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14 <a href=
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</a>
21 <h3>Entries tagged "debian".
</h3>
25 <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>
31 <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
32 install to get support for a given MIME type. Thanks to
33 <a href=
"https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
34 done by Ubuntu
</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
35 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
36 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
37 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:
</p>
43 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
48 version = pkg.candidate
50 version = pkg.installed
53 record = version.record
54 if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
56 mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
58 t = t.rstrip().strip()
60 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
62 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
64 mimetype = sys.argv[
1]
65 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
66 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
70 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:
</p>
73 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
74 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
76 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
77 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
82 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
83 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
84 packages. It would be great if Debian supported such feature too. Is
85 anyone working on adding it?
</p>
91 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>.
96 <div class=
"padding"></div>
100 <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>
106 <p>The
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-
11
107 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive
</a>, is a
108 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
109 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
110 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing. With such
111 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
112 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
113 downloaded by the browser.
</p>
115 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
116 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
117 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there. The result
119 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
120 site
</a>. Using the collected information, it become possible to
121 answer the question in the title. Here are the
20 most supported MIME
122 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
123 The complete list is available from the link above.
</p>
125 <p><strong>Debian Stable:
</strong></p>
129 ----- -----------------------
152 <p><strong>Debian Testing:
</strong></p>
156 ----- -----------------------
179 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:
</strong></p>
183 ----- -----------------------
206 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
207 information mentioned in DEP-
11. I have not yet had time to look at
208 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
211 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
16 13:
35</strong>: Updated numbers after
212 discovering a typo in my script.
</p>
218 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>.
223 <div class=
"padding"></div>
227 <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>
233 <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
234 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
235 values provided by the Linux kernel
</a> following my hope for
236 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
237 dongle support in Debian
</a>. Using this knowledge, I have tested how
238 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
239 to hardware. This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
240 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
241 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
244 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
245 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
246 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
250 Package: package-name
251 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)
</p>
254 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
255 for a given modalias value using this file.
</p>
257 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
258 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class
0E01):
</p>
262 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)
</p>
265 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
266 CardBus bridge (bus class
0607) PCI device is present:
</p>
270 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
273 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
274 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs
04D8:F8DA:
</p>
277 Package: colorhug-client
278 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)
</p>
281 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
282 file in the Debian archive. Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
283 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.
</p>
285 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
286 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
287 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
288 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
289 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information. I've
290 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
291 is working as it should with my prototype. It even made it to Ubuntu
294 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
295 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
296 implementation of the lookup code. The idea is to create files for
297 each modalias and let the shell do the matching. Please check out and
299 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup
</a>
300 shell script. It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
301 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
302 repository where I currently work on my prototype.
</p>
304 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
305 install yubikey-personalization:
</p>
308 % ./hw-support-lookup
309 <br>yubikey-personalization
313 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
314 propose to install the pcmciautils package:
</p>
317 % ./hw-support-lookup
322 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
323 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
324 database
</a>, please tell me about it.
</p>
326 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
327 packages and hardware. One source would be to look at packages with
328 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
329 extract their modalias information. Another would be to look at
330 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
331 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
332 generate a modalias matching rule. I have not tested any of these to
335 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
336 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
337 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
338 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
344 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>.
349 <div class=
"padding"></div>
353 <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>
359 <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
360 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
361 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
362 to document the details. Here are my findings so far, also available
364 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
365 Debian Edu subversion repository
</a>:
367 <p><strong>Modalias decoded
</strong></p>
369 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
370 values stands for. It is in part based on information from
371 <URL:
<a href=
"https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias
</a> >,
372 <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> >,
373 <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> > and
374 <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> >.
376 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
377 this shell script:
</p>
380 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u
383 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
387 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
388 alias: serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
389 alias: serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
393 <p><strong>PCI subtype
</strong></p>
395 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this. This is an Intel Host
396 Bridge memory controller:
</p>
399 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
402 <p>This represent these values:
</p>
407 sv
00001028 (subvendor)
408 sd
000001AD (subdevice)
414 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
415 -n' as
8086:
2770. The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
416 0600. The
0600 class is a host bridge. Other useful bus values are
417 0300 (VGA compatible card) and
0200 (Ethernet controller).
</p>
419 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
422 <p><strong>USB subtype
</strong></p>
424 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this. This is an internal
425 USB hub in a laptop:
</p>
428 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
431 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:
</p>
434 v
1D6B (device vendor)
435 p
0001 (device product)
438 dsc
00 (device subclass)
439 dp
00 (device protocol)
440 ic
09 (interface class)
441 isc
00 (interface subclass)
442 ip
00 (interface protocol)
445 <p>The
0900 device class/subclass means hub. Some times the relevant
446 class is in the interface class section. For a simple USB web camera,
447 these alias entries show up:
</p>
450 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
451 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
452 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
453 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
456 <p>Interface class
0E01 is video control,
0E02 is video streaming (aka
457 camera),
0101 is audio control device and
0102 is audio streaming (aka
458 microphone). Thus this is a camera with microphone included.
</p>
460 <p><strong>ACPI subtype
</strong></p>
462 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff. This is an IR
463 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:
</p>
466 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
469 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.
</p>
471 <p><strong>DMI subtype
</strong></p>
473 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
474 and model. This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
475 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:
</p>
478 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(
1.66):bd06/
15/
2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
481 <p>The values present are
</p>
484 bvn IBM (BIOS vendor)
485 bvr
1UETB
6WW(
1.66) (BIOS version)
486 bd
06/
15/
2005 (BIOS date)
487 svn IBM (system vendor)
488 pn
2371H4G (product name)
489 pvr ThinkPadX40 (product version)
490 rvn IBM (board vendor)
491 rn
2371H4G (board name)
492 rvr NotAvailable (board version)
493 cvn IBM (chassis vendor)
495 cvr NotAvailable (chassis version)
498 <p>The chassis type
10 is Notebook. Other interesting values can be
499 found in the dmidecode source:
</p>
503 4 Low Profile Desktop
516 17 Main Server Chassis
519 20 Bus Expansion Chassis
520 21 Peripheral Chassis
522 23 Rack Mount Chassis
531 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
532 table. For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
533 claim it is a desktop.
</p>
535 <p><strong>SerIO subtype
</strong></p>
537 <p>This type is used for PS/
2 mouse plugs. One example is from my
541 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
544 <p>The values present are
</p>
553 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver. I am not sure what
554 the valid values are.
</p>
556 <p><strong>Other subtypes
</strong></p>
558 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
559 file2alias.c. There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
560 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
561 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
562 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro. I did not spend time documenting all of
563 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
564 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.
</p>
566 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values
</strong></p>
568 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
569 one can use the following shell script:
</p>
572 for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u); do \
574 /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/ /' ; \
578 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
579 list is very long on my test machine):
</p>
583 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
585 FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
587 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
588 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
589 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
590 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
591 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
592 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
593 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
594 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
598 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
599 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
600 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
601 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
603 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
15:
</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
604 "find ... -print0 | xargs -
0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
605 in /sys/ with space in them.
</p>
611 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>.
616 <div class=
"padding"></div>
620 <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>
626 <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
627 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
628 Launcher and updated the Debian package
629 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile
</a> to make
630 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in. I
631 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
632 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
633 plug in his rocket launcher. In the process I moved the source to a
634 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
635 contribute.
<a href=
"http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream
</a>
636 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
637 years of relative silence. The new git repository is not listed in
638 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
639 bit more before I upload the new version. If you want to check out
640 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
641 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
642 view
</a> or use "
<tt>git clone
643 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git
</tt>".</p>
649 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>.
654 <div class="padding
"></div>
658 <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>
664 <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
665 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
666 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
667 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
668 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
669 machine. Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
670 Linux distribution. When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
671 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
672 I need to talk to it. When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
673 yubikey-personalization package. The information required to do this
674 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
676 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
677 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/
2010/
05/msg01206.html
">use
678 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>. The idea is fairly
683 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
684 starting when a user log in.</li>
686 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
687 hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
689 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
690 database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
693 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
694 package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
698 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
699 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
700 discover database to find packages and
701 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/
">PackageKit</a> to install
704 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
705 draft package is now checked into
706 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/
">the
707 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>. In the process, I updated the
708 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html
">discover-data</a>
709 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
710 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
711 2.2013.01.09 to unstable. I also discovered that the current
712 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html
">discover</a>
713 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
714 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present. I ported it to use
715 libusb as a fall back option to get it working. The fixed package
716 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
717 because of the freeze).</p>
719 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
720 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
723 <p align="center
"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
01-
09-hw-autoinstall.png
"></p>
725 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
726 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
727 program(s)" button should to be implemented.
</p>
729 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
730 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
731 from hardware to Debian packages. Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
732 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
733 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
734 reportbug if it isn't. Or, if you know of a better way to provide
735 such mapping, please let me know.
</p>
737 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
738 should be considered before it is ready for production use. Is dbus
739 the correct way to detect new hardware? At the moment I look for HAL
740 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
741 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop. Are there better events to use?
742 How should the user be notified? Is the desktop notification
743 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
744 popup instead? How should packages be installed? When should they
745 not be installed?
</p>
747 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
748 please send me an email. :)
</p>
754 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>.
759 <div class=
"padding"></div>
763 <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>
769 <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
770 <a href=
"http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
771 NXT
</a>. My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
772 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
773 already in Debian Squeeze. If Debian support for LEGO is something
774 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
775 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego
</a> (server
776 irc.debian.org). There is a lot that could be done to improve the
777 Debian support for LEGO designers. For example both CAD software
778 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)
</p>
780 <p>Update
2012-
01-
03: A
781 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page
</a>
782 including links to Lego related packages is now available.
</p>
788 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>.
793 <div class=
"padding"></div>
797 <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>
803 <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
804 year! I hope next year will prove to be a good year.
</p>
806 <p><a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin
</a>, the digital
807 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
808 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
809 experiment. And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
810 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a> is about to improve a bit.
811 The
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
812 package
</a> (version
0.7.2-
2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
813 in
<a href=
"http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue
</A>
814 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
817 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
818 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
819 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:
</p>
822 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
824 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=
1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
825 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
828 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well. The
829 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
830 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment. Note that the
831 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
832 around
5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment. Make sure your
833 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
834 all the blocks. The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
835 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
836 not be able to get all the features out of the client.
</p>
838 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
839 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
840 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
846 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>.
851 <div class=
"padding"></div>
855 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian
</a>
861 <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
862 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin
</a>, the decentralised
863 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
864 have been busy elsewhere. But two days ago, I started looking at the
865 state of
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
866 Debian
</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet. The package
867 is now maintained by a
868 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
869 people
</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team. We
870 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
871 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
872 Wheezy. It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
873 backports). The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
874 it from entering testing. To try to help the team and improve the
875 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
876 reports. I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
878 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
879 Ubuntu
</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
882 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
883 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
884 improve the package. It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
885 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
886 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
887 setup. As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
888 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
889 patch to backport
</a> the latest version. Jonas is going to look at
890 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
891 new version to unstable.
893 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
894 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system. I
895 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
896 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
897 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
898 transactions to Wikileaks. But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
899 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
900 they sell products and services. Improving the bitcoin support in
901 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
902 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
903 pay with bitcoin is still not very good. The bitcoin: URI is a step
904 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
905 use. Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
906 quick transaction. I believe there are other clients available, but
907 have not tested them.
</p>
910 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
911 with bitcoins
</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
912 I received
20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
914 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
915 on the blockexplorer service
</a>. Thank you everyone for your
916 donation. The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
917 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
918 number of users have gone up since then. If you use bitcoin and want
919 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
920 the same address as last time,
921 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
927 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>.
932 <div class=
"padding"></div>
936 <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>
943 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
944 this summer
</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
945 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
946 <a href=
"https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
947 repository for the project
</a>.
</p>
949 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
950 to the HTML version. To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
951 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
952 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.
</p>
954 <p>Want to sing? You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
955 PostScript formats at
956 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
957 Science Songbook
</a>.
</p>
963 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>.
968 <div class=
"padding"></div>
972 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med
19-årsdagen, Debian!
</a>
979 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet
19
980 år
</a>. Jeg har fulgt det de siste
12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
981 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!
</p>
987 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>.
992 <div class=
"padding"></div>
996 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists
</a>
1002 <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
1003 <a href=
"http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø
</a>, I started
1004 collecting computer related songs for use at parties. The original
1005 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
1006 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
1007 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format. I have
1008 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
1009 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
1010 help me extend and update the book. If anyone is volunteering to help
1011 me with this, send me an email. Also let me know if there are songs
1012 missing in my book.
</p>
1014 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
1015 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
1016 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
1017 Especially now that
<a href=
"http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
1018 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going). Want to sing? Check
1019 out
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
1020 Computer Science Songbook
</a>.
1026 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>.
1031 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1035 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge
</a>
1041 <p>At work we have heaps of servers. I believe the total count is
1042 around
1000 at the moment. To be able to get help from the vendors
1043 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
1044 up to date. If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
1045 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
1046 firmware is upgraded. So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
1047 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
1048 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
1049 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
1050 the tools to do so.
</p>
1052 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
1053 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got. Most of
1054 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
1055 so far. This blog post is about the Dell part.
</P>
1057 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
1058 <a href=
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file
</a>
1059 with firmware information for all
11th generation servers, listing
1060 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
1061 site I can find it. Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
1062 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
1063 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
1064 be activated on the first reboot.
</p>
1066 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
1067 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
1068 servers at a site? Please get in touch and lets share resources.
</p>
1074 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
1076 # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
1078 'XML::Simple' =
> 'perl-XML-Simple',
1080 for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
1081 eval "use $module;";
1083 my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
1084 system("yum install -y $pkg");
1085 eval "use $module;";
1089 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
1095 sub run_firmware_script {
1096 my ($opts, $script) = @_;
1098 print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
1101 print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
1103 if (
0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
1104 print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
1106 print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
1110 sub run_firmware_scripts {
1111 my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
1112 # Run firmware packages
1113 for my $dir (@dirs) {
1114 print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
1115 opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
1116 while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
1117 next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
1118 run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
1126 print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
1127 system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
1132 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
1135 if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
1137 # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
1138 system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-
33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
1140 my $tmpdir = tempdir(
1144 fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
1145 system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
1146 my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
1147 # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
1150 for my $url (@paths) {
1151 fetch_dell_fw($url);
1153 run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
1155 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
1156 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
1160 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
1161 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
1167 my $url =
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
1171 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
1172 # firmware packages to download from Dell. Only work for Linux
1173 # machines and
11th generation Dell servers.
1174 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
1175 my $filename = shift;
1177 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
1179 my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
1181 print STDERR
"Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
1183 my $xml = XMLin($filename);
1185 for my $bundle (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareBundle}}) {
1186 my $brand = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
1187 my $model = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Model}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
1189 if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}) {
1190 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}[
0]-
>{osCode};
1192 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}-
>{osCode};
1194 if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
1196 @paths = map { $_-
>{path} } @{$bundle-
>{Contents}-
>{Package}};
1199 for my $component (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareComponent}}) {
1200 my $componenttype = $component-
>{ComponentType}-
>{value};
1202 # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
1203 next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
1205 my $cpath = $component-
>{path};
1206 for my $path (@paths) {
1207 if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
1208 push(@paths, $cpath);
1216 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
1217 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking. Anyone know a
1218 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers? At the
1219 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
1226 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>.
1231 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1235 <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>
1241 <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
1242 <a href=
"http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
1243 comments and opinions
</a> on my blog post on
1244 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
1245 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian
</a> and my blog post about
1246 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
1247 default KDE desktop in Debian
</a>. I only have time to address one
1248 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
1249 misunderstanding he bring forward:
</p>
1252 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
1253 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
1254 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
1257 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
1258 and booting into runlevel
1 is the same. I am not surprised he
1259 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
1260 thing to believe. But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
1261 runlevel
1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
1262 mode. I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
1263 hard to explain.
</p>
1265 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
1266 "
<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin
</tt>". This means the only thing that is
1267 executed in single user mode is sulogin. Single user mode is a boot
1268 state "between
" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
1269 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
1270 enters the single user state. When switching to runlevel 1, the state
1271 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
1272 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
1273 runs "init -t1 S
" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
1274 1. It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
1275 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
1278 <p>This summary might make it clearer. When booting for the first
1279 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
1280 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". When booting into
1281 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
1282 S; /etc/init.d/rc
1; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". A problem show up when
1283 trying to continue after visiting single user mode. Not all services
1284 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
1285 unpredicatble state. This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
1286 after visiting single user mode.</p>
1288 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
1289 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/. When switching from say runlevel 2
1290 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
1291 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
1292 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
1293 2-5. I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
1294 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
1295 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
1297 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
1298 and discovered this problem a few years ago. I suspect it originates
1299 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
1305 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>.
1310 <div class="padding
"></div>
1314 <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>
1320 <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
1321 are started from /etc/rcS.d/. In fact, there is a bite more of them
1322 than make sense, and this causes a few problems. What kind of
1323 problems, you might ask. There are at least two problems. The first
1324 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
1325 runlevel 1. One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
1326 the expected state. The other is that single user boot will sometimes
1327 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
1328 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
1329 machine from a problem in that subsystem. A minor additional point is
1330 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
1331 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
1332 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
1334 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/. In short, only the
1335 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
1336 presented during a single user boot should go there. Everything else
1337 should go into the numeric runlevels. This means things like
1338 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
1339 the numeric runlevels. Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
1340 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
1341 out. Do your package have one of them? Please help us make single
1342 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
1344 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
1345 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
1346 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
1349 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound. To keep
1350 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
1351 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
1352 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
1353 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
1354 moved first. This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
1355 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
1356 the system state correct. This will require some coordination when it
1357 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
1358 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
1359 on them. Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
1360 package, while others are still left to do. I wish I had time to work
1361 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
1362 find time to push this forward.</p>
1368 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>.
1373 <div class="padding
"></div>
1377 <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>
1383 <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
1384 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
1385 desktop to be useful for more people. The use case for this is my
1386 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
1389 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
1390 implement. After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
1391 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
1395 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
1396 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
1397 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
1398 tool to handle it. I have no problem guiding both of my parents
1399 through the process over the phone. If a kernel reboot is required,
1400 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool. Last
1401 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
1404 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
1405 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
1406 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
1407 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
1408 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
1409 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
1410 Packages file in the APT archive). If one or more packages are found,
1411 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
1412 type. If the package require the user to accept some non-free
1413 license, this is explained to the user. The entire process make it
1414 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
1415 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
1416 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
1418 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
1419 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
1420 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
1421 should search for a package that would add support for it. This
1422 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264. The selection
1423 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
1424 plugin handling. This is as far as I know implemented using a
1425 gstreamer hook. The end result is that the user easily get access to
1426 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
1427 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
1429 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
1430 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
1431 start emacs to show it. If I remember correctly, when doing the same
1432 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser. At least I
1433 know Opera will show text files within the browser. I much prefer the
1434 latter behaviour.</li>
1438 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
1439 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
1440 it do not matter much.</p>
1442 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
1443 Debian release. It would require the coordinated effort of several
1444 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
1450 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>.
1455 <div class="padding
"></div>
1459 <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>
1465 <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</A>
1466 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
1467 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
1468 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
1469 security support for a few years.</p>
1471 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
1472 that are missing in Debian at the moment. It would be great if these
1473 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
1474 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com
">FixMyStreet</a> clone
1475 in their own country using only Debian packages. The list of modules
1476 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
1477 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
1478 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
1479 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
1480 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
1481 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
1482 easier in the future.</p>
1484 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
1485 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
1486 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package. But this leave me
1487 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
1488 do not have time for.</p>
1494 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>.
1499 <div class="padding
"></div>
1503 <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>
1509 <p>Here is a small update for my English readers. Most of my blog
1510 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
1511 update in English.</p>
1513 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
1514 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
1515 of the British service
1516 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/
">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
1517 and it has been running for a month now. The entire project has been
1518 organised by me and two others. Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
1519 to fund the development work. In January I drafted a contract with
1520 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/
">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
1521 and in February the development took place. Most of it involved
1522 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
1523 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
1524 running in any country by now. The Norwegian
1525 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a> is using
1526 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/
">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
1527 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
1528 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
1530 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
1531 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th. The system is
1532 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
1533 problem reports in a few weeks. Soon we hope to announce the Android
1534 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
1535 public infrastructure.</p>
1537 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
1544 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>.
1549 <div class="padding
"></div>
1553 <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>
1559 <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
1560 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo. My idea is that
1561 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
1562 available on the Internet, and check our locally
1563 maintained/distributed software against this information. It should
1564 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten. The
1565 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
1566 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
1567 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
1568 out which security holes were present in our free software
1571 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
1572 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
1573 consistent way across data sources. I considered several ways to do
1574 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
1575 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
1576 existing naming scheme. And it seem like I am not the first one to
1577 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
1578 solution. Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html
">Common
1579 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
1580 software, hardware and other platform components. The CPE ids are
1581 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/
">National
1582 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
1583 issues for any CPE name. With this in place, all I need to do is to
1584 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
1585 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
1586 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
1588 <p>To give you an example. The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
1589 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip. If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
1590 check out, one could look up
1591 <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
1592 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
1593 The most recent one is
1594 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-
2010-
0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
1595 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
1596 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
1598 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
1599 for offline processing of issues. Using this dump, I've written a
1600 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
1601 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs. One give it CPEs
1602 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
1603 security issues out.</p>
1605 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
1606 information need to be high. For that to happen, I believe as many as
1607 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database. I notice
1609 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt
">a
1610 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
1611 information. I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
1613 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
1614 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
1615 the CVE database in NVD. The result look fairly good, but there are
1616 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
1617 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
1618 Debian believe are affected by a CVE). Hope to find time to improve
1619 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
1620 someone maintaining it. So far my three emails with questions and
1621 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
1622 established soon.</p>
1624 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
1625 mapping. It would be useful to know which packages in for example
1626 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
1627 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
1628 for their packages.</p>
1634 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>.
1639 <div class="padding
"></div>
1643 <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>
1650 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data
">discover-data</a>
1651 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
1652 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
1653 information. One part of this script that I find very useful when
1654 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
1655 to the PCI device it claims. It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
1656 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with. To see
1657 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
1658 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>. The relevant output on
1659 one of my machines like this:</p>
1663 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
1666 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
1675 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
1676 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
1679 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
1680 echo loaded pci modules:
1682 cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
1683 for address in * ; do
1684 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
1685 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
1686 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
1687 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
1688 id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
3}'`
1698 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
1702 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
1703 echo loaded usb modules:
1705 cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
1706 for address in * ; do
1707 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
1708 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
1709 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
1710 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
1711 id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
6}')
1723 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
1730 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>.
1735 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1739 <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>
1745 <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the
<a
1746 href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a> testing if the new
1747 batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
1748 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
1749 computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
1750 five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
1751 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
1752 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
1755 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
1756 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
1757 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
1758 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
1759 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
1760 on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
1761 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
1762 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.
</p>
1764 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
1765 I perform on a new model.
</p>
1769 <li>Is PXE installation working? I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
1770 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
1771 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.
</li>
1773 <li>Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
1774 installation, X.org is working.
</li>
1776 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
1777 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
1778 reported by the program.
</li>
1780 <li>Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
1781 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
1782 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
1783 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
1784 normally test this by playing
1785 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
1786 video
</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.
</li>
1788 <li>Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
1789 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
1791 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
1792 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
1794 <li>Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
1795 picture from the v4l device show up.
</li>
1797 <li>Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
1798 any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
1801 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
1802 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
1805 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working? I'm testing if the
1806 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
1809 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
1810 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
1811 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
1812 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
1815 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
1816 acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
1817 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
1822 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
1823 for the HP machines I am testing. I'm not done yet, so I will report
1824 the test results later. For now I can report that HP
8100 Elite work
1825 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook
8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
1826 and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with
8440p. As you
1827 can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
1828 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
1829 RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.
</p>
1835 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>.
1840 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1844 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins
</a>
1850 <p>As I continue to explore
1851 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>, I've starting to wonder
1852 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
1853 and regulations here in Norway. Here are some random notes.
</p>
1855 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
1856 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
1857 is known to everyone. This means that if a BitCoin address has been
1858 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
1859 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
1860 that address. There is even a web service to look at the details for
1861 all transactions. There I can see that my address
1862 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a>
1863 have received
16.06 Bitcoin, the
1864 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv
8MHqvwst
3</a>
1865 address of Simon Phipps have received
181.97 BitCoin and the address
1866 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt
</A>
1867 of EFF have received
2447.38 BitCoins so far. Thank you to each and
1868 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
1869 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
1870 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
1871 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction. I'm told
1872 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
1873 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
1874 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.
</p>
1876 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
1877 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
1878 without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting
1879 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
1880 If the Skolelinux foundation
1881 (
<a href=
"http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
1882 Debian Labs
</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
1883 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
1884 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
1885 not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate
1886 should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay
1887 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
1888 BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.
</p>
1890 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
1891 accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to
1892 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
1893 easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
1894 access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really
1895 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
1896 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I
1897 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
1898 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
1899 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
1900 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular. I'm sure they
1901 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
1902 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
1903 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
1906 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
1907 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
1908 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
1909 to see which one get the next lump of cash). The "winner" get
50
1910 BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
1911 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
1912 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
1913 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the
50
1915 <a href=
"http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool
</a>
1916 if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a
1917 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
1918 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
1921 <p>Update
2010-
12-
15: Found an
<a
1922 href=
"http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
1923 criticism
</a> of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
1924 it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be
1925 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.
</p>
1931 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>.
1936 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1940 <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>
1946 <p>With this weeks lawless
1947 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
1948 attacks
</a> on Wikileak and
1949 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
1950 speech
</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
1951 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
1953 <a href=
"http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
1954 Phipps on bitcoin
</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
1955 mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
1956 involved with
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>. I got
1957 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
1958 some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
1959 for helping me remember BitCoin.
</p>
1961 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital
1962 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
1963 networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
1964 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
1965 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The
1966 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets
2.9
1967 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
1968 line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas
1969 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
1970 Debian
</a> soon.
</p>
1972 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
1973 There are
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
1974 bitcoins
</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
1975 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided. There
1976 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you
1977 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
1979 <a href=
"https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free
</a> (
0.05
1980 bitcoin at the time of writing). Use
1981 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch
</a> to keep an eye
1982 on the current exchange rates.
</p>
1984 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
1985 machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
1986 donations to the address
1987 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</b>. Thank you!
</p>
1993 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>.
1998 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2002 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?
</a>
2008 <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
2009 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
2010 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
2011 to play a video file or stream. Only if VLC fail will I drag out
2012 gmplayer to see if it can do better. The reason is mostly the failure
2013 model and trust. When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
2014 reporting the problem. When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
2015 just hangs. The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.
<p>
2017 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
2018 mplayer in
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
2019 Edu/Skolelinux
</a>. The reason is simple. We need a good browser
2020 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
2021 not very good. For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
2022 is no way for the user to pause the video. Also, when I
2023 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
2024 tested the browser plugins
</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
2025 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked. If
2026 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
2027 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.
</P>
2029 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
2030 annoying. The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
2031 keyboard shortcuts. When the player is in full screen mode, its
2032 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
2033 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode. I
2034 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
2035 window mode. Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
2036 the current video. It is very nice when playing short videos from the
2037 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
2038 what is going on.
</p>
2044 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>.
2049 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2053 <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>
2059 <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
2060 upgrade testing of the
2061 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
2062 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a> to do
<tt>apt-get autoremove
</tt> when using apt-get.
2063 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
2064 can now present the updated result from today:
</p>
2066 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
2068 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
2075 browser-plugin-gnash
2082 freedesktop-sound-theme
2084 gconf-defaults-service
2099 gnome-desktop-environment
2103 gnome-session-canberra
2108 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
2114 libapache2-mod-dnssd
2117 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
2120 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
2121 libboost-python1.42
.0
2122 libboost-thread1.42
.0
2124 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0
2126 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
2133 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
2148 libgnomepanel2.24-cil
2153 libgtksourceview2.0-common
2154 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
2155 libmono-addins0.2-cil
2156 libmono-cairo2.0-cil
2157 libmono-corlib2.0-cil
2158 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
2159 libmono-posix2.0-cil
2160 libmono-security2.0-cil
2161 libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
2162 libmono-system2.0-cil
2165 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
2166 libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
2176 libtelepathy-farsight0
2185 nautilus-sendto-empathy
2189 python-aptdaemon-gtk
2191 python-beautifulsoup
2206 python-gtksourceview2
2217 python-pkg-resources
2224 python-twisted-conch
2230 python-zope.interface
2235 rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
2242 system-config-printer-udev
2244 telepathy-mission-control-
5
2257 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
2265 fast-user-switch-applet
2284 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
2286 libsdl1.2debian-alsa
2292 system-config-printer
2299 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
2302 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
2305 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
2311 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
2313 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
2319 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
2326 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
2342 kdeartwork-emoticons
2344 kdeartwork-theme-icon
2348 kdebase-workspace-bin
2349 kdebase-workspace-data
2363 kscreensaver-xsavers
2378 plasma-dataengines-workspace
2380 plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
2381 plasma-runners-addons
2382 plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
2383 plasma-scriptengine-python
2384 plasma-scriptengine-qedje
2385 plasma-scriptengine-ruby
2386 plasma-scriptengine-webkit
2387 plasma-scriptengines
2388 plasma-wallpapers-addons
2389 plasma-widget-folderview
2390 plasma-widget-networkmanagement
2394 xscreensaver-data-extra
2396 xscreensaver-gl-extra
2397 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
2400 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
2404 google-gadgets-common
2422 libggadget-qt-
1.0-
0b
2427 libkonqsidebarplugin4a
2436 libplasma-geolocation-interface4
2438 libplasmagenericshell4
2452 libsmokeknewstuff2-
3
2453 libsmokeknewstuff3-
3
2455 libsmokektexteditor3
2463 libsmokeqtnetwork4-
3
2469 libsmokeqtuitools4-
3
2481 plasma-dataengines-addons
2482 plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
2483 plasma-widget-lancelot
2484 plasma-widgets-addons
2485 plasma-widgets-workspace
2489 update-notifier-common
2492 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
2493 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
2494 differences. I have no idea what packages should be installed after
2495 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.
</p>
2501 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>.
2506 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2510 <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>
2516 <p>Most of the computers in use by the
2517 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project
</a>
2518 are virtual machines. And they have been Xen machines running on a
2519 fairly old IBM eserver xseries
345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
2520 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge
2950 host machine. This was a
2521 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
2522 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
2523 know is not supported by KVM. So to migrate, we had to convert
2524 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.
</p>
2527 <a href=
"http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
2528 nice recipe
</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
2529 migration. It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
2530 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
2531 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data. I NFS mounted the
2532 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.
</p>
2538 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/
35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
2543 if [ -z "$
1" ] ; then
2544 echo "Usage: $
0 <hostname
>"
2550 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
2551 echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
2555 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs. not sure why.
2556 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
2557 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
2558 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
2561 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=
1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
2562 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
2564 parted $img mklabel msdos
2565 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap
0 $disksize
2566 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
2567 parted $img set
1 boot on
2570 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
2571 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
2573 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=
1M
2574 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
2575 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
2577 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
2578 losetup -d /dev/loop0
2581 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
2582 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.
</p>
2584 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
2585 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-
686 and
2586 set up grub to boot from the disk image. After this, the KVM machines
2587 seem to work just fine.
</p>
2593 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>.
2598 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2602 <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>
2608 <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
2609 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
2610 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
2611 status. Here is a short update based on a test I ran
20101118.
</p>
2613 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
2614 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
2615 can see if anything should be changed.
</p>
2617 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
2619 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
2622 apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
2623 browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-
4.3 cups-pk-helper
2624 dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
2625 freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
2626 gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
2627 geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
2628 gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
2629 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
2630 gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
2631 gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
2632 gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
2633 gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
2634 gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
2635 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
2636 libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-
0 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
2637 libboost-python1.42
.0 libboost-thread1.42
.0 libchamplain-
0.4-
0
2638 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
2639 libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-
1.0-
2
2640 libepc-common libepc-ui-
1.0-
2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
2641 libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
2642 libgdl-
1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-
0 libgif4
2643 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
2644 libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
2645 libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
2646 libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
2647 libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
2648 libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
2649 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
2650 libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
2651 libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-
6
2652 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6
.8
2653 libpolkit-gtk-
1-
0 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
2654 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6
.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
2655 libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-
4
2656 libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-
0.99-
0
2657 libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
2658 mono-
2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
2659 nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
2660 openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-
4suite-xml
2661 python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
2662 python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
2663 python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
2664 python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
2665 python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
2666 python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
2667 python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
2668 python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
2669 python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
2670 python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
2671 python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
2672 python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
2673 python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
2674 remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
2675 rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
2676 software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
2677 telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-
5 telepathy-salut tomboy
2678 totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
2679 transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
2683 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
2686 arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
2687 epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
2688 fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
2689 gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
2690 gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
2691 gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
2692 guile-
1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
2693 libavahi-ui0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7
2694 libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
2695 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1
2696 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3 libfaad0 libgadu3
2697 libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
2698 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
2699 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
2700 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-
1.0-
0
2701 libgtkhtml2-
0 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
2702 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
2703 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
2704 libmagick++
10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
2705 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
2706 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9
2707 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8
2708 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
2709 libspeexdsp1 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libsvga1
2710 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
2711 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
2712 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
2713 sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
2714 totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
2717 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
2720 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
2723 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
2729 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
2731 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
2734 autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-
4.3 dcoprss
2735 edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
2736 ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
2737 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
2738 kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
2739 kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
2740 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
2741 kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
2742 kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
2743 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
2744 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
2745 kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
2746 killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
2747 kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
2748 ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42
.0
2749 libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
2750 libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
2751 libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
2752 libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
2753 libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
2754 libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
2755 libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
2756 libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
2757 libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
2758 lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
2759 openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
2760 parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
2761 pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
2762 speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
2766 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
2769 amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
2770 dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
2771 kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
2772 kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
2773 keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
2774 kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
2775 kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
2776 klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
2777 kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
2778 kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
2779 kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
2780 ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
2781 ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
2782 kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
2783 kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
2784 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
2785 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-
0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2
2786 libboost-python1.34
.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
2787 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
2788 libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-
0 libicu38
2789 libiec61883-
0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
2790 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
2791 libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
2792 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
2793 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
2794 libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
2795 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
2796 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-
8 librss1 libsensors3
2797 libsmbios2 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90
2798 libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
2799 mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
2800 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
2801 ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
2804 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
2807 dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
2808 kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
2809 kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
2810 kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
2811 netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
2812 xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
2813 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
2816 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
2819 kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
2826 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>.
2831 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2835 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd
</a>
2842 <a href=
"http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
2843 call from the Gnash project
</a> for
2844 <a href=
"http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot
</a> slaves to test the
2845 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
2846 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
2847 Debian/Squeeze. I hope this can help the developers in getting new
2848 releases out more often.
</p>
2850 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
2851 I have considered setting up a
<a
2852 href=
"http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd
</a>
2853 machine as well. I have also considered using the kfreebsd
2854 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the
5
2855 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video. Because of this, I
2856 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
2857 kfreebsd. Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
2858 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
2859 screen at random locations). Have not gotten very far with the
2860 testing. Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
2861 fatal problem. Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
2862 useful as a file server for NUUG. Will try to find time to set up a
2863 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.
</p>
2869 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>.
2874 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2878 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in
3D
</a>
2884 <p><img src=
"http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
2886 <p>3D printing is just great. I just came across this Debian logo in
2888 <a href=
"http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
2889 thingiverse blog
</a>.
</p>
2895 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>.
2900 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2904 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates
2010-
10-
24</a>
2910 <p>Some updates.
</p>
2912 <p>My
<a href=
"http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge
</a> to
2913 raise money for the project is going well. The lower limit of
10
2914 signers was reached in
24 hours, and so far
13 people have signed it.
2915 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
2916 how far we can get before the time limit of December
24 is reached.
2919 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
2920 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
2921 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
2923 <a href=
"http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov
</a>,
2924 and can be used using
<tt>kcov
<directory
> <binary
></tt>.
2925 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
2926 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
2927 libglib2.0-dev. Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
2928 solvable. I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.
</p>
2930 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for
<a
2931 href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
2932 new alpha release of Debian Edu
</a>, and just published the second
2933 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
2934 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>
2935 release. Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
2936 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
2937 client servers and diskless workstations. A nice touch added
2938 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
2939 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.
</p>
2945 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>.
2950 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2954 <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>
2960 <p>In the
<a href=
"http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
2961 popularity-contest numbers
</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
2962 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian. The sixth
2963 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla. This is a clear indication that
2964 working flash is important for Debian users. Around
10 percent of the
2965 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
2968 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August
2008
2969 («
<a href=
"http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
2970 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
2971 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs
</a>»), one of the most important problems
2972 schools experienced with
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
2973 Edu/Skolelinux
</a> was the lack of working Flash. A lot of educational
2974 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
2975 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
2976 good reason to stay with Windows.
</p>
2978 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
2979 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
2980 everything you told him but could work fairly well. This was a
2981 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
2982 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
2983 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
2984 example Internet Explorer
6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
2985 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
2986 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
2987 pages they want to visit.
</p>
2989 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
2990 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
2991 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
2992 Video to working out of the box. For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
2993 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
2994 the new release
0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
2995 unstable. The new version work with more sites that version
0.8.7.
2996 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
2997 release team have not had time to reply to it yet. I hope they agree
2998 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
2999 accept the new package into Squeeze.
</p>
3005 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>.
3010 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3014 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery
</a>
3020 <p>I discovered this while doing
3021 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
3022 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze
</a>. A few packages
3023 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
3024 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
3025 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.
</p>
3027 <p>An example is from todays
3028 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
3029 of KDE using aptitude
</a>. In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
3030 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade. The cause is simple. If a
3031 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
3032 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
3033 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
3034 because its dependencies are unavailable.
</p>
3036 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:
</p>
3039 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
3040 perl-modules depends on perl (
>=
5.10.1-
1); however:
3041 Version of perl on system is
5.10.0-
19lenny
2.
3042 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
3043 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
3046 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
3047 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug
</a>, and will
3048 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
3049 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
3050 failures. Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
3051 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
3052 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
3053 of dependency loops.
</p>
3056 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
3057 tireless effort by Bill Allombert
</a>, the number of circular
3059 <a href=
"http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
3060 is dropping
</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)
</p>
3062 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
3063 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier
</a> and
3064 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour
</a> between
3065 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
3066 dependency. Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
3073 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>.
3078 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3082 <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>
3089 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup
</a>
3091 <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
3093 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
3094 all
</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.
</p>
3096 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
3097 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
3098 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server. The two
3099 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.
</p>
3101 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
3102 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
3103 on a Debian Edu main-server. Here is a summary.
3105 <p><strong>powerdns
</strong></p>
3107 <a href=
"http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
3108 on how to
</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
3111 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
3112 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
3113 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
3114 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
3115 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
3116 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.
</p>
3118 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
3119 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
3120 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
3121 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
3122 "dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
3123 "(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry. For
3124 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
3125 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
3126 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
3127 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
3128 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
3129 spfrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entries it is looking for
3130 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
3131 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
3132 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. The equivalent
3133 ldapsearch commands could look like this:
</p>
3136 ldapsearch -h ldap \
3137 -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
3138 -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
3139 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
3140 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
3141 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
3142 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
3144 ldapsearch -h ldap \
3145 -b dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
3146 -s base -x '(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
3147 dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
3148 hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
3149 srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
3152 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
3153 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
3154 example LDAP objects used there. In addition to these objects, the
3155 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3159 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3161 objectclass: dnsdomain
3162 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3165 associateddomain: tjener.intern
3167 dn: dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3169 objectclass: dnsdomain2
3170 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3172 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
3173 associateddomain:
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
3176 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently. When looking for
3177 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
3178 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
3179 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
3180 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
3181 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
3182 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entires it also do a
3183 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=
10.0.2.2)"
3184 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
3185 modifytimestamp. In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
3186 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
3189 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
3193 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
3194 '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
3195 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
3196 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
3197 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
3198 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
3200 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
3201 '(arecord=
10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
3204 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
3205 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
3206 reverse lookups.
</p>
3208 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
3209 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
3210 need to generate a DNS reply. This make it able to work with any
3211 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.
</p>
3213 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC
1274) and
3214 dnsdomain2 schemas. The latter is used for reverse entries like
3215 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.
</p>
3217 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
3218 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
3219 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain). The use
3220 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
3221 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.
</p>
3223 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
3224 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
3225 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
3226 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
3227 (zonename and relativedomainname).
</p>
3229 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
3230 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
3231 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
3232 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
3233 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
3234 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):
</p>
3237 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
3240 MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
3241 DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
3242 TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
3243 NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
3244 A6Record $ DNAMERecord
3248 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
3249 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
3250 all the attributes PowerDNS wants. I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
3251 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
3252 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
3253 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.
</p>
3255 <p><strong>ISC dhcp
</strong></p>
3257 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
3258 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want. This
3259 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
3260 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
3261 what is needed without having to read the source code.
</p>
3263 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
3264 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
3265 stored. These are the relevant entries from
3266 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:
</p>
3269 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
3270 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
3273 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
3274 configuration it need. The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
3275 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))". The
3276 search result is this entry:
</p>
3279 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3282 objectClass: dhcpServer
3283 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3286 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
3287 subtree with DHCP configuration. The DHCP configuration subtree base
3288 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
3289 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
3290 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
3291 The search result is this entry:
</p>
3294 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3297 objectClass: dhcpService
3298 objectClass: dhcpOptions
3299 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3300 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
3301 dhcpStatements: authoritative
3302 dhcpOption: smtp-server code
69 = array of ip-address
3303 dhcpOption: www-server code
72 = array of ip-address
3304 dhcpOption: wpad-url code
252 = text
3307 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time. When
3308 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
3309 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
3310 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
3311 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost. These provide options
3312 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc. Leaving out the
3313 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
3314 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
3315 related computer objects.
</p>
3317 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
3318 of the client (
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00 in this example), using a subtree
3319 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
3320 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
3321 00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00))" as the filter. This is what a host object look
3325 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3328 objectClass: dhcpHost
3329 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
3330 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
3333 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
3334 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
3335 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure. On the
3336 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
3337 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries. The latter should make
3338 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
3339 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
3340 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
3341 structural object class.
3343 <p><strong>Conclusion
</strong></p>
3345 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
3346 to which LDAP schemas to use. While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
3347 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
3348 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
3349 in the configuration.
</p>
3351 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
3352 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
3353 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
3354 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
3355 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
3358 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
3359 this might work for Debian Edu:
</p>
3363 cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
3364 cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
3365 cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
3366 cn=
10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
3367 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
3368 cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
3369 cn=
192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
3370 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
3371 ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
3372 cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
3375 <P>This is not tested yet. If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
3376 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
3377 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
3378 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.
</p>
3380 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
3384 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3387 objectClass: dhcpHost
3388 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3389 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
3390 associateddomain: hostname.intern
3391 arecord:
10.11.12.13
3392 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
3393 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
3396 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
3397 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
3398 auxiliary object class.
</p>
3404 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>.
3409 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3413 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects
</a>
3419 <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
3420 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
3421 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
3422 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
3423 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.
</p>
3425 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
3426 information finally found a solution that seem to work.
</p>
3428 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
3429 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry. If
3430 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
3431 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
3432 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
3433 to a slave DNS server.
</p>
3435 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
3436 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
3437 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
3438 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
3439 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup. It
3442 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
3443 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
3444 an earlier email. The combined LDAP object will look something like
3448 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3450 objectClass: dhcphost
3451 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3452 objectclass: dnsdomainaux
3453 associateddomain: hostname.intern
3454 arecord:
10.11.12.13
3455 dhcphwaddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
3456 dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
3460 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
3461 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
3462 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress. LTSP will use
3463 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.
</p>
3465 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
3466 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
3467 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
3468 that. If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
3469 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
3470 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
3471 content. I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
3472 might be a good place to put it.
</p>
3474 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
3475 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
3481 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>.
3486 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3490 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP
</a>
3496 <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
3497 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
3498 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
3499 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.
</p>
3501 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
3502 to get configuration from LDAP. The idea is to look up the MAC
3503 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
3504 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
3507 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
3508 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
3509 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.
</p>
3511 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
3512 this approach. A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
3513 need to be written. Comments, suggestions, etc?
</p>
3516 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
3518 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
3520 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
3521 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
3522 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
3524 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
3525 # existence of attribute names.
3527 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
3528 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
3529 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
3531 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
3532 # configuration settings. Something like this should work:
3534 # objectclass (
1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
3537 # MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
3539 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
3540 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
3541 LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
3542 for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $
5}'|sort -u) ; do
3543 filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
3544 ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
3545 grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
3546 # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
3547 attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
3548 # bass value on to clients
3549 eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
3555 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
3556 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
3557 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
3558 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
3559 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)
</p>
3561 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
3562 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
3564 <p>Update
2010-
07-
17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
3565 configuration in LDAP that was created around year
2000 by
3566 <a href=
"http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
3567 Xperience, Inc.,
2000</a>. I found its
3568 <a href=
"http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files
</a> on a
3569 personal home page over at redhat.com.
</p>
3575 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>.
3580 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3584 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
3591 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
3592 last post
</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
3593 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma. The java application
3594 <a href=
"http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer
</a> is claimed to be capable of
3595 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
3596 authenticate using Kerberos. I have only tested the Kerberos
3597 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
3598 LDAP with my test user yet. It is
3599 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
3600 Debian
</a> testing and unstable at the moment. The only problem I
3601 have with it is how it handle errors. If something go wrong, its
3602 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
3603 and remove the failing query. Nothing big, but very annoying.
</p>
3609 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>.
3614 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3618 <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>
3624 <p>Here is a short update on my
<a
3625 href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
3626 Debian Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrade testing
</a>. Here is a summary of the
3627 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude. I'm
3628 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
3629 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
3630 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#
584861</a> and
3631 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#
585716</a>).
</p>
3633 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
3634 complete list of the installed packages. Based on this I see these
3635 differences when I did a test run today. As usual, I do not really
3636 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
3637 publish the difference.
</p>
3639 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
3642 at-spi cpp-
4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
3643 libatspi1.0-
0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-
1-common
3644 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
3645 libgtksourceview-common libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
3646 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
3647 libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
3648 python-
4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
3649 python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
3652 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
3655 bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
3656 gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
3657 libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-
50
3658 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
3659 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9
3660 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3
3661 libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
3662 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
3663 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
3664 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-
0
3665 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
3666 libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++
10
3667 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
3668 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5
3669 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
3670 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
3671 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1
3672 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
3673 libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
3674 mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
3677 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
3680 gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
3681 python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
3682 xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
3683 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
3684 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
3685 xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
3686 xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
3687 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
3688 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
3689 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
3690 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
3691 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
3692 xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
3693 xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
3694 xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
3695 xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
3696 xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
3697 xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
3698 xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
3699 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
3700 xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
3703 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
3706 deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
3707 xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
3708 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
3711 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
3712 <a href=
"http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
3713 in git
</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
3714 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
3715 the difference somewhat.
3721 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>.
3726 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3730 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
3736 <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
3737 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
3738 tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
3739 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
3740 <a href=
"http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA
</a>, which has proved to
3741 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
3742 populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
3743 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
3744 objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
3745 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)
</p>
3747 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
3748 the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
3749 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
3750 Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
3753 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
3754 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
3755 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
3756 <a href=
"http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi
</a> for that.
</p>
3758 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
3759 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
3761 <p>Update
2010-
06-
29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
3762 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq
</a> package as a
3763 useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
3764 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
3765 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.
</p>
3771 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>.
3776 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3780 <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>
3787 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
3788 about the fact
</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
3789 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
3790 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.
</p>
3792 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
3793 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
3794 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
3795 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.
</p>
3797 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
3798 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
3799 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
3802 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
3804 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
3805 schema
</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
3806 available today from IETF.
</p>
3809 --- dhcp.schema (revision
65192)
3810 +++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
3812 objectclass (
2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
3814 DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
3818 MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
3819 X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
3822 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
3823 Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
3824 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.
</p>
3826 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
3827 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
3833 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>.
3838 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3842 <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>
3848 <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
3849 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now,
3850 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
3851 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
3852 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
3856 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
3857 tasksel --new-install
3860 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
3861 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
3862 any output what so ever.
3864 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
3865 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
3866 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
3867 happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
3868 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
3869 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using
3873 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
3874 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
3878 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "
<tt>aptitude -q
3879 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
3880 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
3881 ~pimportant
</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
3882 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
3883 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
3886 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
3887 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
3894 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>.
3899 <div class="padding
"></div>
3903 <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>
3910 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">testing
3911 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
3912 finally made the upgrade logs available from
3913 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/
">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
3914 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
3915 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting. This time
3916 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
3918 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
3919 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze. The
3920 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
3921 xserver-xorg-video* drivers. Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
3922 sure why. When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
3923 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
3924 longer needed. Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
3925 I do not know. Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
3927 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
3928 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
3929 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
3932 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
3933 and avoided, and perhaps others as well. Here are the complete list
3934 of planned removals. The complete logs is available from the URL
3935 above. Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
3936 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
3937 conffile questions. No idea why. I worked around it by using
3938 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
3941 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
3942 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
3943 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
3944 iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
3945 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
3946 nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
3947 serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
3948 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
3949 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
3950 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
3951 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
3952 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
3953 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
3954 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
3955 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
3956 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
3957 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
3958 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
3959 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
3960 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
3961 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
3962 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
3963 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
3964 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
3965 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
3966 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
3967 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
3968 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
3969 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
3970 xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
3972 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
3974 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
3975 djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
3976 gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
3977 gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
3978 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
3979 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
3980 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
3981 libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
3982 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
3983 libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
3984 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
3985 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
3986 libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
3987 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
3988 libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
3989 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
3990 libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
3991 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
3992 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
3993 libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
3994 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
3995 libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
3996 libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
3997 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
3998 openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
3999 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
4000 python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
4001 python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
4002 swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
4003 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
4004 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
4007 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
4009 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
4010 kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
4011 kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
4012 kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
4013 kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
4014 libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
4015 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
4016 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
4017 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
4018 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
4019 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
4020 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
4021 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
4022 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
4023 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
4024 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
4025 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
4026 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
4027 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
4028 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
4029 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
4030 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
4031 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
4032 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
4033 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
4034 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
4035 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
4036 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
4038 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
4039 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
4040 djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
4041 ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
4042 kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
4043 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
4044 kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
4045 kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
4046 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
4047 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
4048 kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
4049 kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
4050 klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
4051 kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
4052 krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
4053 ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
4054 kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
4055 kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
4056 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
4057 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
4058 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
4059 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
4060 libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
4061 libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
4062 libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
4063 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
4064 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
4065 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
4066 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
4067 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
4068 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
4069 libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
4070 openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
4071 superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
4072 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
4073 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
4074 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
4082 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>.
4087 <div class="padding
"></div>
4091 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
4097 <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
4098 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
4099 have been discovered and reported in the process
4100 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
4101 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
4102 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584861">#584861</a> in
4103 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
4104 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
4106 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
4107 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
4108 it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
4109 script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
4110 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
4111 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
4113 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
4114 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
4115 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
4116 is created. The bug report
4117 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
4118 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
4119 to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
4120 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
4121 do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
4122 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-
26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-
804130/
">known
4123 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
4124 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
4125 working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
4126 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
4127 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
4128 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
4131 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
4132 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
4150 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
4151 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
4153 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
4154 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
4155 cat
> $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
<<EOF
4159 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
4163 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
4164 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
4165 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
4167 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
4169 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
4170 # to return the correct answers.
4171 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
4172 chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
4174 # Include the desktop and laptop task
4175 for test in desktop laptop ; do
4176 echo
> $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
<<EOF
4180 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
4183 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
4184 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
4185 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
4186 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
4188 echo deb $mirror $to main
> $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
4189 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
4190 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
4191 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
4195 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
4196 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
4197 differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
4198 regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
4199 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
4200 kdebase-workspace-data
</p>
4202 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
4203 (KDE
167 KiB, Gnome
516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
4204 post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
4205 aptitude report
760 packages upgraded,
448 newly installed,
129 to
4206 remove and
1 not upgraded and
1024MB need to be downloaded while for
4207 KDE the same numbers are
702 packages upgraded,
507 newly installed,
4208 193 to remove and
0 not upgraded and
1117MB need to be downloaded
</p>
4210 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
4211 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
4212 booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
4213 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
4214 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
4221 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>.
4226 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4230 <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>
4236 <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
4237 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
4238 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd. The packages with such
4239 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
4240 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart. Because of
4241 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
4242 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.
</p>
4244 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
4245 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
4254 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
4256 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
4259 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
4263 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-
2.88
4270 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
4271 sysvinit are not set by upstart. Not sure if it is intentional or not
4272 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.
</p>
4274 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
4275 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
4282 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>.
4287 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4291 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...
</a>
4298 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
4299 of Rob Weir
</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
4300 <a href=
"http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
4301 Standards Wars
</a> (PDF
25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
4302 following the standards wars of today.
</p>
4308 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>.
4313 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4317 <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>
4323 <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
4324 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
4325 information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
4326 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
4327 the Skolelinux build servers:
</p>
4330 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
4332 Dell Computer Corporation
1
4335 eserver xSeries
345 -[
8670M1X]-
1
4341 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
4342 provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
4343 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
4344 machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
4345 option to list the individual machines.
</p>
4348 <a href=
"http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
4349 city of Narvik
</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
4350 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
4351 are ~
1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
4352 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
4353 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
4360 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>.
4365 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4369 <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>
4375 <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
4376 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
4377 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
4378 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
4381 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
4382 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#
583312</a> initially filed
4383 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
4384 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
4385 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#
524751</a> initially filed against
4386 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.
</p>
4388 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
4389 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
4390 distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
4391 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
4392 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
4393 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
4394 distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
4395 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.
</p>
4397 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.
</p>
4403 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>.
4408 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4412 <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>
4418 <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
4419 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
4420 issues are known and should be solved:
4424 <li>The wicd package seen to
4425 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting
</a> and
4426 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup
</a> when
4427 parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
4428 seem to be on the case.
</li>
4430 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
4431 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition
</a>
4432 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
4433 maintainer is on the case.
</li>
4435 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
4436 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
4437 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back
</a> to
4438 sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
4439 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
4440 sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
4441 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
4442 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.
</li>
4446 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
4447 solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
4448 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
4449 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.
</p>
4451 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
4452 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
4453 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
4454 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
4456 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.
</p>
4462 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>.
4467 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4471 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer
</a>
4477 <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
4478 found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
4479 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
4480 definitely helped freeing some time.
</p>
4482 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
4483 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
4484 get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
4485 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
4486 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
4487 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
4488 an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
4489 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
4490 debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
4491 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
4492 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
4493 /cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
4494 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
4497 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
4498 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
4499 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
4500 packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
4501 "external" media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
4502 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
4503 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
4504 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
4505 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
4506 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
4509 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
4510 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
4511 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
4512 run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
4513 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
4514 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.
</p>
4516 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
4517 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.
</p>
4523 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>.
4528 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4532 <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>
4538 <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
4539 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
4540 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
4541 expected, if I am to believe the
4542 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
4543 on debian-devel@
</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
4544 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
4545 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen. If serious problems are
4546 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
4547 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
4550 More information about
4551 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
4552 based boot sequencing
</a> is available from the Debian wiki. It is
4553 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
4554 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
4560 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
4561 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
4562 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
4563 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
4569 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>.
4574 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4578 <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>
4584 <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
4585 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
4586 system
</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
4587 network. Each machine will automatically report its status to the
4588 central server after boot and once per night. The network setup is
4589 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
4590 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines. This is useful
4591 to update the DHCP configuration.
</p>
4593 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
4594 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary. Run
4595 this on the collector host:
</p>
4598 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
4601 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
4602 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.
</p>
4604 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
4605 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
4606 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
4607 tables in LDAP using this information. Such tool is unfortunately not
4614 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>.
4619 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4623 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart
</a>
4629 <p>The last few days a new boot system called
4630 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd
</a>
4632 <a href=
"http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced
</a>
4634 to the free software world. I have not yet had time to play around
4635 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
4636 <a href=
"http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart
</a>, and might prove to be
4637 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
4638 based boot system. Tollef is
4639 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process
</a> of getting
4640 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work. I
4641 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
4642 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
4643 at the moment do not.
</p>
4645 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
4646 platform support. It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
4647 some new kernel features enabled to function properly. This means
4648 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
4649 system. Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
4652 <p>In the mean time, based on the
4653 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
4654 on debian-devel@
</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
4655 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
4656 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
4657 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies. A
4658 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
4659 already in experimental. If all go well, Squeeze will be released
4660 with parallel booting enabled by default.
</p>
4666 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>.
4671 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4675 <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>
4681 <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
4682 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
4683 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies. If you want
4684 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
4685 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
4686 based boot sequencing
</a> is enabled, and add this line to
4687 /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
4690 CONCURRENCY=makefile
4693 <p>That is it. It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
4694 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
4695 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
4696 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts. Startpar is configured
4697 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
4698 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
4699 make this happen.
</p>
4701 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result. If some services
4702 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
4703 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
4704 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies). Report bugs and get
4705 the package maintainers to fix it. :)
</p>
4707 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
4708 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct. I
4709 expect we will get there in Squeeze+
1, if we get manage to test and
4710 fix the remaining issues.
</p>
4712 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
4713 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
4714 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
4715 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
4721 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>.
4726 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4730 <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>
4736 <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version
2.87dsf-
2,
4737 and the upload of insserv version
1.12.0-
10 yesterday, Debian unstable
4738 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing. This
4739 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
4740 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
4741 installation. Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
4742 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.
</p>
4744 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
4745 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
4746 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.
</p>
4752 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>.
4757 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4761 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development
</a>
4767 <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
4768 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
4769 take over the package and become the new upstream. The number of
4770 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
4771 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
4772 the package up to date.
</p>
4774 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
4775 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman. About
10 days ago, I made
4776 a new upstream tarball with version number
2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
4777 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
4778 distributions. We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
4779 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge. Since the
4780 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
4781 upstream project at
<a href=
"http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah
</a>, and continue
4782 development there. The project is registered and currently waiting
4783 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
4784 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
4785 working on the future release.
</p>
4787 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
4788 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.
</p>
4794 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>.
4799 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4803 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker
</a>
4809 <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
4810 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
4811 could find more ways to speed up the boot system. This was an Ubuntu
4813 <a href=
"https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
4814 gathering
</a>. It was quite productive. We also discussed the future
4815 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
4816 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
4817 asynchronous and event base. The Ubuntu approach using udev and
4818 upstart might be a good way forward. Time will show.
</p>
4820 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
4821 process in Debian. All of these should be applied to get a quick
4826 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.
</li>
4828 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
4829 clock is in UTC.
</li>
4831 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
4832 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
4833 based boot sequencing
</a>, and enable concurrent booting.
</li>
4837 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
4838 <a href=
"http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
4841 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
4842 unstable yesterday. When we tested it, we were able to cut
6 seconds
4843 from the boot sequence. It depend on very correct dependency
4844 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
4845 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
4848 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
4849 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
4850 startup speed as well. Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
4851 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
4852 possible to run a of them in the same process. A quick way to test
4853 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
4854 insserv'. Will need to test if that work. :)
</p>
4860 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>.
4865 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4869 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand
</a>
4875 <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
4876 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
4877 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
4878 ulike land rundt om i verden. Resultatene er tendensiøse. For noen
4880 <a href=
"http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
4881 rapport
</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
4882 dagene. Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
4883 <a href=
"http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
4884 höftade Sverigesiffror
</a>, oppsummeres slik:
</p>
4887 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att
25 procent av all mjukvara i
4888 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
4889 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
4890 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
4893 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge? To andre kommentarer er
<a
4894 href=
"http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
4895 piracy figures need a shot of reality
</a> og
<a
4896 href=
"http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
4897 Copyright Treaty Work?
</a></p>
4899 <p>Fant lenkene via
<a
4900 href=
"http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
4901 på Slashdot
</a>.
</p>
4907 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>.
4912 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4916 <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>
4923 <a href=
"http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
4924 tall
</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet. Fikk meg til
4925 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
4926 jobber til daglig. En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har
490
4927 (
61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og
196
4928 (
25%) windowstjenere, samt
112 (
14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere. Med den
4929 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.
</p>
4935 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>.
4940 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4944 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis
</a>
4950 <p><a href=
"http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
4951 IT melder
</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
4952 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
4953 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer. Det er ingen tvil om
4954 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
4955 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
4956 bærbare. Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
4957 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
4958 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
4959 foreningsarbeide. Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
4960 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
4961 av dem. Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
4962 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
4963 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
4964 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker. Jeg har LVM på toppen
4965 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
4966 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare. Kostnaden når
4967 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
4968 betydelige. En bør dog passe på passordet. Hvis det går tapt, må
4969 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.
</p>
4971 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
4972 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
4973 krypteringsnøklene. Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
4974 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten. Jeg tror oddsene for at
4975 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
4976 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
4977 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
4984 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>.
4989 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4993 <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>
4999 <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
5000 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
5001 do not yet know them.
</p>
5003 <p>The first one is
<a href=
"http://valgrind.org/">valgrind
</a>, a
5004 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
5005 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
5006 and it will report any problems on stdout. It is even better if the
5007 program include debug information. With debug information, it is able
5008 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
5009 occurs. It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
5010 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
5011 'using uninitialised value in control logic'. This tool has made it
5012 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
5013 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
5015 <p>The second one is
5016 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity
</a> which is
5017 a source code checker. It is able to process the source of a program
5018 and find problems in the logic without running the program. It
5019 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
5020 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel. It is now a commercial tool
5021 and the company behind it is running
5022 <a href=
"http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service
</a> for the
5023 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
5024 their source checked for free. Several thousand defects have been
5025 found and fixed so far. It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
5026 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
5027 Y lines O to P can never be executed'. The projects included in the
5028 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
5029 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.
</p>
5031 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
5032 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
5033 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
5034 surrounded by today.
</p>
5040 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>.
5045 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5049 <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>
5056 <a href=
"http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
5057 patch is better than a useless patch
</a>. I completely disagree, as a
5058 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
5059 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
5060 time on fixing it. No patch do not provide any of these positive
5067 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>.
5072 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5076 <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>
5082 <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
5083 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure. It is the
5084 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
5085 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
5086 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
5087 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
5088 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
5091 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
5092 independently of the server applications. One can even allow users to
5093 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
5094 protocol and format. In the normal case, only one client application
5095 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
5096 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
5097 blocked from doing so.
</p>
5099 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
5100 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
5101 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
5102 requirements change.
</p>
5104 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
5105 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
5106 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.
</p>
5112 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>.
5117 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5121 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering
</a>
5127 <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
5128 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering. I got a bit done tuning the
5129 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
5130 implementation avahi. It look like it could be useful for us. Almost
5131 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
5132 get to know the Skolelinux system. Walter Bender, involved in the
5133 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
5134 also helped me improve my OLPC installation. He also showed me that
5135 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
5136 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian. As a
5137 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu. We also
5138 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
5139 proved to be too hard for us. The application seem to need more work
5140 before it is ready for me. I look forward to getting home and relax
5147 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>.
5152 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5156 <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>
5162 <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
5163 optimal. There is RFC
2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
5164 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC
2307bis, with
5165 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory. The RFC
5166 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
5167 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.
</p>
5169 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux
</a>,
5170 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
5171 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
5172 and LTSP configuration in LDAP. These objects have a lot in common,
5173 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
5174 object per entity. For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
5175 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
5176 DNS information and another with DHCP information. The schemas
5177 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
5178 object. In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
5179 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
5180 It just do not scale. I believe it is time for a few RFC
5181 specifications to cleam up this mess.
</p>
5183 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
5184 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
5185 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
5186 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.
</p>
5188 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
5189 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.
</p>
5191 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
5192 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up. Time to start a
5193 new IETF work group?
</p>
5199 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>.
5204 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5208 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut
</a>
5214 <p>Endelig er
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a>
5215 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny
</a> gitt ut.
5216 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
5217 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
5218 stabile utgaven av Debian. Neste steg er nå å få
5219 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> /
5220 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu
</a> ferdig
5221 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
5222 slippes løs på skolene. Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
5223 gjort dette mulig. Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
5224 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
5225 <tt>insserv
</tt>.
</p>
5231 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>.
5236 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5240 <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>
5246 <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
5247 Oslo. Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
5248 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
5249 LTSP installation. LTSP now work out of the box on the
10-network.
5250 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
5251 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box. Was working on getting the
5252 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
5253 finish it before the weekend was up.
</p>
5255 <p>Did not find time to look at the
4 VGA cards in one box we got from
5256 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
5257 development gathering. Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
5258 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
5265 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>.
5270 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5274 <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>
5280 <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
5281 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
5282 default in Debian Edu. We need an embedded video playing plugin with
5283 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
5284 all the multimedia content available on the web. The test results and
5285 notes are available on
5286 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
5287 Debian wiki
</a>. I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
5288 fill this need. My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
5289 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages. A lot of the MIME
5290 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
5291 video/ogg), just do not work. And simple formats like the
5292 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
5293 totem and vlc plugins. I hope the situation will improve soon. No
5294 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.
</p>
5296 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin. It seem to
5297 be the only one fitting our needs. :/
</p>
5303 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>.
5308 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5310 <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>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (
8)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (
7)
</a></li>
5330 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (
10)
</a></li>
5332 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (
17)
</a></li>
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12)
</a></li>
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12)
</a></li>
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</a></li>
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6)
</a></li>
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</a></li>
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10)
</a></li>
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3)
</a></li>
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1)
</a></li>
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</a></li>
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13)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (
7)
</a></li>
5404 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (
9)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (
13)
</a></li>
5408 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (
12)
</a></li>
5415 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (
8)
</a></li>
5417 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (
8)
</a></li>
5419 <li><a href=
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</a></li>
5421 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (
10)
</a></li>
5423 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (
9)
</a></li>
5425 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (
3)
</a></li>
5427 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (
4)
</a></li>
5429 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (
3)
</a></li>
5431 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (
1)
</a></li>
5433 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (
2)
</a></li>
5435 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (
3)
</a></li>
5437 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (
3)
</a></li>
5444 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (
5)
</a></li>
5446 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (
7)
</a></li>
5457 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (
13)
</a></li>
5459 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (
1)
</a></li>
5461 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (
1)
</a></li>
5463 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (
4)
</a></li>
5465 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (
5)
</a></li>
5467 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (
12)
</a></li>
5469 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (
2)
</a></li>
5471 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (
66)
</a></li>
5473 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (
118)
</a></li>
5475 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (
9)
</a></li>
5477 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (
7)
</a></li>
5479 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (
4)
</a></li>
5481 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (
172)
</a></li>
5483 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (
21)
</a></li>
5485 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (
12)
</a></li>
5487 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (
10)
</a></li>
5489 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (
9)
</a></li>
5491 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (
32)
</a></li>
5493 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (
17)
</a></li>
5495 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (
8)
</a></li>
5497 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (
6)
</a></li>
5499 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (
1)
</a></li>
5501 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (
25)
</a></li>
5503 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (
219)
</a></li>
5505 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (
148)
</a></li>
5507 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (
6)
</a></li>
5509 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (
2)
</a></li>
5511 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (
41)
</a></li>
5513 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (
61)
</a></li>
5515 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (
1)
</a></li>
5517 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (
11)
</a></li>
5519 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (
2)
</a></li>
5521 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (
6)
</a></li>
5523 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (
1)
</a></li>
5525 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (
4)
</a></li>
5527 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (
2)
</a></li>
5529 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (
28)
</a></li>
5531 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (
4)
</a></li>
5533 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (
4)
</a></li>
5535 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (
39)
</a></li>
5537 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (
3)
</a></li>
5539 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (
5)
</a></li>
5541 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (
12)
</a></li>
5543 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (
1)
</a></li>
5545 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (
7)
</a></li>
5547 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (
35)
</a></li>
5549 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (
4)
</a></li>
5551 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (
26)
</a></li>
5557 <p style=
"text-align: right">
5558 Created by
<a href=
"http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.4
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