysqlite2
2702   python-rdflib
2703   python-serial
2704   python-tagpy
2705   python-twisted-bin
2706   python-twisted-conch
2707   python-twisted-core
2708   python-twisted-web
2709   python-utidylib
2710   python-webkit
2711   python-xdg
2712   python-zope.interface
2713   remmina
2714   remmina-plugin-data
2715   remmina-plugin-rdp
2716   remmina-plugin-vnc
2717   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
2718   rhythmbox-plugins
2719   rpm-common
2720   rpm2cpio
2721   seahorse-plugins
2722   shotwell
2723   software-center
2724   system-config-printer-udev
2725   telepathy-gabble
2726   telepathy-mission-control-5
2727   telepathy-salut
2728   tomboy
2729   totem
2730   totem-coherence
2731   totem-mozilla
2732   totem-plugins
2733   transmission-common
2734   xdg-user-dirs
2735   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
2736   xserver-xephyr
2737 </p></blockquote>
2738
2739 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
2740
2741 <blockquote><p>
2742   cheese
2743   ekiga
2744   eog
2745   epiphany-extensions
2746   evolution-exchange
2747   fast-user-switch-applet
2748   file-roller
2749   gcalctool
2750   gconf-editor
2751   gdm
2752   gedit
2753   gedit-common
2754   gnome-games
2755   gnome-games-data
2756   gnome-nettool
2757   gnome-system-tools
2758   gnome-themes
2759   gnuchess
2760   gucharmap
2761   guile-1.8-libs
2762   libavahi-ui0
2763   libdmx1
2764   libgalago3
2765   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
2766   libgtksourceview2.0-0
2767   liblircclient0
2768   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
2769   libspeexdsp1
2770   libsvga1
2771   rhythmbox
2772   seahorse
2773   sound-juicer
2774   system-config-printer
2775   totem-common
2776   transmission-gtk
2777   vinagre
2778   vino
2779 </p></blockquote>
2780
2781 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
2782
2783 <blockquote><p>
2784   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
2785 </p></blockquote>
2786
2787 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
2788
2789 <blockquote><p>
2790 [nothing]
2791 </p></blockquote>
2792
2793 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
2794
2795 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2796
2797 <blockquote><p>
2798   ksmserver
2799 </p></blockquote>
2800
2801 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
2802
2803 <blockquote><p>
2804   kwin
2805   network-manager-kde
2806 </p></blockquote>
2807
2808 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
2809
2810 <blockquote><p>
2811   arts
2812   dolphin
2813   freespacenotifier
2814   google-gadgets-gst
2815   google-gadgets-xul
2816   kappfinder
2817   kcalc
2818   kcharselect
2819   kde-core
2820   kde-plasma-desktop
2821   kde-standard
2822   kde-window-manager
2823   kdeartwork
2824   kdeartwork-emoticons
2825   kdeartwork-style
2826   kdeartwork-theme-icon
2827   kdebase
2828   kdebase-apps
2829   kdebase-workspace
2830   kdebase-workspace-bin
2831   kdebase-workspace-data
2832   kdeeject
2833   kdelibs
2834   kdeplasma-addons
2835   kdeutils
2836   kdewallpapers
2837   kdf
2838   kfloppy
2839   kgpg
2840   khelpcenter4
2841   kinfocenter
2842   konq-plugins-l10n
2843   konqueror-nsplugins
2844   kscreensaver
2845   kscreensaver-xsavers
2846   ktimer
2847   kwrite
2848   libgle3
2849   libkde4-ruby1.8
2850   libkonq5
2851   libkonq5-templates
2852   libnetpbm10
2853   libplasma-ruby
2854   libplasma-ruby1.8
2855   libqt4-ruby1.8
2856   marble-data
2857   marble-plugins
2858   netpbm
2859   nuvola-icon-theme
2860   plasma-dataengines-workspace
2861   plasma-desktop
2862   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
2863   plasma-runners-addons
2864   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
2865   plasma-scriptengine-python
2866   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
2867   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
2868   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
2869   plasma-scriptengines
2870   plasma-wallpapers-addons
2871   plasma-widget-folderview
2872   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
2873   ruby
2874   sweeper
2875   update-notifier-kde
2876   xscreensaver-data-extra
2877   xscreensaver-gl
2878   xscreensaver-gl-extra
2879   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
2880 </p></blockquote>
2881
2882 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
2883
2884 <blockquote><p>
2885   ark
2886   google-gadgets-common
2887   google-gadgets-qt
2888   htdig
2889   kate
2890   kdebase-bin
2891   kdebase-data
2892   kdepasswd
2893   kfind
2894   klipper
2895   konq-plugins
2896   konqueror
2897   ksysguard
2898   ksysguardd
2899   libarchive1
2900   libcln6
2901   libeet1
2902   libeina-svn-06
2903   libggadget-1.0-0b
2904   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
2905   libgps19
2906   libkdecorations4
2907   libkephal4
2908   libkonq4
2909   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
2910   libkscreensaver5
2911   libksgrd4
2912   libksignalplotter4
2913   libkunitconversion4
2914   libkwineffects1a
2915   libmarblewidget4
2916   libntrack-qt4-1
2917   libntrack0
2918   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
2919   libplasmaclock4a
2920   libplasmagenericshell4
2921   libprocesscore4a
2922   libprocessui4a
2923   libqalculate5
2924   libqedje0a
2925   libqtruby4shared2
2926   libqzion0a
2927   libruby1.8
2928   libscim8c2a
2929   libsmokekdecore4-3
2930   libsmokekdeui4-3
2931   libsmokekfile3
2932   libsmokekhtml3
2933   libsmokekio3
2934   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
2935   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
2936   libsmokekparts3
2937   libsmokektexteditor3
2938   libsmokekutils3
2939   libsmokenepomuk3
2940   libsmokephonon3
2941   libsmokeplasma3
2942   libsmokeqtcore4-3
2943   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
2944   libsmokeqtgui4-3
2945   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
2946   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
2947   libsmokeqtscript4-3
2948   libsmokeqtsql4-3
2949   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
2950   libsmokeqttest4-3
2951   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
2952   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
2953   libsmokeqtxml4-3
2954   libsmokesolid3
2955   libsmokesoprano3
2956   libtaskmanager4a
2957   libtidy-0.99-0
2958   libweather-ion4a
2959   libxklavier16
2960   libxxf86misc1
2961   okteta
2962   oxygencursors
2963   plasma-dataengines-addons
2964   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
2965   plasma-widget-lancelot
2966   plasma-widgets-addons
2967   plasma-widgets-workspace
2968   polkit-kde-1
2969   ruby1.8
2970   systemsettings
2971   update-notifier-common
2972 </p></blockquote>
2973
2974 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
2975 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
2976 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
2977 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
2978
2979       </div>
2980       <div class="tags">
2981
2982
2983         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2984
2985
2986       </div>
2987     </div>
2988     <div class="padding"></div>
2989
2990     <div class="entry">
2991       <div class="title">
2992         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html">Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</a>
2993       </div>
2994       <div class="date">
2995         22nd November 2010
2996       </div>
2997       <div class="body">
2998         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
2999 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
3000 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
3001 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
3002 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
3003 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
3004 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
3005 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
3006 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
3007
3008 <p>I found
3009 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
3010 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
3011 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
3012 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
3013 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
3014 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
3015
3016 <pre>
3017 #!/bin/sh
3018
3019 # Based on
3020 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
3021
3022 set -e
3023 set -x
3024
3025 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
3026     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
3027     exit 1
3028 else
3029     host="$1"
3030 fi
3031
3032 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
3033     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
3034     exit 1
3035 fi
3036
3037 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
3038 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
3039 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
3040 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
3041
3042 img=$host.img
3043 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
3044 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
3045
3046 parted $img mklabel msdos
3047 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
3048 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
3049 parted $img set 1 boot on
3050
3051 modprobe dm-mod
3052 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
3053 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
3054
3055 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
3056 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
3057 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
3058
3059 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
3060 losetup -d /dev/loop0
3061 </pre>
3062
3063 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
3064 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
3065
3066 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
3067 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
3068 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
3069 seem to work just fine.</p>
3070
3071       </div>
3072       <div class="tags">
3073
3074
3075         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>.
3076
3077
3078       </div>
3079     </div>
3080     <div class="padding"></div>
3081
3082     <div class="entry">
3083       <div class="title">
3084         <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>
3085       </div>
3086       <div class="date">
3087         20th November 2010
3088       </div>
3089       <div class="body">
3090         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
3091 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
3092 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
3093 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
3094
3095 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
3096 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
3097 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
3098
3099 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
3100
3101 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
3102
3103 <blockquote><p>
3104   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
3105   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
3106   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
3107   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
3108   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
3109   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
3110   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
3111   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
3112   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
3113   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
3114   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
3115   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
3116   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
3117   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
3118   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
3119   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
3120   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
3121   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
3122   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
3123   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
3124   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
3125   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
3126   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
3127   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
3128   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
3129   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
3130   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
3131   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
3132   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
3133   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
3134   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
3135   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
3136   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
3137   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
3138   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
3139   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
3140   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
3141   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
3142   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
3143   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
3144   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
3145   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
3146   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
3147   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
3148   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
3149   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
3150   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
3151   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
3152   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
3153   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
3154   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
3155   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
3156   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
3157   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
3158   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
3159   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
3160   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
3161   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
3162   zip
3163 </p></blockquote>
3164
3165 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
3166
3167 <blockquote><p>
3168   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
3169   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
3170   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
3171   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
3172   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
3173   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
3174   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
3175   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
3176   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
3177   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
3178   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
3179   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
3180   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
3181   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
3182   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
3183   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
3184   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
3185   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
3186   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
3187   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
3188   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
3189   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
3190   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
3191   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
3192   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
3193   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
3194   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
3195   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
3196   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
3197 </p></blockquote>
3198
3199 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3200
3201 <blockquote><p>
3202   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
3203 </p></blockquote>
3204
3205 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3206
3207 <blockquote><p>
3208 [nothing]
3209 </p></blockquote>
3210
3211 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
3212
3213 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
3214
3215 <blockquote><p>
3216   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
3217   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
3218   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
3219   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
3220   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
3221   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
3222   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
3223   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
3224   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
3225   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
3226   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
3227   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
3228   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
3229   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
3230   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
3231   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
3232   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
3233   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
3234   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
3235   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
3236   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
3237   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
3238   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
3239   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
3240   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
3241   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
3242   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
3243   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
3244   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
3245   ttf-sazanami-gothic
3246 </p></blockquote>
3247
3248 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
3249
3250 <blockquote><p>
3251   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
3252   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
3253   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
3254   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
3255   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
3256   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
3257   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
3258   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
3259   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
3260   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
3261   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
3262   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
3263   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
3264   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
3265   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
3266   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
3267   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
3268   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
3269   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
3270   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
3271   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
3272   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
3273   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
3274   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
3275   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
3276   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
3277   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
3278   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
3279   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
3280   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
3281   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
3282   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
3283   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
3284 </p></blockquote>
3285
3286 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3287
3288 <blockquote><p>
3289   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
3290   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
3291   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
3292   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
3293   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
3294   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
3295   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
3296 </p></blockquote>
3297
3298 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3299
3300 <blockquote><p>
3301   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
3302 </p></blockquote>
3303
3304       </div>
3305       <div class="tags">
3306
3307
3308         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>.
3309
3310
3311       </div>
3312     </div>
3313     <div class="padding"></div>
3314
3315     <div class="entry">
3316       <div class="title">
3317         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
3318       </div>
3319       <div class="date">
3320         20th November 2010
3321       </div>
3322       <div class="body">
3323         <p>Answering
3324 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
3325 call from the Gnash project</a> for
3326 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
3327 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
3328 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
3329 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
3330 releases out more often.</p>
3331
3332 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
3333 I have considered setting up a <a
3334 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
3335 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
3336 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
3337 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
3338 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
3339 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
3340 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
3341 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
3342 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
3343 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
3344 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
3345 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
3346
3347       </div>
3348       <div class="tags">
3349
3350
3351         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>.
3352
3353
3354       </div>
3355     </div>
3356     <div class="padding"></div>
3357
3358     <div class="entry">
3359       <div class="title">
3360         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
3361       </div>
3362       <div class="date">
3363          9th November 2010
3364       </div>
3365       <div class="body">
3366         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
3367
3368 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
3369 3D linked in from
3370 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
3371 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
3372
3373       </div>
3374       <div class="tags">
3375
3376
3377         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>.
3378
3379
3380       </div>
3381     </div>
3382     <div class="padding"></div>
3383
3384     <div class="entry">
3385       <div class="title">
3386         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
3387       </div>
3388       <div class="date">
3389         24th October 2010
3390       </div>
3391       <div class="body">
3392         <p>Some updates.</p>
3393
3394 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
3395 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
3396 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
3397 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
3398 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
3399 :)</p>
3400
3401 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
3402 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
3403 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
3404 It is called
3405 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
3406 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
3407 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
3408 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
3409 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
3410 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
3411
3412 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
3413 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
3414 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
3415 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
3416 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
3417 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
3418 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
3419 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
3420 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
3421 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
3422
3423       </div>
3424       <div class="tags">
3425
3426
3427         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>.
3428
3429
3430       </div>
3431     </div>
3432     <div class="padding"></div>
3433
3434     <div class="entry">
3435       <div class="title">
3436         <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>
3437       </div>
3438       <div class="date">
3439          4th September 2010
3440       </div>
3441       <div class="body">
3442         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
3443 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
3444 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
3445 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
3446 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
3447 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
3448 installed.</p>
3449
3450 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
3451 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
3452 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
3453 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
3454 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
3455 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
3456 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
3457 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
3458 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
3459
3460 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
3461 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
3462 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
3463 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
3464 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
3465 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
3466 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
3467 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
3468 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
3469 pages they want to visit.</p>
3470
3471 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
3472 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
3473 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
3474 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
3475 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
3476 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
3477 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
3478 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
3479 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
3480 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
3481 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
3482
3483       </div>
3484       <div class="tags">
3485
3486
3487         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>.
3488
3489
3490       </div>
3491     </div>
3492     <div class="padding"></div>
3493
3494     <div class="entry">
3495       <div class="title">
3496         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
3497       </div>
3498       <div class="date">
3499         27th July 2010
3500       </div>
3501       <div class="body">
3502         <p>I discovered this while doing
3503 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
3504 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
3505 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
3506 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
3507 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
3508
3509 <p>An example is from todays
3510 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
3511 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
3512 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
3513 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
3514 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
3515 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
3516 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
3517
3518 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
3519
3520 <blockquote><pre>
3521 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
3522  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
3523   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
3524 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
3525  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
3526 </pre></blockquote>
3527
3528 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
3529 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
3530 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
3531 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
3532 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
3533 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
3534 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
3535 of dependency loops.</p>
3536
3537 <p>Thanks to
3538 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
3539 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
3540 dependencies
3541 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
3542 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
3543
3544 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
3545 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
3546 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
3547 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
3548 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
3549 it.</p>
3550
3551       </div>
3552       <div class="tags">
3553
3554
3555         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>.
3556
3557
3558       </div>
3559     </div>
3560     <div class="padding"></div>
3561
3562     <div class="entry">
3563       <div class="title">
3564         <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>
3565       </div>
3566       <div class="date">
3567         17th July 2010
3568       </div>
3569       <div class="body">
3570         <p>This is a
3571 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
3572 on my
3573 <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
3574 work</a> on
3575 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
3576 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
3577
3578 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
3579 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
3580 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
3581 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
3582
3583 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
3584 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
3585 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
3586
3587 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
3588
3589 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
3590 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
3591 the web.
3592
3593 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
3594 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
3595 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
3596 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
3597 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
3598 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
3599
3600 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
3601 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
3602 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
3603 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
3604 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
3605 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
3606 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
3607 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
3608 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
3609 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
3610 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
3611 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
3612 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
3613 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
3614 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
3615 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
3616
3617 <blockquote><pre>
3618 ldapsearch -h ldap \
3619   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
3620   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
3621   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
3622   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
3623   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
3624   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
3625
3626 ldapsearch -h ldap \
3627   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
3628   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
3629   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
3630   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
3631   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
3632 </pre></blockquote>
3633
3634 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
3635 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
3636 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
3637 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3638 also exist.</p>
3639
3640 <blockquote><pre>
3641 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3642 objectclass: top
3643 objectclass: dnsdomain
3644 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3645 dc: tjener
3646 arecord: 10.0.2.2
3647 associateddomain: tjener.intern
3648
3649 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3650 objectclass: top
3651 objectclass: dnsdomain2
3652 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3653 dc: 2
3654 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
3655 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
3656 </pre></blockquote>
3657
3658 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
3659 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
3660 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
3661 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
3662 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
3663 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
3664 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
3665 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
3666 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
3667 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
3668 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
3669 instead.</p>
3670
3671 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
3672 like this:</p>
3673
3674 <blockquote><pre>
3675 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
3676   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
3677   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
3678   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
3679   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
3680   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
3681
3682 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
3683   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
3684 </pre></blockquote>
3685
3686 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
3687 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
3688 reverse lookups.</p>
3689
3690 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
3691 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
3692 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
3693 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
3694
3695 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
3696 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
3697 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
3698
3699 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
3700 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
3701 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
3702 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
3703 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
3704
3705 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
3706 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
3707 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
3708 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
3709 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
3710
3711 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
3712 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
3713 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
3714 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
3715 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
3716 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
3717
3718 <blockquote><pre>
3719 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
3720     SUP top
3721     AUXILIARY
3722     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
3723           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
3724           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
3725           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
3726           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
3727     ))
3728 </pre></blockquote>
3729
3730 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
3731 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
3732 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
3733 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
3734 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
3735 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
3736
3737 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
3738
3739 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
3740 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
3741 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
3742 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
3743 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
3744
3745 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
3746 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
3747 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
3748 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
3749
3750 <blockquote><pre>
3751 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
3752 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
3753 </pre></blockquote>
3754
3755 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
3756 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
3757 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
3758 search result is this entry:</p>
3759
3760 <blockquote><pre>
3761 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3762 cn: dhcp
3763 objectClass: top
3764 objectClass: dhcpServer
3765 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3766 </pre></blockquote>
3767
3768 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
3769 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
3770 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
3771 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
3772 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
3773 The search result is this entry:</p>
3774
3775 <blockquote><pre>
3776 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3777 cn: DHCP Config
3778 objectClass: top
3779 objectClass: dhcpService
3780 objectClass: dhcpOptions
3781 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3782 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
3783 dhcpStatements: authoritative
3784 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
3785 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
3786 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
3787 </pre></blockquote>
3788
3789 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
3790 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
3791 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
3792 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
3793 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
3794 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
3795 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
3796 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
3797 related computer objects.</p>
3798
3799 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
3800 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
3801 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
3802 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
3803 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
3804 like:</p>
3805
3806 <blockquote><pre>
3807 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3808 cn: hostname
3809 objectClass: top
3810 objectClass: dhcpHost
3811 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
3812 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
3813 </pre></blockquote>
3814
3815 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
3816 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
3817 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
3818 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
3819 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
3820 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
3821 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
3822 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
3823 structural object class.
3824
3825 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
3826
3827 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
3828 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
3829 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
3830 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
3831 in the configuration.</p>
3832
3833 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
3834 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
3835 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
3836 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
3837 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
3838 structure.</p>
3839
3840 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
3841 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
3842
3843 <blockquote><pre>
3844 ou=services
3845   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
3846     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
3847     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
3848       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
3849         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
3850     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
3851       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
3852         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
3853     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
3854       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
3855 </pre></blockquote>
3856
3857 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
3858 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
3859 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
3860 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
3861
3862 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
3863 like this:</p>
3864
3865 <blockquote><pre>
3866 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3867 dc: hostname
3868 objectClass: top
3869 objectClass: dhcpHost
3870 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3871 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
3872 associateddomain: hostname.intern
3873 arecord: 10.11.12.13
3874 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
3875 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
3876 </pre></blockquote>
3877
3878 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
3879 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
3880 auxiliary object class.</p>
3881
3882       </div>
3883       <div class="tags">
3884
3885
3886         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>.
3887
3888
3889       </div>
3890     </div>
3891     <div class="padding"></div>
3892
3893     <div class="entry">
3894       <div class="title">
3895         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
3896       </div>
3897       <div class="date">
3898         14th July 2010
3899       </div>
3900       <div class="body">
3901         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
3902 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
3903 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
3904 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
3905 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
3906
3907 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
3908 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
3909
3910 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
3911 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
3912 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
3913 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
3914 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
3915 to a slave DNS server.</p>
3916
3917 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
3918 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
3919 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
3920 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
3921 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
3922 seem to work.</p>
3923
3924 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
3925 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
3926 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
3927 this:</p>
3928
3929 <blockquote><pre>
3930   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3931   cn: hostname
3932   objectClass: dhcphost
3933   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3934   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
3935   associateddomain: hostname.intern
3936   arecord: 10.11.12.13
3937   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
3938   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
3939   ldapconfigsound: Y
3940 </pre></blockquote>
3941
3942 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
3943 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
3944 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
3945 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
3946
3947 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
3948 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
3949 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
3950 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
3951 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
3952 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
3953 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
3954 might be a good place to put it.</p>
3955
3956 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
3957 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
3958
3959       </div>
3960       <div class="tags">
3961
3962
3963         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>.
3964
3965
3966       </div>
3967     </div>
3968     <div class="padding"></div>
3969
3970     <div class="entry">
3971       <div class="title">
3972         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
3973       </div>
3974       <div class="date">
3975         11th July 2010
3976       </div>
3977       <div class="body">
3978         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
3979 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
3980 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
3981 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
3982
3983 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
3984 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
3985 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
3986 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
3987 LTSP clients.</p>
3988
3989 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
3990 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
3991 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
3992
3993 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
3994 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
3995 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
3996
3997 <blockquote><pre>
3998 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
3999 #
4000 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
4001 #
4002 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
4003 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
4004 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
4005 #
4006 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
4007 # existence of attribute names.
4008 #
4009 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
4010 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
4011 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
4012 #
4013 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
4014 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
4015 #
4016 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
4017 #     SUP top
4018 #     AUXILIARY
4019 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
4020
4021 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
4022 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
4023     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
4024     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
4025         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
4026         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
4027             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
4028             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
4029             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
4030             # bass value on to clients
4031             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
4032         done
4033     done
4034 fi
4035 </pre></blockquote>
4036
4037 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
4038 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
4039 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
4040 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
4041 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
4042
4043 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
4044 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
4045
4046 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
4047 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
4048 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
4049 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
4050 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
4051 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
4052
4053       </div>
4054       <div class="tags">
4055
4056
4057         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>.
4058
4059
4060       </div>
4061     </div>
4062     <div class="padding"></div>
4063
4064     <div class="entry">
4065       <div class="title">
4066         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
4067       </div>
4068       <div class="date">
4069          9th July 2010
4070       </div>
4071       <div class="body">
4072         <p>Since
4073 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
4074 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
4075 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
4076 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
4077 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
4078 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
4079 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
4080 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
4081 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
4082 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
4083 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
4084 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
4085 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
4086
4087       </div>
4088       <div class="tags">
4089
4090
4091         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>.
4092
4093
4094       </div>
4095     </div>
4096     <div class="padding"></div>
4097
4098     <div class="entry">
4099       <div class="title">
4100         <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>
4101       </div>
4102       <div class="date">
4103          3rd July 2010
4104       </div>
4105       <div class="body">
4106         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
4107 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
4108 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
4109 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
4110 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
4111 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
4112 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
4113 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
4114
4115 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
4116 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
4117 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
4118 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
4119 publish the difference.</p>
4120
4121 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
4122
4123 <blockquote><p>
4124   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
4125   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
4126   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
4127   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
4128   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
4129   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
4130   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
4131   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
4132 </p></blockquote>
4133
4134 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
4135
4136 <blockquote><p>
4137   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
4138   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
4139   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
4140   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
4141   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
4142   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
4143   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
4144   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
4145   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
4146   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
4147   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
4148   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
4149   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
4150   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
4151   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
4152   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
4153   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
4154   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
4155   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
4156   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
4157 </p></blockquote>
4158
4159 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
4160
4161 <blockquote><p>
4162   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
4163   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
4164   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
4165   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
4166   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
4167   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
4168   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
4169   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
4170   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
4171   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
4172   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
4173   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
4174   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
4175   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
4176   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
4177   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
4178   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
4179   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
4180   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
4181   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
4182   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
4183 </p></blockquote>
4184
4185 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
4186
4187 <blockquote><p>
4188   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
4189   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
4190   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
4191 </p></blockquote>
4192
4193 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
4194 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
4195 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
4196 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
4197 the difference somewhat.
4198
4199       </div>
4200       <div class="tags">
4201
4202
4203         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>.
4204
4205
4206       </div>
4207     </div>
4208     <div class="padding"></div>
4209
4210     <div class="entry">
4211       <div class="title">
4212         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
4213       </div>
4214       <div class="date">
4215         28th June 2010
4216       </div>
4217       <div class="body">
4218         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
4219 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
4220 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
4221 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
4222 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
4223 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
4224 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
4225 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
4226 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
4227 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
4228
4229 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
4230 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
4231 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
4232 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
4233 released.</p>
4234
4235 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
4236 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
4237 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
4238 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
4239
4240 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
4241 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
4242
4243 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
4244 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
4245 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
4246 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
4247 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
4248
4249       </div>
4250       <div class="tags">
4251
4252
4253         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>.
4254
4255
4256       </div>
4257     </div>
4258     <div class="padding"></div>
4259
4260     <div class="entry">
4261       <div class="title">
4262         <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>
4263       </div>
4264       <div class="date">
4265         24th June 2010
4266       </div>
4267       <div class="body">
4268         <p>A while back, I
4269 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
4270 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
4271 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
4272 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
4273
4274 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
4275 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
4276 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
4277 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
4278
4279 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
4280 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
4281 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
4282 Debian Edu.</p>
4283
4284 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
4285 the
4286 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
4287 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
4288 available today from IETF.</p>
4289
4290 <pre>
4291 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
4292 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
4293 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
4294  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
4295         NAME 'dhcpHost'
4296         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
4297 -       SUP top
4298 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
4299         MUST cn
4300         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
4301         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
4302 </pre>
4303
4304 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
4305 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
4306 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
4307
4308 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
4309 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
4310
4311       </div>
4312       <div class="tags">
4313
4314
4315         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>.
4316
4317
4318       </div>
4319     </div>
4320     <div class="padding"></div>
4321
4322     <div class="entry">
4323       <div class="title">
4324         <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>
4325       </div>
4326       <div class="date">
4327         16th June 2010
4328       </div>
4329       <div class="body">
4330         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
4331 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
4332 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
4333 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
4334 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
4335 this:
4336
4337 <blockquote><pre>
4338 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
4339 tasksel --new-install
4340 </pre></blockquote>
4341
4342 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
4343 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
4344 any output what so ever.
4345
4346 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
4347 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
4348 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
4349 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
4350 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
4351 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
4352 code like this:
4353
4354 <blockquote><pre>
4355 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
4356 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
4357 $cmd
4358 </pre></blockquote>
4359
4360 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
4361 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
4362 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
4363 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
4364 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
4365 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
4366 installation.</p>
4367
4368 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
4369 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
4370 like this.</p>
4371
4372       </div>
4373       <div class="tags">
4374
4375
4376         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>.
4377
4378
4379       </div>
4380     </div>
4381     <div class="padding"></div>
4382
4383     <div class="entry">
4384       <div class="title">
4385         <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>
4386       </div>
4387       <div class="date">
4388         13th June 2010
4389       </div>
4390       <div class="body">
4391         <p>My
4392 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
4393 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
4394 finally made the upgrade logs available from
4395 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
4396 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
4397 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
4398 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
4399
4400 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
4401 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
4402 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
4403 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
4404 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
4405 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
4406 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
4407 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
4408
4409 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
4410 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
4411 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
4412 too surprising.</p>
4413
4414 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
4415 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
4416 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
4417 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
4418 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
4419 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
4420 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
4421 continue.</p>
4422
4423 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
4424 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
4425   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
4426   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
4427   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
4428   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
4429   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
4430   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
4431   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
4432   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
4433   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
4434   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
4435   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
4436   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
4437   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
4438   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
4439   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
4440   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
4441   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
4442   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
4443   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
4444   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
4445   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
4446   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
4447   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
4448   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
4449   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
4450   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
4451   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
4452   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
4453
4454 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
4455
4456 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
4457   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
4458   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
4459   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
4460   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
4461   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
4462   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
4463   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
4464   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
4465   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
4466   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
4467   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
4468   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
4469   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
4470   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
4471   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
4472   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
4473   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
4474   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
4475   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
4476   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
4477   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
4478   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
4479   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
4480   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
4481   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
4482   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
4483   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
4484   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
4485   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
4486   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
4487   zip</p>
4488
4489 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
4490
4491 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
4492   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
4493   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
4494   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
4495   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
4496   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
4497   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
4498   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
4499   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
4500   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
4501   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
4502   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
4503   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
4504   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
4505   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
4506   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
4507   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
4508   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
4509   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
4510   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
4511   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
4512   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
4513   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
4514   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
4515   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
4516   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
4517   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
4518   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
4519
4520 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
4521 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
4522   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
4523   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
4524   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
4525   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
4526   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
4527   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
4528   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
4529   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
4530   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
4531   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
4532   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
4533   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
4534   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
4535   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
4536   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
4537   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
4538   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
4539   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
4540   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
4541   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
4542   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
4543   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
4544   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
4545   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
4546   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
4547   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
4548   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
4549   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
4550   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
4551   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
4552   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
4553   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
4554   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
4555   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
4556   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
4557   xulrunner-1.9</p>
4558
4559
4560       </div>
4561       <div class="tags">
4562
4563
4564         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>.
4565
4566
4567       </div>
4568     </div>
4569     <div class="padding"></div>
4570
4571     <div class="entry">
4572       <div class="title">
4573         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
4574       </div>
4575       <div class="date">
4576         11th June 2010
4577       </div>
4578       <div class="body">
4579         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
4580 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
4581 have been discovered and reported in the process
4582 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
4583 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
4584 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
4585 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
4586 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
4587
4588 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
4589 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
4590 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
4591 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
4592 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
4593 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
4594
4595 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
4596 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
4597 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
4598 is created.  The bug report
4599 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
4600 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
4601 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
4602 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
4603 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
4604 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
4605 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
4606 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
4607 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
4608 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
4609 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
4610 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
4611 Debian Squeeze.</p>
4612
4613 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
4614 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
4615 trick:</p>
4616
4617 <blockquote><pre>
4618 #!/bin/sh
4619 set -ex
4620
4621 if [ "$1" ] ; then
4622     desktop=$1
4623 else
4624     desktop=gnome
4625 fi
4626
4627 from=lenny
4628 to=squeeze
4629
4630 exec &lt; /dev/null
4631 unset LANG
4632 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
4633 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
4634 fuser -mv .
4635 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
4636 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
4637 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
4638 #!/bin/sh
4639 exit 101
4640 EOF
4641 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
4642 exit_cleanup() {
4643     umount $tmpdir/proc
4644 }
4645 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
4646 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
4647 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
4648
4649 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
4650
4651 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
4652 # to return the correct answers.
4653 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
4654     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
4655
4656 # Include the desktop and laptop task
4657 for test in desktop laptop ; do
4658     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
4659 #!/bin/sh
4660 exit 2
4661 EOF
4662     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
4663 done
4664
4665 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
4666 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
4667 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
4668 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
4669
4670 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
4671 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
4672 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
4673 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
4674 fuser -mv
4675 </pre></blockquote>
4676
4677 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
4678 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
4679 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
4680 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
4681 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
4682 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
4683
4684 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
4685 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
4686 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
4687 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
4688 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
4689 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
4690 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
4691
4692 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
4693 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
4694 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
4695 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
4696 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
4697 packages.</p>
4698
4699       </div>
4700       <div class="tags">
4701
4702
4703         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>.
4704
4705
4706       </div>
4707     </div>
4708     <div class="padding"></div>
4709
4710     <div class="entry">
4711       <div class="title">
4712         <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>
4713       </div>
4714       <div class="date">
4715          6th June 2010
4716       </div>
4717       <div class="body">
4718         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
4719 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
4720 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
4721 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
4722 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
4723 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
4724 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
4725
4726 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
4727 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
4728 COLUMNS):</p>
4729
4730 <blockquote><pre>
4731 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
4732 previous=N
4733 PREVLEVEL=
4734 RUNLEVEL=
4735 runlevel=S
4736 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
4737 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
4738 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
4739 </pre></blockquote>
4740
4741 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
4742 script.</p>
4743
4744 <blockquote><pre>
4745 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
4746 previous=N
4747 PREVLEVEL=N
4748 RUNLEVEL=S
4749 runlevel=S
4750 </pre></blockquote>
4751
4752 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
4753 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
4754 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
4755
4756 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
4757 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
4758 choice.</p>
4759
4760       </div>
4761       <div class="tags">
4762
4763
4764         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>.
4765
4766
4767       </div>
4768     </div>
4769     <div class="padding"></div>
4770
4771     <div class="entry">
4772       <div class="title">
4773         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
4774       </div>
4775       <div class="date">
4776          6th June 2010
4777       </div>
4778       <div class="body">
4779         <p>Via the
4780 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
4781 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
4782 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
4783 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
4784 following the standards wars of today.</p>
4785
4786       </div>
4787       <div class="tags">
4788
4789
4790         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>.
4791
4792
4793       </div>
4794     </div>
4795     <div class="padding"></div>
4796
4797     <div class="entry">
4798       <div class="title">
4799         <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>
4800       </div>
4801       <div class="date">
4802          3rd June 2010
4803       </div>
4804       <div class="body">
4805         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
4806 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
4807 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
4808 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
4809 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
4810
4811 <blockquote><pre>
4812 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
4813   vendor                    count
4814   Dell Computer Corporation     1
4815     PowerEdge 1750              1
4816   IBM                           1
4817     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
4818   Intel                         2
4819   [no-dmi-info]                 3
4820 maintainer:~#
4821 </pre></blockquote>
4822
4823 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
4824 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
4825 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
4826 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
4827 option to list the individual machines.</p>
4828
4829 <p>A larger list is
4830 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
4831 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
4832 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
4833 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
4834 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
4835 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
4836 collector.</p>
4837
4838       </div>
4839       <div class="tags">
4840
4841
4842         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>.
4843
4844
4845       </div>
4846     </div>
4847     <div class="padding"></div>
4848
4849     <div class="entry">
4850       <div class="title">
4851         <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>
4852       </div>
4853       <div class="date">
4854          1st June 2010
4855       </div>
4856       <div class="body">
4857         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
4858 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
4859 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
4860 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
4861 wait.</p>
4862
4863 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
4864 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
4865 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
4866 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
4867 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
4868 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
4869
4870 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
4871 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
4872 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
4873 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
4874 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
4875 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
4876 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
4877 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
4878
4879 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
4880
4881       </div>
4882       <div class="tags">
4883
4884
4885         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>.
4886
4887
4888       </div>
4889     </div>
4890     <div class="padding"></div>
4891
4892     <div class="entry">
4893       <div class="title">
4894         <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>
4895       </div>
4896       <div class="date">
4897         27th May 2010
4898       </div>
4899       <div class="body">
4900         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
4901 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
4902 issues are known and should be solved:
4903
4904 <p><ul>
4905
4906 <li>The wicd package seen to
4907 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
4908 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
4909 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
4910 seem to be on the case.</li>
4911
4912 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
4913 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
4914 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
4915 maintainer is on the case.</li>
4916
4917 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
4918 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
4919 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
4920 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
4921 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
4922 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
4923 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
4924 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
4925
4926 </ul></p>
4927
4928 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
4929 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
4930 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
4931 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
4932
4933 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
4934 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
4935 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
4936 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
4937
4938 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
4939
4940       </div>
4941       <div class="tags">
4942
4943
4944         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>.
4945
4946
4947       </div>
4948     </div>
4949     <div class="padding"></div>
4950
4951     <div class="entry">
4952       <div class="title">
4953         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
4954       </div>
4955       <div class="date">
4956         22nd May 2010
4957       </div>
4958       <div class="body">
4959         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
4960 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
4961 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
4962 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
4963
4964 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
4965 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
4966 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
4967 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
4968 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
4969 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
4970 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
4971 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
4972 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
4973 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
4974 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
4975 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
4976 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
4977 going to work.</p>
4978
4979 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
4980 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
4981 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
4982 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
4983 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
4984 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
4985 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
4986 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
4987 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
4988 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
4989 Edu.</p>
4990
4991 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
4992 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
4993 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
4994 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
4995 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
4996 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
4997
4998 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
4999 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
5000
5001       </div>
5002       <div class="tags">
5003
5004
5005         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>.
5006
5007
5008       </div>
5009     </div>
5010     <div class="padding"></div>
5011
5012     <div class="entry">
5013       <div class="title">
5014         <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>
5015       </div>
5016       <div class="date">
5017         14th May 2010
5018       </div>
5019       <div class="body">
5020         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
5021 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
5022 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
5023 expected, if I am to believe the
5024 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
5025 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
5026 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
5027 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
5028 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
5029 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
5030 version.</p>
5031
5032 More information about
5033 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
5034 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
5035 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
5036 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
5037
5038 <blockquote><pre>
5039 CONCURRENCY=none
5040 </pre></blockquote>
5041
5042 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
5043 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
5044 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
5045 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
5046
5047       </div>
5048       <div class="tags">
5049
5050
5051         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>.
5052
5053
5054       </div>
5055     </div>
5056     <div class="padding"></div>
5057
5058     <div class="entry">
5059       <div class="title">
5060         <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>
5061       </div>
5062       <div class="date">
5063         14th May 2010
5064       </div>
5065       <div class="body">
5066         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
5067 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
5068 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
5069 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
5070 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
5071 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
5072 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
5073 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
5074
5075 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
5076 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
5077 this on the collector host:</p>
5078
5079 <blockquote><pre>
5080 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
5081 </pre></blockquote>
5082
5083 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
5084 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
5085
5086 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
5087 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
5088 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
5089 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
5090 written yet.</p>
5091
5092       </div>
5093       <div class="tags">
5094
5095
5096         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>.
5097
5098
5099       </div>
5100     </div>
5101     <div class="padding"></div>
5102
5103     <div class="entry">
5104       <div class="title">
5105         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
5106       </div>
5107       <div class="date">
5108         13th May 2010
5109       </div>
5110       <div class="body">
5111         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
5112 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
5113 has been
5114 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
5115
5116 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
5117 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
5118 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
5119 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
5120 based boot system.  Tollef is
5121 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
5122 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
5123 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
5124 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
5125 at the moment do not.</p>
5126
5127 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
5128 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
5129 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
5130 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
5131 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
5132 way forward.</p>
5133
5134 <p>In the mean time, based on the
5135 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
5136 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
5137 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
5138 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
5139 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
5140 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
5141 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
5142 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
5143
5144       </div>
5145       <div class="tags">
5146
5147
5148         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>.
5149
5150
5151       </div>
5152     </div>
5153     <div class="padding"></div>
5154
5155     <div class="entry">
5156       <div class="title">
5157         <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>
5158       </div>
5159       <div class="date">
5160          6th May 2010
5161       </div>
5162       <div class="body">
5163         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
5164 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
5165 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
5166 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
5167 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
5168 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
5169 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
5170
5171 <blockquote><pre>
5172 CONCURRENCY=makefile
5173 </pre></blockquote>
5174
5175 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
5176 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
5177 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
5178 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
5179 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
5180 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
5181 make this happen.</p>
5182
5183 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
5184 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
5185 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
5186 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
5187 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
5188
5189 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
5190 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
5191 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
5192 fix the remaining issues.</p>
5193
5194 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
5195 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
5196 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
5197 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
5198
5199       </div>
5200       <div class="tags">
5201
5202
5203         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>.
5204
5205
5206       </div>
5207     </div>
5208     <div class="padding"></div>
5209
5210     <div class="entry">
5211       <div class="title">
5212         <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>
5213       </div>
5214       <div class="date">
5215         27th July 2009
5216       </div>
5217       <div class="body">
5218         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
5219 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
5220 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
5221 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
5222 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
5223 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
5224 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
5225
5226 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
5227 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
5228 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
5229
5230       </div>
5231       <div class="tags">
5232
5233
5234         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>.
5235
5236
5237       </div>
5238     </div>
5239     <div class="padding"></div>
5240
5241     <div class="entry">
5242       <div class="title">
5243         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
5244       </div>
5245       <div class="date">
5246         22nd July 2009
5247       </div>
5248       <div class="body">
5249         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
5250 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
5251 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
5252 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
5253 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
5254 the package up to date.</p>
5255
5256 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
5257 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
5258 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
5259 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
5260 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
5261 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
5262 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
5263 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
5264 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
5265 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
5266 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
5267 working on the future release.</p>
5268
5269 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
5270 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
5271
5272       </div>
5273       <div class="tags">
5274
5275
5276         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>.
5277
5278
5279       </div>
5280     </div>
5281     <div class="padding"></div>
5282
5283     <div class="entry">
5284       <div class="title">
5285         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
5286       </div>
5287       <div class="date">
5288         24th June 2009
5289       </div>
5290       <div class="body">
5291         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
5292 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
5293 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
5294 funded
5295 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
5296 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
5297 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
5298 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
5299 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
5300 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
5301
5302 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
5303 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
5304 boot:</p>
5305
5306 <ul>
5307
5308 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
5309
5310 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
5311    clock is in UTC.</li>
5312
5313 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
5314    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
5315    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
5316
5317 </ul>
5318
5319 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
5320 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
5321 Villegas</a>.
5322
5323 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
5324 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
5325 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
5326 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
5327 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
5328 using this.</p>
5329
5330 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
5331 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
5332 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
5333 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
5334 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
5335 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
5336 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
5337
5338       </div>
5339       <div class="tags">
5340
5341
5342         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>.
5343
5344
5345       </div>
5346     </div>
5347     <div class="padding"></div>
5348
5349     <div class="entry">
5350       <div class="title">
5351         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
5352       </div>
5353       <div class="date">
5354         17th May 2009
5355       </div>
5356       <div class="body">
5357         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
5358 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
5359 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
5360 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
5361 dager siden kom
5362 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
5363 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
5364 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
5365 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
5366 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
5367
5368 <blockquote>
5369 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
5370 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
5371 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
5372 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
5373 </blockquote>
5374
5375 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
5376 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
5377 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
5378 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
5379 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
5380
5381 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
5382 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
5383 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
5384
5385       </div>
5386       <div class="tags">
5387
5388
5389         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</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>.
5390
5391
5392       </div>
5393     </div>
5394     <div class="padding"></div>
5395
5396     <div class="entry">
5397       <div class="title">
5398         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
5399       </div>
5400       <div class="date">
5401          7th May 2009
5402       </div>
5403       <div class="body">
5404         <p>Kom over
5405 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
5406 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
5407 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
5408 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
5409 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
5410 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
5411 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
5412
5413       </div>
5414       <div class="tags">
5415
5416
5417         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5418
5419
5420       </div>
5421     </div>
5422     <div class="padding"></div>
5423
5424     <div class="entry">
5425       <div class="title">
5426         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
5427       </div>
5428       <div class="date">
5429          2nd May 2009
5430       </div>
5431       <div class="body">
5432         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
5433 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
5434 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
5435 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
5436 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
5437 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
5438 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
5439 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
5440 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
5441 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
5442 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
5443 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
5444 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
5445 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
5446 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
5447 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
5448 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
5449 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
5450 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
5451 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
5452
5453 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
5454 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
5455 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
5456 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
5457 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
5458 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
5459 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
5460 betydelige.</p>
5461
5462       </div>
5463       <div class="tags">
5464
5465
5466         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</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>.
5467
5468
5469       </div>
5470     </div>
5471     <div class="padding"></div>
5472
5473     <div class="entry">
5474       <div class="title">
5475         <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>
5476       </div>
5477       <div class="date">
5478          2nd May 2009
5479       </div>
5480       <div class="body">
5481         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
5482 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
5483 do not yet know them.</p>
5484
5485 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
5486 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
5487 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
5488 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
5489 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
5490 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
5491 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
5492 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
5493 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
5494 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
5495 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
5496
5497 <p>The second one is
5498 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
5499 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
5500 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
5501 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
5502 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
5503 and the company behind it is running
5504 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
5505 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
5506 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
5507 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
5508 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
5509 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
5510 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
5511 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
5512
5513 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
5514 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
5515 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
5516 surrounded by today.</p>
5517
5518       </div>
5519       <div class="tags">
5520
5521
5522         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>.
5523
5524
5525       </div>
5526     </div>
5527     <div class="padding"></div>
5528
5529     <div class="entry">
5530       <div class="title">
5531         <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>
5532       </div>
5533       <div class="date">
5534         28th April 2009
5535       </div>
5536       <div class="body">
5537         <p>Julien Blache
5538 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
5539 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
5540 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
5541 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
5542 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
5543 properties.</p>
5544
5545       </div>
5546       <div class="tags">
5547
5548
5549         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>.
5550
5551
5552       </div>
5553     </div>
5554     <div class="padding"></div>
5555
5556     <div class="entry">
5557       <div class="title">
5558         <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>
5559       </div>
5560       <div class="date">
5561         30th March 2009
5562       </div>
5563       <div class="body">
5564         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
5565 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
5566 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
5567 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
5568 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
5569 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
5570 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
5571 application.</p>
5572
5573 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
5574 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
5575 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
5576 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
5577 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
5578 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
5579 blocked from doing so.</p>
5580
5581 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
5582 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
5583 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
5584 requirements change.</p>
5585
5586 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
5587 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
5588 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
5589
5590       </div>
5591       <div class="tags">
5592
5593
5594         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>.
5595
5596
5597       </div>
5598     </div>
5599     <div class="padding"></div>
5600
5601     <div class="entry">
5602       <div class="title">
5603         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
5604       </div>
5605       <div class="date">
5606         29th March 2009
5607       </div>
5608       <div class="body">
5609         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
5610 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
5611 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
5612 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
5613 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
5614 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
5615 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
5616 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
5617 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
5618 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
5619 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
5620 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
5621 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
5622 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
5623 now. :)</p>
5624
5625       </div>
5626       <div class="tags">
5627
5628
5629         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>.
5630
5631
5632       </div>
5633     </div>
5634     <div class="padding"></div>
5635
5636     <div class="entry">
5637       <div class="title">
5638         <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>
5639       </div>
5640       <div class="date">
5641         29th March 2009
5642       </div>
5643       <div class="body">
5644         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
5645 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
5646 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
5647 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
5648 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
5649 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
5650
5651 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
5652 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
5653 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
5654 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
5655 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
5656 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
5657 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
5658 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
5659 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
5660 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
5661 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
5662 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
5663 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
5664
5665 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
5666 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
5667 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
5668 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
5669
5670 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
5671 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
5672
5673 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
5674 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
5675 new IETF work group?</p>
5676
5677       </div>
5678       <div class="tags">
5679
5680
5681         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>.
5682
5683
5684       </div>
5685     </div>
5686     <div class="padding"></div>
5687
5688     <div class="entry">
5689       <div class="title">
5690         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
5691       </div>
5692       <div class="date">
5693         15th February 2009
5694       </div>
5695       <div class="body">
5696         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
5697 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
5698 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
5699 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
5700 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
5701 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
5702 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
5703 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
5704 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
5705 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
5706 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
5707 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
5708
5709       </div>
5710       <div class="tags">
5711
5712
5713         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/norsk">norsk</a>.
5714
5715
5716       </div>
5717     </div>
5718     <div class="padding"></div>
5719
5720     <div class="entry">
5721       <div class="title">
5722         <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>
5723       </div>
5724       <div class="date">
5725          7th December 2008
5726       </div>
5727       <div class="body">
5728         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
5729 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
5730 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
5731 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
5732 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
5733 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
5734 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
5735 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
5736
5737 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
5738 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
5739 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
5740 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
5741 of these cards.</p>
5742
5743       </div>
5744       <div class="tags">
5745
5746
5747         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>.
5748
5749
5750       </div>
5751     </div>
5752     <div class="padding"></div>
5753
5754     <div class="entry">
5755       <div class="title">
5756         <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>
5757       </div>
5758       <div class="date">
5759         25th November 2008
5760       </div>
5761       <div class="body">
5762         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
5763 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
5764 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
5765 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
5766 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
5767 notes are available on
5768 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
5769 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
5770 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
5771 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
5772 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
5773 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
5774 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
5775 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
5776 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
5777
5778 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
5779 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
5780
5781       </div>
5782       <div class="tags">
5783
5784
5785         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>.
5786
5787
5788       </div>
5789     </div>
5790     <div class="padding"></div>
5791
5792     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
5793     <div id="sidebar">
5794
5795
5796
5797 <h2>Archive</h2>
5798 <ul>
5799
5800 <li>2013
5801 <ul>
5802
5803 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
5804
5805 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
5806
5807 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
5808
5809 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
5810
5811 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (6)</a></li>
5812
5813 </ul></li>
5814
5815 <li>2012
5816 <ul>
5817
5818 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
5819
5820 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
5821
5822 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
5823
5824 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
5825
5826 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
5827
5828 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
5829
5830 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
5831
5832 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
5833
5834 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
5835
5836 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
5837
5838 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
5839
5840 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
5841
5842 </ul></li>
5843
5844 <li>2011
5845 <ul>
5846
5847 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
5848
5849 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
5850
5851 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
5852
5853 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
5854
5855 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
5856
5857 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
5858
5859 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
5860
5861 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
5862
5863 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
5864
5865 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
5866
5867 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
5868
5869 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
5870
5871 </ul></li>
5872
5873 <li>2010
5874 <ul>
5875
5876 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
5877
5878 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
5879
5880 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
5881
5882 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
5883
5884 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
5885
5886 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
5887
5888 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
5889
5890 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
5891
5892 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
5893
5894 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
5895
5896 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
5897
5898 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
5899
5900 </ul></li>
5901
5902 <li>2009
5903 <ul>
5904
5905 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
5906
5907 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
5908
5909 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
5910
5911 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
5912
5913 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
5914
5915 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
5916
5917 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
5918
5919 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
5920
5921 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
5922
5923 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
5924
5925 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
5926
5927 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
5928
5929 </ul></li>
5930
5931 <li>2008
5932 <ul>
5933
5934 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
5935
5936 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
5937
5938 </ul></li>
5939
5940 </ul>
5941
5942
5943
5944 <h2>Tags</h2>
5945 <ul>
5946
5947  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
5948
5949  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
5950
5951  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
5952
5953  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
5954
5955  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (7)</a></li>
5956
5957  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
5958
5959  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
5960
5961  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (74)</a></li>
5962
5963  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (127)</a></li>
5964
5965  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
5966
5967  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (9)</a></li>
5968
5969  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
5970
5971  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (192)</a></li>
5972
5973  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
5974
5975  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
5976
5977  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (11)</a></li>
5978
5979  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
5980
5981  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (33)</a></li>
5982
5983  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (6)</a></li>
5984
5985  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
5986
5987  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
5988
5989  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (6)</a></li>
5990
5991  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
5992
5993  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
5994
5995  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (232)</a></li>
5996
5997  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (152)</a></li>
5998
5999  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (8)</a></li>
6000
6001  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
6002
6003  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (44)</a></li>
6004
6005  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (65)</a></li>
6006
6007  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
6008
6009  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
6010
6011  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
6012
6013  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (7)</a></li>
6014
6015  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
6016
6017  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
6018
6019  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
6020
6021  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (29)</a></li>
6022
6023  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
6024
6025  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
6026
6027  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (42)</a></li>
6028
6029  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
6030
6031  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (7)</a></li>
6032
6033  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (15)</a></li>
6034
6035  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
6036
6037  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (7)</a></li>
6038
6039  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (38)</a></li>
6040
6041  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
6042
6043  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (26)</a></li>
6044
6045 </ul>
6046
6047
6048     </div>
6049     <p style="text-align: right">
6050  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
6051 </p>
6052
6053   </body>
6054 </html>