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1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
2 <rss version='2.0' xmlns:lj='http://www.livejournal.org/rss/lj/1.0/'>
3 <channel>
4 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries tagged debian</title>
5 <description>Entries tagged debian</description>
6 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/</link>
7
8
9 <item>
10 <title>121 packages in Debian mapped to hardware for automatic recommendation</title>
11 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/121_packages_in_Debian_mapped_to_hardware_for_automatic_recommendation.html</link>
12 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/121_packages_in_Debian_mapped_to_hardware_for_automatic_recommendation.html</guid>
13 <pubDate>Sun, 19 Jan 2025 12:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
14 <description>&lt;p&gt;For some years now, I have been working on a automatic hardware
15 based package recommendation system for Debian and other Linux
16 distributions. The isenkram system I started on back in 2013 now
17 consist of two subsystems, one locating firmware files using the
18 information provided by apt-file, and one matching hardware to
19 packages using information provided by AppStream. The former is very
20 similar to the mechanism implemented in debian-installer to pick the
21 right firmware packages to install. This post is about the latter
22 system. Thanks to steady progress and good help from both other
23 Debian and upstream developers, I am happy to report that
24 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram&quot;&gt;the Isenkram
25 system&lt;/a&gt; now are able to recommend 121 packages using information
26 provided via
27 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Distributions/AppStream/&quot;&gt;AppStream&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
28
29 &lt;p&gt;The mapping is done using modalias information provided by the
30 kernel, the same information used by udev when creating device files,
31 and the kernel when deciding which kernel modules to load. To get all
32 the modalias identifiers relevant for your machine, you can run the
33 following command on the command line:&lt;/p&gt;
34
35 &lt;pre&gt;
36 find /sys/devices -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 sort -u
37 &lt;/pre&gt;
38
39 &lt;p&gt;The modalias identifiers can look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;
40
41 &lt;pre&gt;
42 acpi:PNP0000
43 cpu:type:x86,ven0000fam0006mod003F:feature:,0000,0001,0002,0003,0004,0005,0006,0007,0008,0009,000B,000C,000D,000E,000F,0010,0011,0013,0015,0016,0017,0018,0019,001A,001B,001C,001D,001F,002B,0034,003A,003B,003D,0068,006B,006C,006D,006F,0070,0072,0074,0075,0076,0078,0079,007C,0080,0081,0082,0083,0084,0085,0086,0087,0088,0089,008B,008C,008D,008E,008F,0091,0092,0093,0094,0095,0096,0097,0098,0099,009A,009B,009C,009D,009E,00C0,00C5,00E1,00E3,00EB,00ED,00F0,00F1,00F3,00F5,00F6,00F9,00FA,00FB,00FD,00FF,0100,0101,0102,0103,0111,0120,0121,0123,0125,0127,0128,0129,012A,012C,012D,0140,0160,0161,0165,016C,017B,01C0,01C1,01C2,01C4,01C5,01C6,01F9,024A,025A,025B,025C,025F,0282
44 dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvr2.18.1:bd08/14/2023:br2.18:svnDellInc.:pnPowerEdgeR730:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0H21J3:rvrA09:cvnDellInc.:ct23:cvr:skuSKU=NotProvided
45 pci:v00008086d00008D3Bsv00001028sd00000600bc07sc80i00
46 platform:serial8250
47 scsi:t-0x05
48 usb:v413CpA001d0000dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00in00
49 &lt;/pre&gt;
50
51 &lt;p&gt;The entries above are a selection of the complete set available on
52 a Dell PowerEdge R730 machine I have access to, to give an idea about
53 the various styles of hardware identifiers presented in the modalias
54 format. When looking up relevant packages in a Debian Testing
55 installation on the same R730, I get this list of packages
56 proposed:&lt;/p&gt;
57
58 &lt;pre&gt;
59 % sudo isenkram-lookup
60 firmware-bnx2x
61 firmware-nvidia-graphics
62 firmware-qlogic
63 megactl
64 wsl
65 %
66 &lt;/pre&gt;
67
68 &lt;p&gt;The list consist of firmware packages requested by kernel modules,
69 as well packages with program to get the status from the RAID
70 controller and to maintain the LAN console. When the edac-utils
71 package providing tools to check the ECC RAM status will enter testing
72 in a few days, it will also show up as a proposal from isenkram. In
73 addition, once the mfiutil package we uploaded in October get past the
74 NEW processing, it will also propose a tool to configure the RAID
75 controller.&lt;/p&gt;
76
77 &lt;p&gt;Another example is the trusty old Lenovo Thinkpad X230, which have
78 hardware handled by several packages in the archive. This is running
79 on Debian Stable:&lt;/p&gt;
80
81 &lt;pre&gt;
82 % isenkram-lookup
83 beignet-opencl-icd
84 bluez
85 cheese
86 ethtool
87 firmware-iwlwifi
88 firmware-misc-nonfree
89 fprintd
90 fprintd-demo
91 gkrellm-thinkbat
92 hdapsd
93 libpam-fprintd
94 pidgin-blinklight
95 thinkfan
96 tlp
97 tp-smapi-dkms
98 tpb
99 %
100 &lt;/pre&gt;
101
102 &lt;p&gt;Here there proposal consist of software to handle the camera,
103 bluetooth, network card, wifi card, GPU, fan, fingerprint reader and
104 acceleration sensor on the machine.&lt;/p&gt;
105
106 &lt;p&gt;Here is the complete set of packages currently providing hardware
107 mapping via AppStream in Debian Unstable: air-quality-sensor,
108 alsa-firmware-loaders, antpm, array-info, avarice, avrdude,
109 bmusb-v4l2proxy, brltty, calibre, colorhug-client, concordance-common,
110 consolekit, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux, edac-utils,
111 eegdev-plugins-free, ekeyd, elogind, firmware-amd-graphics,
112 firmware-ath9k-htc, firmware-atheros, firmware-b43-installer,
113 firmware-b43legacy-installer, firmware-bnx2, firmware-bnx2x,
114 firmware-brcm80211, firmware-carl9170, firmware-cavium,
115 firmware-intel-graphics, firmware-intel-misc, firmware-ipw2x00,
116 firmware-ivtv, firmware-iwlwifi, firmware-libertas,
117 firmware-linux-free, firmware-mediatek, firmware-misc-nonfree,
118 firmware-myricom, firmware-netronome, firmware-netxen,
119 firmware-nvidia-graphics, firmware-qcom-soc, firmware-qlogic,
120 firmware-realtek, firmware-ti-connectivity, fpga-icestorm, g810-led,
121 galileo, garmin-forerunner-tools, gkrellm-thinkbat, goldencheetah,
122 gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, i8kutils, imsprog, ledger-wallets-udev,
123 libairspy0, libam7xxx0.1, libbladerf2, libgphoto2-6t64,
124 libhamlib-utils, libm2k0.9.0, libmirisdr4, libnxt, libopenxr1-monado,
125 libosmosdr0, librem5-flash-image, librtlsdr0, libticables2-8,
126 libx52pro0, libykpers-1-1, libyubikey-udev, limesuite,
127 linuxcnc-uspace, lomoco, madwimax, media-player-info, megactl, mixxx,
128 mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mu-editor, mustang-plug, nbc, nitrokey-app, nqc,
129 ola, openfpgaloader, openocd, openrazer-driver-dkms, pcmciautils,
130 pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, ponyprog, printer-driver-splix,
131 python-yubico-tools, python3-btchip, qlcplus, rosegarden, scdaemon,
132 sispmctl, solaar, spectools, sunxi-tools, t2n, thinkfan, tlp,
133 tp-smapi-dkms, trezor, tucnak, ubertooth, usbrelay, uuu, viking,
134 w1retap, wsl, xawtv, xinput-calibrator, xserver-xorg-input-wacom and
135 xtrx-dkms.&lt;/p&gt;
136
137 &lt;p&gt;In addition to these, there are several
138 &lt;a href=&quot;https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/bts-usertags.cgi?user=pere%40hungry.com&amp;tag=appstream-modalias&quot;&gt;with
139 patches pending in the Debian bug tracking system&lt;/a&gt;, and even more
140 where no-one wrote patches yet. Good candiates for the latter are
141 packages
142 &lt;a href=&quot;https://udd.debian.org/lintian-tag.cgi?tag=appstream-metadata-missing-modalias-provide&quot;&gt;with
143 udev rules but no AppStream hardware information&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
144
145 &lt;p&gt;The isenkram system consist of two packages, isenkram-cli with the
146 command line tools, and isenkram with a GUI background process. The
147 latter will listen for dbus events from udev emitted when new hardware
148 become available (like when inserting a USB dongle or discovering a
149 new bluetooth device), look up the modalias entry for this piece of
150 hardware in AppStream (and a hard coded list of mappings from isenkram
151 - currently working hard to move this list to AppStream), and pop up a
152 dialog proposing to install any not already installed packages
153 supporting this hardware. It work very well today when inserting the
154 LEGO Mindstorms RCX, NXT and EV3 controllers. :) If you want to make
155 sure more hardware related packages get recommended, please help out
156 fixing the remaining packages in Debian to provide AppStream metadata
157 with hardware mappings.&lt;/p&gt;
158
159 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
160 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
161 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
162 </description>
163 </item>
164
165 <item>
166 <title>What is the most supported MIME type in Debian in 2025?</title>
167 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2025_.html</link>
168 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2025_.html</guid>
169 <pubDate>Sat, 18 Jan 2025 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
170 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2018_.html&quot;&gt;Seven&lt;/a&gt;
171 and
172 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html&quot;&gt;twelve&lt;/a&gt;
173 years ago, I measured what the most supported MIME type in Debian
174 was&lt;/a&gt;, first by analysing the desktop files in all packages in the
175 archive, then by analysing the DEP-11 AppStream data set. I guess it
176 is time to repeat the measurement, only for unstable as last time:&lt;/p&gt;
177
178 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Unstable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
179
180 &lt;pre&gt;
181 count MIME type
182 ----- -----------------------
183 63 image/png
184 63 image/jpeg
185 57 image/tiff
186 54 image/gif
187 51 image/bmp
188 50 audio/mpeg
189 48 text/plain
190 42 audio/x-mp3
191 40 application/ogg
192 39 audio/x-wav
193 39 audio/x-flac
194 36 audio/x-vorbis+ogg
195 35 audio/x-mpeg
196 34 audio/x-mpegurl
197 34 audio/ogg
198 33 application/x-ogg
199 32 audio/mp4
200 31 audio/x-scpls
201 31 application/pdf
202 29 audio/x-ms-wma
203 &lt;/pre&gt;
204
205 &lt;p&gt;The list was created like this using a sid chroot:&lt;/p&gt;
206
207 &lt;pre&gt;
208 cat /var/lib/apt/lists/*sid*_dep11_Components-amd64.yml.gz | \
209 zcat | awk &#39;/^ - \S+\/\S+$/ {print $2 }&#39; | sort | \
210 uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20
211 &lt;/pre&gt;
212
213 &lt;p&gt;It is nice to see that the same number of packages now support PNG
214 and JPEG. Last time JPEG had more support than PNG. Most of the MIME
215 types are known to me, but the &#39;audio/x-scpls&#39; one I have no idea what
216 represent, except it being an audio format. To find the packages
217 claiming support for this format, the appstreamcli command from the
218 appstream package can be used:
219
220 &lt;pre&gt;
221 % appstreamcli what-provides mediatype audio/x-scpls | grep Package: | sort -u
222 Package: alsaplayer-common
223 Package: amarok
224 Package: audacious
225 Package: brasero
226 Package: celluloid
227 Package: clapper
228 Package: clementine
229 Package: cynthiune.app
230 Package: elisa
231 Package: gtranscribe
232 Package: kaffeine
233 Package: kmplayer
234 Package: kylin-burner
235 Package: lollypop
236 Package: mediaconch-gui
237 Package: mediainfo-gui
238 Package: mplayer-gui
239 Package: mpv
240 Package: mystiq
241 Package: parlatype
242 Package: parole
243 Package: pragha
244 Package: qmmp
245 Package: rhythmbox
246 Package: sayonara
247 Package: shotcut
248 Package: smplayer
249 Package: soundconverter
250 Package: strawberry
251 Package: syncplay
252 Package: vlc
253 %
254 &lt;/pre&gt;
255
256 &lt;p&gt;Look like several video and auto tools understand the format.
257 Similarly one can check out the number of packages supporting the STL
258 format commonly used for 3D printing:&lt;/p&gt;
259
260 &lt;pre&gt;
261 % appstreamcli what-provides mediatype model/stl | grep Package: | sort -u
262 Package: cura
263 Package: freecad
264 Package: open3d-viewer
265 %
266 &lt;/pre&gt;
267
268 &lt;p&gt;How strange the
269 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r&quot;&gt;slic3r&lt;/a&gt; and
270 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r-prusa&quot;&gt;prusa-slicer&lt;/a&gt;
271 packages do not support STL. Perhaps just missing package metadata?
272 Luckily the amount of package metadata in Debian is getting better,
273 and hopefully this way of locating relevant packages for any file
274 format will be the preferred one soon.
275
276 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
277 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
278 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
279 </description>
280 </item>
281
282 <item>
283 <title>The 2025 LinuxCNC Norwegian developer gathering</title>
284 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_2025_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html</link>
285 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_2025_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html</guid>
286 <pubDate>Sat, 11 Jan 2025 14:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
287 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://linuxcnc.org/&quot;&gt;The LinuxCNC project&lt;/a&gt; is
288 trotting along. And I believe this great software system for
289 numerical control of machines such as milling machines, lathes, plasma
290 cutters, routers, cutting machines, robots and hexapods, would do even
291 better with more in-person developer gatherings, so we plan to
292 organise such gathering this summer too.&lt;/p&gt;
293
294 &lt;p&gt;This year we would like to invite to a small LinuxCNC and free
295 software fabrication workshop/gathering in Norway this summer for the
296 weekend starting July 4th 2025. New this year is the slightly larger
297 scope, and we invite people also outside the LinuxCNC community to
298 join. As earlier, we suggest to organize it as an
299 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference&quot;&gt;unconference&lt;/a&gt;,
300 where the participants create the program upon arrival.&lt;/p&gt;
301
302 &lt;p&gt;The location is a metal workshop 15 minutes drive away from to the
303 Gardermoen airport (OSL), where there is a lot of space and a hotel only
304 5 minutes away by car. We plan to fire up the barbeque in the evenings.&lt;/p&gt;
305
306 &lt;p&gt;Please let us know if you would like to join. We track the list of
307 participants on &lt;a href=&quot;https://pad.efn.no/p/linuxcnc-2025-norway&quot;&gt;a
308 simple pad&lt;/a&gt;, please add yourself there if you are interested in joining.&lt;/p&gt;
309
310 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nuugfoundation.no/&quot;&gt;The NUUG Foundation&lt;/a&gt; has on
311 our request offered to handle any money involved with this gathering,
312 in other words holding any sponsor funds and paying any bills.
313 NUUG Foundation is a spinnoff from the NUUG member organisation here
314 in Norway with long ties to the free software and open standards
315 communities.&lt;/p&gt;
316
317 &lt;p&gt;As usual we hope to find sponsors to pay for food, lodging and travel.&lt;/p&gt;
318
319 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
320 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
321 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
322 </description>
323 </item>
324
325 <item>
326 <title>New lsdvd release 0.18 after ten years</title>
327 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_0_18_after_ten_years.html</link>
328 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_0_18_after_ten_years.html</guid>
329 <pubDate>Sat, 21 Dec 2024 10:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
330 <description>&lt;p&gt;The rumors of the death of
331 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/&quot;&gt;the lsdvd project&lt;/a&gt;
332 is slightly exaggerated. And the last few months, we have been
333 working on fixing and improving it, culminating in a new release last
334 night. This is the list of changes in the new 0.18 release, as
335 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/59108028/&quot;&gt;announced
336 on the project mailing list&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
337
338 &lt;ul&gt;
339
340 &lt;li&gt;Simplified autoconf setup, dropped --enable-debug option.&lt;/li&gt;
341 &lt;li&gt;Improved video resolution reporting (&lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/patches/8/&quot;&gt;Fixes #8&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
342 &lt;li&gt;Applied patches fetched from BSDs (&lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/patches/7/&quot;&gt;Fixes #7&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
343 &lt;li&gt;Corrected Perl output (&lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/patches/1/&quot;&gt;Fixes #1&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
344 &lt;li&gt;Adjusted Pan and Scan entries to produce valid XML.&lt;/li&gt;
345 &lt;li&gt;Changed --help output from stderr to stdout.&lt;/li&gt;
346 &lt;li&gt;Corrected aspect ratio and audio format formatting.&lt;/li&gt;
347 &lt;li&gt;Avoid segfault when hitting a NULL pointer in the IFO structure.&lt;/li&gt;
348 &lt;li&gt;Change build rules to supress compiler flags, to make it easier to
349 spot warnings.&lt;/li&gt;
350 &lt;li&gt;Set default DVD device based on OS (Linux, *BSD, Darwin)&lt;/li&gt;
351 &lt;li&gt;Added libdvdread DVDDiscID to output.&lt;/li&gt;
352 &lt;li&gt;Corrected typo in longest track value in XML format.&lt;/li&gt;
353 &lt;li&gt;Switched XML output to use libxml to avoid string encoding issues.&lt;/li&gt;
354 &lt;li&gt;Added simple build time test suite.&lt;/li&gt;
355 &lt;li&gt;Cleaned up language code handling and adding missing mapping for
356 language codes &#39;nb&#39; and &#39;nn&#39;.&lt;/li&gt;
357 &lt;li&gt;Added JSON output support using -Oj.&lt;/li&gt;
358 &lt;/ul&gt;
359
360 &lt;p&gt;The most exciting news to me is easy access to the DVDDiscID, which
361 make it a lot easier to identify DVD duplicates across a large
362 collection of DVDs. During testing it has proved to be very effective
363 ad identifying when DVDs in a DVD box (say all Star Wars movies) is
364 identical to DVDs sold individually (like the same Star Wars movies
365 packaged individually).&lt;/p&gt;
366
367 &lt;p&gt;Because none of the current developers got access to do tarball
368 releases on Sourceforge any more, the release is only available as
369 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/0.18/tree/&quot;&gt;a git
370 tag&lt;/a&gt; in the repository. Lets hope it do not take ten years for the
371 next release. The project are discussing to move away from
372 Sourceforge, but it has not yet concluded.&lt;/p&gt;
373
374 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
375 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
376 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
377 </description>
378 </item>
379
380 <item>
381 <title>More than 200 orphaned Debian packages moved to git, 216 to go</title>
382 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/More_than_200_orphaned_Debian_packages_moved_to_git__216_to_go.html</link>
383 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/More_than_200_orphaned_Debian_packages_moved_to_git__216_to_go.html</guid>
384 <pubDate>Thu, 11 Jul 2024 12:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
385 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_to_move_orphaned_Debian_packages_to_git.html&quot;&gt;In
386 April&lt;/a&gt;, I started migrating orphaned Debian packages without any
387 version control system listed in debian/control to git. This morning,
388 my Debian QA page finally reached 200 QA packages migrated. In
389 reality there are a few more, as the packages uploaded by someone else
390 after my initial upload have disappeared from my QA uploads list. As
391 I am running out of steam and will most likely focus on other parts of
392 Debian moving forward, I hope someone else will find time to continue
393 the migration to bring the number of orphaned packages without any
394 version control system down to zero. Here is the updated recipe if
395 someone want to help out.&lt;/p&gt;
396
397 &lt;p&gt;To locate packages to work on, the following one-liner can be used:&lt;/p&gt;
398
399 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
400 PGPASSWORD=&quot;udd-mirror&quot; psql --port=5432 --host=udd-mirror.debian.net \
401 --username=udd-mirror udd -c &quot;select source from sources \
402 where release = &#39;sid&#39; and (vcs_url ilike &#39;%anonscm.debian.org%&#39; \
403 OR vcs_browser ilike &#39;%anonscm.debian.org%&#39; or vcs_url IS NULL \
404 OR vcs_browser IS NULL) AND maintainer ilike &#39;%packages@qa.debian.org%&#39; \
405 order by random() limit 10;&quot;
406 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
407
408 &lt;p&gt;Pick a random package from the list and run the latest edition of
409 the script
410 &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2024-07-11-debian-snap-to-salsa.sh&quot;&gt;debian-snap-to-salsa&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;
411 with the package name as the argument to prepare a git repository with
412 the existing packaging. This will download old Debian packages from
413 &lt;tt&gt;snapshot.debian.org&lt;/tt&gt;. Note that very recent uploads will not
414 be included, so check out the package on &lt;tt&gt;tracker.debian.org&lt;/tt&gt;.
415 Next, run &lt;tt&gt;gbp buildpackage --git-ignore-new&lt;/tt&gt; to verify that
416 the package build as it should, and then visit
417 &lt;a href=&quot;https://salsa.debian.org/debian/&quot;&gt;https://salsa.debian.org/debian/&lt;/a&gt;
418 and make sure there is not already a git repository for the package
419 there. I also did &lt;tt&gt;git log -p debian/control&lt;/tt&gt; and look for vcs
420 entries to check if the package used to have a git repository on
421 Alioth, and see if it can be a useful starting point moving forward.
422 If all this check out, I created a new gitlab project below the Debian
423 group on salsa, push the package source there and upload a new version.
424 I tend to also ensure build hardening is enabled, if it prove to be
425 easy, and check if I can easily fix any lintian issues or bug reports.
426 If the process took more than 20 minutes, I dropped it and moved on to
427 another package.&lt;/p&gt;
428
429 &lt;p&gt;If I found patches in debian/patches/ that were not yet passed
430 upstream, I would send an email to make sure upstream know about them.
431 This has proved to be a valuable step, and caused several new releases
432 for software that initially appeared abandoned. :)&lt;/p&gt;
433
434 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
435 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
436 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
437 </description>
438 </item>
439
440 <item>
441 <title>Some notes from the 2024 LinuxCNC Norwegian developer gathering</title>
442 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Some_notes_from_the_2024_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html</link>
443 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Some_notes_from_the_2024_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html</guid>
444 <pubDate>Wed, 10 Jul 2024 14:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
445 <description>&lt;p&gt;The Norwegian &lt;a href=&quot;https://linuxcnc.org/&quot;&gt;The LinuxCNC&lt;/a&gt;
446 developer gathering 2024 is over. It was a great and productive
447 weekend, and I am sad that it is over.&lt;/p&gt;
448
449 &lt;p&gt;Regular readers probably still remember what LinuxCNC is, but her
450 is a quick summary for those that forgot? LinuxCNC is a free software
451 system for numerical control of machines such as milling machines,
452 lathes, plasma cutters, routers, cutting machines, robots and
453 hexapods. It eats G-code and produce motor movement and other changes
454 to the physical world, while reading sensor input.&lt;/p&gt;
455
456 &lt;p&gt;I am not quite sure about the total head count, as not all people
457 were present at the gathering the entire weekend, but I believe it was
458 close to 10 people showing their faces at the gathering. The &quot;hard
459 core&quot; of the group, who stayed the entire weekend, were two from
460 Norway, two from Germany and one from England. I am happy with the
461 outcome from the gathering. We managed to wrap up a new stable
462 LinuxCNC release 2.9.3 and even tested it on real hardware within
463 minutes of the release. The release notes for 2.9.3 are still being
464 written, but should show up on on the project site in the next few
465 days. We managed to go through around twenty pull requests and merge
466 then into either the stable release (2.9) or the development branch
467 (master). There are still around thirty pull requests left to
468 process, so we are not out of work yet. We even managed to
469 fix/improve a slightly worn lathe, and experiment with running a
470 mechanical clock using G-code.&lt;/p&gt;
471
472 &lt;p&gt;The evening barbeque worked well both on Saturday and Sunday. It
473 is quite fun to light up a charcoal grill using compressed air. Sadly
474 the weather was not the best, so we stayed indoors most of the
475 time.&lt;/p&gt;
476
477 &lt;p&gt;This gathering was made possible partly with sponsoring from both
478 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.redpill-linpro.com/&quot;&gt;Redpill Linpro&lt;/a&gt;,
479 &lt;a href=&quot;https://debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; and
480 &lt;a href=&quot;https://nuugfoundation.no/&quot;&gt;NUUG Foundation&lt;/a&gt;, and we are
481 most grateful for the support. I would also like to thank the local
482 school for lending us some furniture, and of course the rest of the
483 members of the organizers team, Asle and Bosse, for their countless
484 contributions. The gathering was such success that we want to do it
485 again next year.&lt;/p&gt;
486
487 &lt;p&gt;We plan to organize the next Norwegian LinuxCNC developer gathering
488 at the end of June next year, the weekend Friday 27th to Sunday 29th
489 of June 2025. I recommend you reserve the dates on your calendar
490 today. Other related communities are also welcome to join in, for
491 example those working on systems like FreeCAD and opencamlib, as I am
492 sure we have much in common and sharing experiences would be very
493 useful to all involved. We are of course looking for sponsors for
494 this gathering already. The total budget for this gathering was
495 around NOK 25.000 (around EUR 2.300), so our needs are quite modest.
496 Perhaps a machine or tools company would like to help out the free
497 software manufacturing community by sponsoring food, lodging and
498 transport for such gathering?&lt;/p&gt;
499 </description>
500 </item>
501
502 <item>
503 <title>The 2024 LinuxCNC Norwegian developer gathering</title>
504 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_2024_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html</link>
505 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_2024_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html</guid>
506 <pubDate>Fri, 31 May 2024 07:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
507 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://linuxcnc.org/&quot;&gt;The LinuxCNC project&lt;/a&gt; is still
508 going strong. And I believe this great software system for numerical control of
509 machines such as milling machines, lathes, plasma cutters, routers,
510 cutting machines, robots and hexapods, would do even better with more
511 in-person developer gatherings, so we plan to organise such gathering
512 this summer too.&lt;/p&gt;
513
514 &lt;p&gt;The Norwegian LinuxCNC developer gathering take place the weekend
515 Friday July 5th to 7th this year, and is open for everyone interested
516 in contributing to LinuxCNC and free software manufacturing. Up to
517 date information about the gathering can be found in
518 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/emc/mailman/emc-developers/thread/123eaae0-f3b9-4170-a251-b7d608f1e974%40bofh.no/&quot;&gt;the
519 developer mailing list thread&lt;/a&gt; where the gathering was announced.
520 Thanks to the good people at
521
522 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; as well as leftover money
523 from last years gathering from
524 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.redpill-linpro.com/&quot;&gt;Redpill-Linpro&lt;/a&gt; and
525 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nuugfoundation.no/no/&quot;&gt;NUUG Foundation&lt;/a&gt;, we
526 have enough sponsor funds to pay for food, and probably also shelter
527 for the people traveling from afar to join us. If you would like to
528 join the gathering, get in touch and add your details on
529 &lt;a href=&quot;https://pad.efn.no/p/linuxcnc-2024-norway&quot;&gt;the pad&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
530
531 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
532 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
533 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
534 </description>
535 </item>
536
537 <item>
538 <title>45 orphaned Debian packages moved to git, 391 to go</title>
539 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/45_orphaned_Debian_packages_moved_to_git__391_to_go.html</link>
540 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/45_orphaned_Debian_packages_moved_to_git__391_to_go.html</guid>
541 <pubDate>Thu, 25 Apr 2024 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
542 <description>&lt;p&gt;Nine days ago, I started migrating orphaned Debian packages with no
543 version control system listed in debian/control of the source to git.
544 At the time there were 438 such packages. Now there are 391,
545 according to the UDD. In reality it is slightly less, as there is a
546 delay between uploads and UDD updates. In the nine days since, I have
547 thus been able to work my way through ten percent of the packages. I
548 am starting to run out of steam, and hope someone else will also help
549 brushing some dust of these packages. Here is a recipe how to do it.
550
551 I start by picking a random package by querying the UDD for a list of
552 10 random packages from the set of remaining packages:
553
554 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
555 PGPASSWORD=&quot;udd-mirror&quot; psql --port=5432 --host=udd-mirror.debian.net \
556 --username=udd-mirror udd -c &quot;select source from sources \
557 where release = &#39;sid&#39; and (vcs_url ilike &#39;%anonscm.debian.org%&#39; \
558 OR vcs_browser ilike &#39;%anonscm.debian.org%&#39; or vcs_url IS NULL \
559 OR vcs_browser IS NULL) AND maintainer ilike &#39;%packages@qa.debian.org%&#39; \
560 order by random() limit 10;&quot;
561 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
562
563 &lt;p&gt;Next, I visit http://salsa.debian.org/debian and search for the
564 package name, to ensure no git repository already exist. If it does,
565 I clone it and try to get it to an uploadable state, and add the Vcs-*
566 entries in d/control to make the repository more widely known. These
567 packages are a minority, so I will not cover that use case here.&lt;/p&gt;
568
569 &lt;p&gt;For packages without an existing git repository, I run the
570 following script &lt;tt&gt;debian-snap-to-salsa&lt;/tt&gt; to prepare a git
571 repository with the existing packaging.&lt;/p&gt;
572
573 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
574 #!/bin/sh
575 #
576 # See also https://bugs.debian.org/804722#31
577
578 set -e
579
580 # Move to this Standards-Version.
581 SV_LATEST=4.7.0
582
583 PKG=&quot;$1&quot;
584
585 if [ -z &quot;$PKG&quot; ]; then
586 echo &quot;usage: $0 &lt;pkgname&gt;&quot;
587 exit 1
588 fi
589
590 if [ -e &quot;${PKG}-salsa&quot; ]; then
591 echo &quot;error: ${PKG}-salsa already exist, aborting.&quot;
592 exit 1
593 fi
594
595 if [ -z &quot;ALLOWFAILURE&quot; ] ; then
596 ALLOWFAILURE=false
597 fi
598
599 # Fetch every snapshotted source package. Manually loop until all
600 # transfers succeed, as &#39;gbp import-dscs --debsnap&#39; do not fail on
601 # download failures.
602 until debsnap --force -v $PKG || $ALLOWFAILURE ; do sleep 1; done
603 mkdir ${PKG}-salsa; cd ${PKG}-salsa
604 git init
605
606 # Specify branches to override any debian/gbp.conf file present in the
607 # source package.
608 gbp import-dscs --debian-branch=master --upstream-branch=upstream \
609 --pristine-tar ../source-$PKG/*.dsc
610
611 # Add Vcs pointing to Salsa Debian project (must be manually created
612 # and pushed to).
613 if ! grep -q ^Vcs- debian/control ; then
614 awk &quot;BEGIN { s=1 } /^\$/ { if (s==1) { print \&quot;Vcs-Browser: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/$PKG\&quot;; print \&quot;Vcs-Git: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/$PKG.git\&quot; }; s=0 } { print }&quot; &lt; debian/control &gt; debian/control.new &amp;&amp; mv debian/control.new debian/control
615 git commit -m &quot;Updated vcs in d/control to Salsa.&quot; debian/control
616 fi
617
618 # Tell gbp to enforce the use of pristine-tar.
619 inifile +inifile debian/gbp.conf +create +section DEFAULT +key pristine-tar +value True
620 git add debian/gbp.conf
621 git commit -m &quot;Added d/gbp.conf to enforce the use of pristine-tar.&quot; debian/gbp.conf
622
623 # Update to latest Standards-Version.
624 SV=&quot;$(grep ^Standards-Version: debian/control|awk &#39;{print $2}&#39;)&quot;
625 if [ $SV_LATEST != $SV ]; then
626 sed -i &quot;s/\(Standards-Version: \)\(.*\)/\1$SV_LATEST/&quot; debian/control
627 git commit -m &quot;Updated Standards-Version from $SV to $SV_LATEST.&quot; debian/control
628 fi
629
630 if grep -q pkg-config debian/control; then
631 sed -i s/pkg-config/pkgconf/ debian/control
632 git commit -m &quot;Replaced obsolete pkg-config build dependency with pkgconf.&quot; debian/control
633 fi
634
635 if grep -q libncurses5-dev debian/control; then
636 sed -i s/libncurses5-dev/libncurses-dev/ debian/control
637 git commit -m &quot;Replaced obsolete libncurses5-dev build dependency with libncurses-dev.&quot; debian/control
638 fi
639 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
640
641 Some times the debsnap script fail to download some of the versions.
642 In those cases I investigate, and if I decide the failing versions
643 will not be missed, I call it using ALLOWFAILURE=true to ignore the
644 problem and create the git repository anyway.&lt;/p&gt;
645
646 &lt;p&gt;With the git repository in place, I do a test build (gbp
647 buildpackage) to ensure the build is actually working. If it does not
648 I pick a different package, or if the build failure is trivial to fix,
649 I fix it before continuing. At this stage I revisit
650 http://salsa.debian.org/debian and create the project under this group
651 for the package. I then follow the instructions to publish the local
652 git repository. Here is from a recent example:&lt;/p&gt;
653
654 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
655 git remote add origin git@salsa.debian.org:debian/perl-byacc.git
656 git push --set-upstream origin master upstream pristine-tar
657 git push --tags
658 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
659
660 &lt;p&gt;With a working build, I have a look at the build rules if I want to
661 remove some more dust. I normally try to move to debhelper compat
662 level 13, which involves removing debian/compat and modifying
663 debian/control to build depend on debhelper-compat (=13). I also test
664 with &#39;Rules-Requires-Root: no&#39; in debian/control and verify in
665 debian/rules that hardening is enabled, and include all of these if
666 the package still build. If it fail to build with level 13, I try
667 with 12, 11, 10 and so on until I find a level where it build, as I do
668 not want to spend a lot of time fixing build issues.&lt;/p&gt;
669
670 &lt;p&gt;Some times, when I feel inspired, I make sure debian/copyright is
671 converted to the machine readable format, often by starting with
672 &#39;debhelper -cc&#39; and then cleaning up the autogenerated content until
673 it matches realities. If I feel like it, I might also clean up
674 non-dh-based debian/rules files to use the short style dh build
675 rules.&lt;/p&gt;
676
677 &lt;p&gt;Once I have removed all the dust I care to process for the package,
678 I run &#39;gbp dch&#39; to generate a debian/changelog entry based on the
679 commits done so far, run &#39;dch -r&#39; to switch from &#39;UNRELEASED&#39; to
680 &#39;unstable&#39; and get an editor to make sure the &#39;QA upload&#39; marker is in
681 place and that all long commit descriptions are wrapped into sensible
682 lengths, run &#39;debcommit --release -a&#39; to commit and tag the new
683 debian/changelog entry, run &#39;debuild -S&#39; to build a source only
684 package, and &#39;dput ../perl-byacc_2.0-10_source.changes&#39; to do the
685 upload. During the entire process, and many times per step, I run
686 &#39;debuild&#39; to verify the changes done still work. I also some times
687 verify the set of built files using &#39;find debian&#39; to see if I can spot
688 any problems (like no file in usr/bin any more or empty package). I
689 also try to fix all lintian issues reported at the end of each
690 &#39;debuild&#39; run.&lt;/p&gt;
691
692 &lt;p&gt;If I find Debian specific patches, I try to ensure their metadata
693 is fairly up to date and some times I even try to reach out to
694 upstream, to make the upstream project aware of the patches. Most of
695 my emails bounce, so the success rate is low. For projects with no
696 Homepage entry in debian/control I try to track down one, and for
697 packages with no debian/watch file I try to create one. But at least
698 for some of the packages I have been unable to find a functioning
699 upstream, and must skip both of these.&lt;/p&gt;
700
701 &lt;p&gt;If I could handle ten percent in nine days, twenty people could
702 complete the rest in less then five days. I use approximately twenty
703 minutes per package, when I have twenty minutes spare time to spend.
704 Perhaps you got twenty minutes to spare too?&lt;/p&gt;
705
706 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
707 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
708 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
709
710 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2024-05-04:&lt;/strong&gt; There is
711 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2024-05-04-debian-snap-to-salsa.sh&quot;&gt;an
712 updated edition of my migration script&lt;/a&gt;, last updated
713 2024-05-04.&lt;/p&gt;
714 </description>
715 </item>
716
717 <item>
718 <title>Time to move orphaned Debian packages to git</title>
719 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_to_move_orphaned_Debian_packages_to_git.html</link>
720 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_to_move_orphaned_Debian_packages_to_git.html</guid>
721 <pubDate>Sun, 14 Apr 2024 09:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
722 <description>&lt;p&gt;There are several packages in Debian without a associated git
723 repository with the packaging history. This is unfortunate and it
724 would be nice if more of these would do so. Quote a lot of these are
725 without a maintainer, ie listed as maintained by the
726 &#39;&lt;a href=&quot;https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=packages%40qa.debian.org&quot;&gt;Debian
727 QA Group&lt;/a&gt;&#39; place holder. In fact, 438 packages have this property
728 according to UDD (&lt;tt&gt;SELECT source FROM sources WHERE release = &#39;sid&#39;
729 AND (vcs_url ilike &#39;%anonscm.debian.org%&#39; OR vcs_browser ilike
730 &#39;%anonscm.debian.org%&#39; or vcs_url IS NULL OR vcs_browser IS NULL) AND
731 maintainer ilike &#39;%packages@qa.debian.org%&#39;;&lt;/tt&gt;). Such packages can
732 be updated without much coordination by any Debian developer, as they
733 are considered orphaned.&lt;/p&gt;
734
735 &lt;p&gt;To try to improve the situation and reduce the number of packages
736 without associated git repository, I started a few days ago to search
737 out candiates and provide them with a git repository under the
738 &#39;debian&#39; collaborative Salsa project. I started with the packages
739 pointing to obsolete Alioth git repositories, and am now working my
740 way across the ones completely without git references. In addition to
741 updating the Vcs-* debian/control fields, I try to update
742 Standards-Version, debhelper compat level, simplify d/rules, switch to
743 Rules-Requires-Root: no and fix lintian issues reported. I only
744 implement those that are trivial to fix, to avoid spending too much
745 time on each orphaned package. So far my experience is that it take
746 aproximately 20 minutes to convert a package without any git
747 references, and a lot more for packages with existing git repositories
748 incompatible with git-buildpackages.&lt;/p&gt;
749
750 &lt;p&gt;So far I have converted 10 packages, and I will keep going until I
751 run out of steam. As should be clear from the numbers, there is
752 enough packages remaining for more people to do the same without
753 stepping on each others toes. I find it useful to start by searching
754 for a git repo already on salsa, as I find that some times a git repo
755 has already been created, but no new version is uploaded to Debian
756 yet. In those cases I start with the existing git repository. I
757 convert to the git-buildpackage+pristine-tar workflow, and ensure a
758 debian/gbp.conf file with &quot;pristine-tar=True&quot; is added early, to avoid
759 uploading a orig.tar.gz with the wrong checksum by mistake. Did that
760 three times in the begin before I remembered my mistake.&lt;/p&gt;
761
762 &lt;p&gt;So, if you are a Debian Developer and got some spare time, perhaps
763 considering migrating some orphaned packages to git?&lt;/p&gt;
764
765 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
766 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
767 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
768 </description>
769 </item>
770
771 <item>
772 <title>New and improved sqlcipher in Debian for accessing Signal database</title>
773 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_and_improved_sqlcipher_in_Debian_for_accessing_Signal_database.html</link>
774 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_and_improved_sqlcipher_in_Debian_for_accessing_Signal_database.html</guid>
775 <pubDate>Sun, 12 Nov 2023 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
776 <description>&lt;p&gt;For a while now I wanted to have direct access to the
777 &lt;a href=&quot;https://signal.org/&quot;&gt;Signal&lt;/a&gt; database of messages and
778 channels of my Desktop edition of Signal. I prefer the enforced end
779 to end encryption of Signal these days for my communication with
780 friends and family, to increase the level of safety and privacy as
781 well as raising the cost of the mass surveillance government and
782 non-government entities practice these days. In August I came across
783 a nice
784 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.yoranbrondsema.com/post/the-guide-to-extracting-statistics-from-your-signal-conversations/&quot;&gt;recipe
785 on how to use sqlcipher to extract statistics from the Signal
786 database&lt;/a&gt; explaining how to do this. Unfortunately this did not
787 work with the version of sqlcipher in Debian. The
788 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tracker.debian.org/sqlcipher/&quot;&gt;sqlcipher&lt;/a&gt;
789 package is a &quot;fork&quot; of the sqlite package with added support for
790 encrypted databases. Sadly the current Debian maintainer
791 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/961598&quot;&gt;announced more than three
792 years ago that he did not have time to maintain sqlcipher&lt;/a&gt;, so it
793 seemed unlikely to be upgraded by the maintainer. I was reluctant to
794 take on the job myself, as I have very limited experience maintaining
795 shared libraries in Debian. After waiting and hoping for a few
796 months, I gave up the last week, and set out to update the package. In
797 the process I orphaned it to make it more obvious for the next person
798 looking at it that the package need proper maintenance.&lt;/p&gt;
799
800 &lt;p&gt;The version in Debian was around five years old, and quite a lot of
801 changes had taken place upstream into the Debian maintenance git
802 repository. After spending a few days importing the new upstream
803 versions, realising that upstream did not care much for SONAME
804 versioning as I saw library symbols being both added and removed with
805 minor version number changes to the project, I concluded that I had to
806 do a SONAME bump of the library package to avoid surprising the
807 reverse dependencies. I even added a simple
808 autopkgtest script to ensure the package work as intended. Dug deep
809 into the hole of learning shared library maintenance, I set out a few
810 days ago to upload the new version to Debian experimental to see what
811 the quality assurance framework in Debian had to say about the result.
812 The feedback told me the pacakge was not too shabby, and yesterday I
813 uploaded the latest version to Debian unstable. It should enter
814 testing today or tomorrow, perhaps delayed by
815 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/1055812&quot;&gt;a small library
816 transition&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
817
818 &lt;p&gt;Armed with a new version of sqlcipher, I can now have a look at the
819 SQL database in ~/.config/Signal/sql/db.sqlite. First, one need to
820 fetch the encryption key from the Signal configuration using this
821 simple JSON extraction command:&lt;/p&gt;
822
823 &lt;pre&gt;/usr/bin/jq -r &#39;.&quot;key&quot;&#39; ~/.config/Signal/config.json&lt;/pre&gt;
824
825 &lt;p&gt;Assuming the result from that command is &#39;secretkey&#39;, which is a
826 hexadecimal number representing the key used to encrypt the database.
827 Next, one can now connect to the database and inject the encryption
828 key for access via SQL to fetch information from the database. Here
829 is an example dumping the database structure:&lt;/p&gt;
830
831 &lt;pre&gt;
832 % sqlcipher ~/.config/Signal/sql/db.sqlite
833 sqlite&gt; PRAGMA key = &quot;x&#39;secretkey&#39;&quot;;
834 sqlite&gt; .schema
835 CREATE TABLE sqlite_stat1(tbl,idx,stat);
836 CREATE TABLE conversations(
837 id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
838 json TEXT,
839
840 active_at INTEGER,
841 type STRING,
842 members TEXT,
843 name TEXT,
844 profileName TEXT
845 , profileFamilyName TEXT, profileFullName TEXT, e164 TEXT, serviceId TEXT, groupId TEXT, profileLastFetchedAt INTEGER);
846 CREATE TABLE identityKeys(
847 id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
848 json TEXT
849 );
850 CREATE TABLE items(
851 id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
852 json TEXT
853 );
854 CREATE TABLE sessions(
855 id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
856 conversationId TEXT,
857 json TEXT
858 , ourServiceId STRING, serviceId STRING);
859 CREATE TABLE attachment_downloads(
860 id STRING primary key,
861 timestamp INTEGER,
862 pending INTEGER,
863 json TEXT
864 );
865 CREATE TABLE sticker_packs(
866 id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
867 key TEXT NOT NULL,
868
869 author STRING,
870 coverStickerId INTEGER,
871 createdAt INTEGER,
872 downloadAttempts INTEGER,
873 installedAt INTEGER,
874 lastUsed INTEGER,
875 status STRING,
876 stickerCount INTEGER,
877 title STRING
878 , attemptedStatus STRING, position INTEGER DEFAULT 0 NOT NULL, storageID STRING, storageVersion INTEGER, storageUnknownFields BLOB, storageNeedsSync
879 INTEGER DEFAULT 0 NOT NULL);
880 CREATE TABLE stickers(
881 id INTEGER NOT NULL,
882 packId TEXT NOT NULL,
883
884 emoji STRING,
885 height INTEGER,
886 isCoverOnly INTEGER,
887 lastUsed INTEGER,
888 path STRING,
889 width INTEGER,
890
891 PRIMARY KEY (id, packId),
892 CONSTRAINT stickers_fk
893 FOREIGN KEY (packId)
894 REFERENCES sticker_packs(id)
895 ON DELETE CASCADE
896 );
897 CREATE TABLE sticker_references(
898 messageId STRING,
899 packId TEXT,
900 CONSTRAINT sticker_references_fk
901 FOREIGN KEY(packId)
902 REFERENCES sticker_packs(id)
903 ON DELETE CASCADE
904 );
905 CREATE TABLE emojis(
906 shortName TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
907 lastUsage INTEGER
908 );
909 CREATE TABLE messages(
910 rowid INTEGER PRIMARY KEY ASC,
911 id STRING UNIQUE,
912 json TEXT,
913 readStatus INTEGER,
914 expires_at INTEGER,
915 sent_at INTEGER,
916 schemaVersion INTEGER,
917 conversationId STRING,
918 received_at INTEGER,
919 source STRING,
920 hasAttachments INTEGER,
921 hasFileAttachments INTEGER,
922 hasVisualMediaAttachments INTEGER,
923 expireTimer INTEGER,
924 expirationStartTimestamp INTEGER,
925 type STRING,
926 body TEXT,
927 messageTimer INTEGER,
928 messageTimerStart INTEGER,
929 messageTimerExpiresAt INTEGER,
930 isErased INTEGER,
931 isViewOnce INTEGER,
932 sourceServiceId TEXT, serverGuid STRING NULL, sourceDevice INTEGER, storyId STRING, isStory INTEGER
933 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (type IS &#39;story&#39;), isChangeCreatedByUs INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, isTimerChangeFromSync INTEGER
934 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
935 json_extract(json, &#39;$.expirationTimerUpdate.fromSync&#39;) IS 1
936 ), seenStatus NUMBER default 0, storyDistributionListId STRING, expiresAt INT
937 GENERATED ALWAYS
938 AS (ifnull(
939 expirationStartTimestamp + (expireTimer * 1000),
940 9007199254740991
941 )), shouldAffectActivity INTEGER
942 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
943 type IS NULL
944 OR
945 type NOT IN (
946 &#39;change-number-notification&#39;,
947 &#39;contact-removed-notification&#39;,
948 &#39;conversation-merge&#39;,
949 &#39;group-v1-migration&#39;,
950 &#39;keychange&#39;,
951 &#39;message-history-unsynced&#39;,
952 &#39;profile-change&#39;,
953 &#39;story&#39;,
954 &#39;universal-timer-notification&#39;,
955 &#39;verified-change&#39;
956 )
957 ), shouldAffectPreview INTEGER
958 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
959 type IS NULL
960 OR
961 type NOT IN (
962 &#39;change-number-notification&#39;,
963 &#39;contact-removed-notification&#39;,
964 &#39;conversation-merge&#39;,
965 &#39;group-v1-migration&#39;,
966 &#39;keychange&#39;,
967 &#39;message-history-unsynced&#39;,
968 &#39;profile-change&#39;,
969 &#39;story&#39;,
970 &#39;universal-timer-notification&#39;,
971 &#39;verified-change&#39;
972 )
973 ), isUserInitiatedMessage INTEGER
974 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
975 type IS NULL
976 OR
977 type NOT IN (
978 &#39;change-number-notification&#39;,
979 &#39;contact-removed-notification&#39;,
980 &#39;conversation-merge&#39;,
981 &#39;group-v1-migration&#39;,
982 &#39;group-v2-change&#39;,
983 &#39;keychange&#39;,
984 &#39;message-history-unsynced&#39;,
985 &#39;profile-change&#39;,
986 &#39;story&#39;,
987 &#39;universal-timer-notification&#39;,
988 &#39;verified-change&#39;
989 )
990 ), mentionsMe INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, isGroupLeaveEvent INTEGER
991 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
992 type IS &#39;group-v2-change&#39; AND
993 json_array_length(json_extract(json, &#39;$.groupV2Change.details&#39;)) IS 1 AND
994 json_extract(json, &#39;$.groupV2Change.details[0].type&#39;) IS &#39;member-remove&#39; AND
995 json_extract(json, &#39;$.groupV2Change.from&#39;) IS NOT NULL AND
996 json_extract(json, &#39;$.groupV2Change.from&#39;) IS json_extract(json, &#39;$.groupV2Change.details[0].aci&#39;)
997 ), isGroupLeaveEventFromOther INTEGER
998 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
999 isGroupLeaveEvent IS 1
1000 AND
1001 isChangeCreatedByUs IS 0
1002 ), callId TEXT
1003 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
1004 json_extract(json, &#39;$.callId&#39;)
1005 ));
1006 CREATE TABLE sqlite_stat4(tbl,idx,neq,nlt,ndlt,sample);
1007 CREATE TABLE jobs(
1008 id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
1009 queueType TEXT STRING NOT NULL,
1010 timestamp INTEGER NOT NULL,
1011 data STRING TEXT
1012 );
1013 CREATE TABLE reactions(
1014 conversationId STRING,
1015 emoji STRING,
1016 fromId STRING,
1017 messageReceivedAt INTEGER,
1018 targetAuthorAci STRING,
1019 targetTimestamp INTEGER,
1020 unread INTEGER
1021 , messageId STRING);
1022 CREATE TABLE senderKeys(
1023 id TEXT PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
1024 senderId TEXT NOT NULL,
1025 distributionId TEXT NOT NULL,
1026 data BLOB NOT NULL,
1027 lastUpdatedDate NUMBER NOT NULL
1028 );
1029 CREATE TABLE unprocessed(
1030 id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
1031 timestamp INTEGER,
1032 version INTEGER,
1033 attempts INTEGER,
1034 envelope TEXT,
1035 decrypted TEXT,
1036 source TEXT,
1037 serverTimestamp INTEGER,
1038 sourceServiceId STRING
1039 , serverGuid STRING NULL, sourceDevice INTEGER, receivedAtCounter INTEGER, urgent INTEGER, story INTEGER);
1040 CREATE TABLE sendLogPayloads(
1041 id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY ASC,
1042
1043 timestamp INTEGER NOT NULL,
1044 contentHint INTEGER NOT NULL,
1045 proto BLOB NOT NULL
1046 , urgent INTEGER, hasPniSignatureMessage INTEGER DEFAULT 0 NOT NULL);
1047 CREATE TABLE sendLogRecipients(
1048 payloadId INTEGER NOT NULL,
1049
1050 recipientServiceId STRING NOT NULL,
1051 deviceId INTEGER NOT NULL,
1052
1053 PRIMARY KEY (payloadId, recipientServiceId, deviceId),
1054
1055 CONSTRAINT sendLogRecipientsForeignKey
1056 FOREIGN KEY (payloadId)
1057 REFERENCES sendLogPayloads(id)
1058 ON DELETE CASCADE
1059 );
1060 CREATE TABLE sendLogMessageIds(
1061 payloadId INTEGER NOT NULL,
1062
1063 messageId STRING NOT NULL,
1064
1065 PRIMARY KEY (payloadId, messageId),
1066
1067 CONSTRAINT sendLogMessageIdsForeignKey
1068 FOREIGN KEY (payloadId)
1069 REFERENCES sendLogPayloads(id)
1070 ON DELETE CASCADE
1071 );
1072 CREATE TABLE preKeys(
1073 id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
1074 json TEXT
1075 , ourServiceId NUMBER
1076 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (json_extract(json, &#39;$.ourServiceId&#39;)));
1077 CREATE TABLE signedPreKeys(
1078 id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
1079 json TEXT
1080 , ourServiceId NUMBER
1081 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (json_extract(json, &#39;$.ourServiceId&#39;)));
1082 CREATE TABLE badges(
1083 id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
1084 category TEXT NOT NULL,
1085 name TEXT NOT NULL,
1086 descriptionTemplate TEXT NOT NULL
1087 );
1088 CREATE TABLE badgeImageFiles(
1089 badgeId TEXT REFERENCES badges(id)
1090 ON DELETE CASCADE
1091 ON UPDATE CASCADE,
1092 &#39;order&#39; INTEGER NOT NULL,
1093 url TEXT NOT NULL,
1094 localPath TEXT,
1095 theme TEXT NOT NULL
1096 );
1097 CREATE TABLE storyReads (
1098 authorId STRING NOT NULL,
1099 conversationId STRING NOT NULL,
1100 storyId STRING NOT NULL,
1101 storyReadDate NUMBER NOT NULL,
1102
1103 PRIMARY KEY (authorId, storyId)
1104 );
1105 CREATE TABLE storyDistributions(
1106 id STRING PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
1107 name TEXT,
1108
1109 senderKeyInfoJson STRING
1110 , deletedAtTimestamp INTEGER, allowsReplies INTEGER, isBlockList INTEGER, storageID STRING, storageVersion INTEGER, storageUnknownFields BLOB, storageNeedsSync INTEGER);
1111 CREATE TABLE storyDistributionMembers(
1112 listId STRING NOT NULL REFERENCES storyDistributions(id)
1113 ON DELETE CASCADE
1114 ON UPDATE CASCADE,
1115 serviceId STRING NOT NULL,
1116
1117 PRIMARY KEY (listId, serviceId)
1118 );
1119 CREATE TABLE uninstalled_sticker_packs (
1120 id STRING NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
1121 uninstalledAt NUMBER NOT NULL,
1122 storageID STRING,
1123 storageVersion NUMBER,
1124 storageUnknownFields BLOB,
1125 storageNeedsSync INTEGER NOT NULL
1126 );
1127 CREATE TABLE groupCallRingCancellations(
1128 ringId INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
1129 createdAt INTEGER NOT NULL
1130 );
1131 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS &#39;messages_fts_data&#39;(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, block BLOB);
1132 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS &#39;messages_fts_idx&#39;(segid, term, pgno, PRIMARY KEY(segid, term)) WITHOUT ROWID;
1133 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS &#39;messages_fts_content&#39;(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, c0);
1134 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS &#39;messages_fts_docsize&#39;(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, sz BLOB);
1135 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS &#39;messages_fts_config&#39;(k PRIMARY KEY, v) WITHOUT ROWID;
1136 CREATE TABLE edited_messages(
1137 messageId STRING REFERENCES messages(id)
1138 ON DELETE CASCADE,
1139 sentAt INTEGER,
1140 readStatus INTEGER
1141 , conversationId STRING);
1142 CREATE TABLE mentions (
1143 messageId REFERENCES messages(id) ON DELETE CASCADE,
1144 mentionAci STRING,
1145 start INTEGER,
1146 length INTEGER
1147 );
1148 CREATE TABLE kyberPreKeys(
1149 id STRING PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
1150 json TEXT NOT NULL, ourServiceId NUMBER
1151 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (json_extract(json, &#39;$.ourServiceId&#39;)));
1152 CREATE TABLE callsHistory (
1153 callId TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
1154 peerId TEXT NOT NULL, -- conversation id (legacy) | uuid | groupId | roomId
1155 ringerId TEXT DEFAULT NULL, -- ringer uuid
1156 mode TEXT NOT NULL, -- enum &quot;Direct&quot; | &quot;Group&quot;
1157 type TEXT NOT NULL, -- enum &quot;Audio&quot; | &quot;Video&quot; | &quot;Group&quot;
1158 direction TEXT NOT NULL, -- enum &quot;Incoming&quot; | &quot;Outgoing
1159 -- Direct: enum &quot;Pending&quot; | &quot;Missed&quot; | &quot;Accepted&quot; | &quot;Deleted&quot;
1160 -- Group: enum &quot;GenericGroupCall&quot; | &quot;OutgoingRing&quot; | &quot;Ringing&quot; | &quot;Joined&quot; | &quot;Missed&quot; | &quot;Declined&quot; | &quot;Accepted&quot; | &quot;Deleted&quot;
1161 status TEXT NOT NULL,
1162 timestamp INTEGER NOT NULL,
1163 UNIQUE (callId, peerId) ON CONFLICT FAIL
1164 );
1165 [ dropped all indexes to save space in this blog post ]
1166 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_view_once_update AFTER UPDATE ON messages
1167 WHEN
1168 new.body IS NOT NULL AND new.isViewOnce = 1
1169 BEGIN
1170 DELETE FROM messages_fts WHERE rowid = old.rowid;
1171 END;
1172 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_insert AFTER INSERT ON messages
1173 WHEN new.isViewOnce IS NOT 1 AND new.storyId IS NULL
1174 BEGIN
1175 INSERT INTO messages_fts
1176 (rowid, body)
1177 VALUES
1178 (new.rowid, new.body);
1179 END;
1180 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_delete AFTER DELETE ON messages BEGIN
1181 DELETE FROM messages_fts WHERE rowid = old.rowid;
1182 DELETE FROM sendLogPayloads WHERE id IN (
1183 SELECT payloadId FROM sendLogMessageIds
1184 WHERE messageId = old.id
1185 );
1186 DELETE FROM reactions WHERE rowid IN (
1187 SELECT rowid FROM reactions
1188 WHERE messageId = old.id
1189 );
1190 DELETE FROM storyReads WHERE storyId = old.storyId;
1191 END;
1192 CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE messages_fts USING fts5(
1193 body,
1194 tokenize = &#39;signal_tokenizer&#39;
1195 );
1196 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_update AFTER UPDATE ON messages
1197 WHEN
1198 (new.body IS NULL OR old.body IS NOT new.body) AND
1199 new.isViewOnce IS NOT 1 AND new.storyId IS NULL
1200 BEGIN
1201 DELETE FROM messages_fts WHERE rowid = old.rowid;
1202 INSERT INTO messages_fts
1203 (rowid, body)
1204 VALUES
1205 (new.rowid, new.body);
1206 END;
1207 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_insert_insert_mentions AFTER INSERT ON messages
1208 BEGIN
1209 INSERT INTO mentions (messageId, mentionAci, start, length)
1210
1211 SELECT messages.id, bodyRanges.value -&gt;&gt; &#39;mentionAci&#39; as mentionAci,
1212 bodyRanges.value -&gt;&gt; &#39;start&#39; as start,
1213 bodyRanges.value -&gt;&gt; &#39;length&#39; as length
1214 FROM messages, json_each(messages.json -&gt;&gt; &#39;bodyRanges&#39;) as bodyRanges
1215 WHERE bodyRanges.value -&gt;&gt; &#39;mentionAci&#39; IS NOT NULL
1216
1217 AND messages.id = new.id;
1218 END;
1219 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_update_update_mentions AFTER UPDATE ON messages
1220 BEGIN
1221 DELETE FROM mentions WHERE messageId = new.id;
1222 INSERT INTO mentions (messageId, mentionAci, start, length)
1223
1224 SELECT messages.id, bodyRanges.value -&gt;&gt; &#39;mentionAci&#39; as mentionAci,
1225 bodyRanges.value -&gt;&gt; &#39;start&#39; as start,
1226 bodyRanges.value -&gt;&gt; &#39;length&#39; as length
1227 FROM messages, json_each(messages.json -&gt;&gt; &#39;bodyRanges&#39;) as bodyRanges
1228 WHERE bodyRanges.value -&gt;&gt; &#39;mentionAci&#39; IS NOT NULL
1229
1230 AND messages.id = new.id;
1231 END;
1232 sqlite&gt;
1233 &lt;/pre&gt;
1234
1235 &lt;p&gt;Finally I have the tool needed to inspect and process Signal
1236 messages that I need, without using the vendor provided client. Now
1237 on to transforming it to a more useful format.&lt;/p&gt;
1238
1239 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1240 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1241 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1242 </description>
1243 </item>
1244
1245 <item>
1246 <title>New chrpath release 0.17</title>
1247 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_17.html</link>
1248 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_17.html</guid>
1249 <pubDate>Fri, 10 Nov 2023 07:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
1250 <description>&lt;p&gt;The chrpath package provide a simple command line tool to remove or
1251 modify the rpath or runpath of compiled ELF program. It is almost 10
1252 years since I updated the code base, but I stumbled over the tool
1253 today, and decided it was time to move the code base from Subversion
1254 to git and find a new home for it, as the previous one (Debian Alioth)
1255 has been shut down. I decided to go with
1256 &lt;a href=&quot;https://codeberg.org/&quot;&gt;Codeberg&lt;/a&gt; this time, as it is my git
1257 service of choice these days, did a quick and dirty migration to git
1258 and updated the code with a few patches I found in the Debian bug
1259 tracker. These are the release notes:&lt;/p&gt;
1260
1261 &lt;p&gt;New in 0.17 released 2023-11-10:&lt;/p&gt;
1262
1263 &lt;ul&gt;
1264 &lt;li&gt;Moved project to Codeberg, as Alioth is shut down.&lt;/li&gt;
1265 &lt;li&gt;Add Solaris support (use &amp;lt;sys/byteorder.h&gt; instead of &amp;lt;byteswap.h&gt;).
1266 Patch from Rainer Orth.&lt;/li&gt;
1267 &lt;li&gt;Added missing newline from printf() line. Patch from Frank Dana.&lt;/li&gt;
1268 &lt;li&gt;Corrected handling of multiple ELF sections. Patch from Frank Dana.&lt;/li&gt;
1269 &lt;li&gt;Updated build rules for .deb. Partly based on patch from djcj.&lt;/li&gt;
1270 &lt;/ul&gt;
1271
1272 &lt;p&gt;The latest edition is tagged and available from
1273 &lt;a href=&quot;https://codeberg.org/pere/chrpath&quot;&gt;https://codeberg.org/pere/chrpath&lt;/a&gt;.
1274
1275 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1276 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1277 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1278 </description>
1279 </item>
1280
1281 <item>
1282 <title>Test framework for DocBook processors / formatters</title>
1283 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Test_framework_for_DocBook_processors___formatters.html</link>
1284 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Test_framework_for_DocBook_processors___formatters.html</guid>
1285 <pubDate>Sun, 5 Nov 2023 13:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
1286 <description>&lt;p&gt;All the books I have published so far has been using
1287 &lt;a href=&quot;https://docbook.org/&quot;&gt;DocBook&lt;/a&gt; somewhere in the process.
1288 For the first book, the source format was DocBook, while for every
1289 later book it was an intermediate format used as the stepping stone to
1290 be able to present the same manuscript in several formats, on paper,
1291 as ebook in ePub format, as a HTML page and as a PDF file either for
1292 paper production or for Internet consumption. This is made possible
1293 with a wide variety of free software tools with DocBook support in
1294 Debian. The source format of later books have been docx via rst,
1295 Markdown, Filemaker and Asciidoc, and for all of these I was able to
1296 generate a suitable DocBook file for further processing using
1297 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/pandoc&quot;&gt;pandoc&lt;/a&gt;,
1298 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/asciidoc&quot;&gt;a2x&lt;/a&gt; and
1299 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/asciidoctor&quot;&gt;asciidoctor&lt;/a&gt;,
1300 as well as rendering using
1301 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/xmlto&quot;&gt;xmlto&lt;/a&gt;,
1302 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dbtoepub&quot;&gt;dbtoepub&lt;/a&gt;,
1303 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dblatex&quot;&gt;dblatex&lt;/a&gt;,
1304 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/docbook-xsl&quot;&gt;docbook-xsl&lt;/a&gt; and
1305 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/fop&quot;&gt;fop&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1306
1307 &lt;p&gt;Most of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/publisher/&quot;&gt;books I
1308 have published&lt;/a&gt; are translated books, with English as the source
1309 language. The use of
1310 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/po4a&quot;&gt;po4a&lt;/a&gt; to
1311 handle translations using the gettext PO format has been a blessing,
1312 but publishing translated books had triggered the need to ensure the
1313 DocBook tools handle relevant languages correctly. For every new
1314 language I have published, I had to submit patches dblatex, dbtoepub
1315 and docbook-xsl fixing incorrect language and country specific issues
1316 in the framework themselves. Typically this has been missing keywords
1317 like &#39;figure&#39; or sort ordering of index entries. After a while it
1318 became tiresome to only discover issues like this by accident, and I
1319 decided to write a DocBook &quot;test framework&quot; exercising various
1320 features of DocBook and allowing me to see all features exercised for
1321 a given language. It consist of a set of DocBook files, a version 4
1322 book, a version 5 book, a v4 book set, a v4 selection of problematic
1323 tables, one v4 testing sidefloat and finally one v4 testing a book of
1324 articles. The DocBook files are accompanied with a set of build rules
1325 for building PDF using dblatex and docbook-xsl/fop, HTML using xmlto
1326 or docbook-xsl and epub using dbtoepub. The result is a set of files
1327 visualizing footnotes, indexes, table of content list, figures,
1328 formulas and other DocBook features, allowing for a quick review on
1329 the completeness of the given locale settings. To build with a
1330 different language setting, all one need to do is edit the lang= value
1331 in the .xml file to pick a different ISO 639 code value and run
1332 &#39;make&#39;.&lt;/p&gt;
1333
1334 &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://codeberg.org/pere/docbook-example/&quot;&gt;test framework
1335 source code&lt;/a&gt; is available from Codeberg, and a generated set of
1336 presentations of the various examples is available as Codeberg static
1337 web pages at
1338 &lt;a href=&quot;https://pere.codeberg.page/docbook-example/&quot;&gt;https://pere.codeberg.page/docbook-example/&lt;/a&gt;.
1339 Using this test framework I have been able to discover and report
1340 several bugs and missing features in various tools, and got a lot of
1341 them fixed. For example I got Northern Sami keywords added to both
1342 docbook-xsl and dblatex, fixed several typos in Norwegian bokmål and
1343 Norwegian Nynorsk, support for non-ascii title IDs added to pandoc,
1344 Norwegian index sorting support fixed in xindy and initial Norwegian
1345 Bokmål support added to dblatex. Some issues still remains, though.
1346 Default index sorting rules are still broken in several tools, so the
1347 Norwegian letters æ, ø and å are more often than not sorted properly
1348 in the book index.&lt;/p&gt;
1349
1350 &lt;p&gt;The test framework recently received some more polish, as part of
1351 publishing my latest book. This book contained a lot of fairly
1352 complex tables, which exposed bugs in some of the tools. This made me
1353 add a new test file with various tables, as well as spend some time to
1354 brush up the build rules. My goal is for the test framework to
1355 exercise all DocBook features to make it easier to see which features
1356 work with different processors, and hopefully get them all to support
1357 the full set of DocBook features. Feel free to send patches to extend
1358 the test set, and test it with your favorite DocBook processor.
1359 Please visit these two URLs to learn more:&lt;/p&gt;
1360
1361 &lt;ul&gt;
1362 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://codeberg.org/pere/docbook-example/&quot;&gt;https://codeberg.org/pere/docbook-example/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
1363 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pere.codeberg.page/docbook-example/&quot;&gt;https://pere.codeberg.page/docbook-example/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
1364 &lt;/ul&gt;
1365
1366 &lt;p&gt;If you want to learn more on Docbook and translations, I recommend
1367 having a look at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://docbook.org/&quot;&gt;the DocBook
1368 web site&lt;/a&gt;,
1369 &lt;a href=&quot;https://doccookbook.sourceforge.net/html/en/&quot;&gt;the DoCookBook
1370 site&lt;a/&gt; and my earlier blog post on
1371 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html&quot;&gt;how
1372 the Skolelinux project process and translate documentation&lt;/a&gt;, a talk I gave earlier this year on
1373 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20230314-oversetting-og-publisering-av-b%c3%b8ker-med-fri-programvare/&quot;&gt;how
1374 to translate and publish books using free software&lt;/a&gt; (Norwegian
1375 only).&lt;/p&gt;
1376
1377 &lt;!--
1378
1379 https://github.com/docbook/xslt10-stylesheets/issues/205 (docbook-xsl: sme support)
1380 https://bugs.debian.org/968437 (xindy: index sorting rules for nb/nn)
1381 https://bugs.debian.org/856123 (pandoc: markdown to docbook with non-english titles)
1382 https://bugs.debian.org/864813 (dblatex: missing nb words)
1383 https://bugs.debian.org/756386 (dblatex: index sorting rules for nb/nn)
1384 https://bugs.debian.org/796871 (dbtoepub: index sorting rules for nb/nn)
1385 https://bugs.debian.org/792616 (dblatex: PDF metadata)
1386 https://bugs.debian.org/686908 (docbook-xsl: index sorting rules for nb/nn)
1387 https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&amp;atid=373747&amp;aid=3556630&amp;group_id=21935 (docbook-xsl: nb/nn support)
1388 https://bugs.debian.org/684391 (dblatex: initial nb support)
1389
1390 --&gt;
1391
1392 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1393 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1394 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1395 </description>
1396 </item>
1397
1398 <item>
1399 <title>What did I learn from OpenSnitch this summer?</title>
1400 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_did_I_learn_from_OpenSnitch_this_summer_.html</link>
1401 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_did_I_learn_from_OpenSnitch_this_summer_.html</guid>
1402 <pubDate>Sun, 11 Jun 2023 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
1403 <description>&lt;p&gt;With yesterdays
1404 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/News/2023/20230610&quot;&gt;release of Debian
1405 12 Bookworm&lt;/a&gt;, I am happy to know the
1406 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch&quot;&gt;the interactive
1407 application firewall OpenSnitch&lt;/a&gt; is available for a wider audience.
1408 I have been running it for a few weeks now, and have been surprised
1409 about some of the programs connecting to the Internet. Some programs
1410 are obviously calling out from my machine, like the NTP network based
1411 clock adjusting system and Tor to reach other Tor clients, but others
1412 were more dubious. For example, the KDE Window manager try to look up
1413 the host name in DNS, for no apparent reason, but if this lookup is
1414 blocked the KDE desktop get periodically stuck when I use it. Another
1415 surprise was how much Firefox call home directly to mozilla.com,
1416 mozilla.net and googleapis.com, to mention a few, when I visit other
1417 web pages. This direct connection happen even if I told Firefox to
1418 always use a proxy, and the proxy setting is ignored for this traffic.
1419 Other surprising connections come from audacity and dirmngr (I do not
1420 use Gnome). It took some trial and error to get a good default set of
1421 permissions. Without it, I would get popups asking for permissions at
1422 any time, also the most inconvenient ones where I am in the middle of
1423 a time sensitive gaming session.&lt;/p&gt;
1424
1425 &lt;p&gt;I suspect some application developers should rethink when then need
1426 to use network connections or DNS lookups, and recommend testing
1427 OpenSnitch (only &lt;tt&gt;apt install opensnitch&lt;/tt&gt; away in Debian
1428 Bookworm) to locate and report any surprising Internet connections on
1429 your desktop machine.&lt;/p&gt;
1430
1431 &lt;p&gt;At the moment the upstream developer and Debian package maintainer
1432 is working on making the system more reliable in Debian, by enabling
1433 the eBPF kernel module to track processes and connections instead of
1434 depending in content in /proc/. This should enter unstable fairly
1435 soon.&lt;/p&gt;
1436
1437 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1438 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1439 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1440
1441 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2023-06-12&lt;/strong&gt;: I got a tip about
1442 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/PrivacyIssues&quot;&gt;a list of privacy
1443 issues in Free Software&lt;/a&gt; and the
1444 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-privacy&quot;&gt;#debian-privacy IRC
1445 channel&lt;/a&gt; discussing these topics.&lt;/p&gt;
1446
1447 </description>
1448 </item>
1449
1450 <item>
1451 <title>wmbusmeters, parse data from your utility meter - nice free software</title>
1452 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/wmbusmeters__parse_data_from_your_utility_meter___nice_free_software.html</link>
1453 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/wmbusmeters__parse_data_from_your_utility_meter___nice_free_software.html</guid>
1454 <pubDate>Fri, 19 May 2023 21:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
1455 <description>&lt;p&gt;There is a European standard for reading utility meters like water,
1456 gas, electricity or heat distribution meters. The
1457 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meter-Bus&quot;&gt;Meter-Bus standard
1458 (EN 13757-2, EN 13757-3 and EN 137574)&lt;/a&gt; provide a cross vendor way
1459 to talk to and collect meter data. I ran into this standard when I
1460 wanted to monitor some heat distribution meters, and managed to find
1461 free software that could do the job. The meters in question broadcast
1462 encrypted messages with meter information via radio, and the hardest
1463 part was to track down the encryption keys from the vendor. With this
1464 in place I could set up a MQTT gateway to submit the meter data for
1465 graphing.&lt;/p&gt;
1466
1467 &lt;p&gt;The free software systems in question,
1468 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/rtl-wmbus&quot;&gt;rtl-wmbus&lt;/a&gt; to
1469 read the messages from a software defined radio, and
1470 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/wmbusmeters&quot;&gt;wmbusmeters&lt;/a&gt; to
1471 decrypt and decode the content of the messages, is working very well
1472 and allowe me to get frequent updates from my meters. I got in touch
1473 with upstream last year to see if there was any interest in publishing
1474 the packages via Debian. I was very happy to learn that Fredrik
1475 Öhrström volunteered to maintain the packages, and I have since
1476 assisted him in getting Debian package build rules in place as well as
1477 sponsoring the packages into the Debian archive. Sadly we completed
1478 it too late for them to become part of the next stable Debian release
1479 (Bookworm). The wmbusmeters package just cleared the NEW queue. It
1480 will need some work to fix a built problem, but I expect Fredrik will
1481 find a solution soon.&lt;/p&gt;
1482
1483 &lt;p&gt;If you got a infrastructure meter supporting the Meter Bus
1484 standard, I strongly recommend having a look at these nice
1485 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
1486
1487 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1488 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1489 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1490 </description>
1491 </item>
1492
1493 <item>
1494 <title>The 2023 LinuxCNC Norwegian developer gathering</title>
1495 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_2023_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html</link>
1496 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_2023_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html</guid>
1497 <pubDate>Sun, 14 May 2023 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
1498 <description>&lt;p&gt;The LinuxCNC project is making headway these days. A lot of
1499 patches and issues have seen activity on
1500 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/&quot;&gt;the project github
1501 pages&lt;/a&gt; recently. A few weeks ago there was a developer gathering
1502 over at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://tormach.com/&quot;&gt;Tormach&lt;/a&gt; headquarter in
1503 Wisconsin, and now we are planning a new gathering in Norway. If you
1504 wonder what LinuxCNC is, lets quote Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;
1505
1506 &lt;blockquote&gt;
1507 &quot;LinuxCNC is a software system for numerical control of
1508 machines such as milling machines, lathes, plasma cutters, routers,
1509 cutting machines, robots and hexapods. It can control up to 9 axes or
1510 joints of a CNC machine using G-code (RS-274NGC) as input. It has
1511 several GUIs suited to specific kinds of usage (touch screen,
1512 interactive development).&quot;
1513 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
1514
1515 &lt;p&gt;The Norwegian developer gathering take place the weekend June 16th
1516 to 18th this year, and is open for everyone interested in contributing
1517 to LinuxCNC. Up to date information about the gathering can be found
1518 in
1519 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/emc/mailman/emc-developers/thread/sa64jp06nob.fsf%40hjemme.reinholdtsen.name/#msg37837251&quot;&gt;the
1520 developer mailing list thread&lt;/a&gt; where the gathering was announced.
1521 Thanks to the good people at
1522 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt;,
1523 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.redpill-linpro.com/&quot;&gt;Redpill-Linpro&lt;/a&gt; and
1524 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nuugfoundation.no/no/&quot;&gt;NUUG Foundation&lt;/a&gt;, we
1525 have enough sponsor funds to pay for food, and shelter for the people
1526 traveling from afar to join us. If you would like to join the
1527 gathering, get in touch.&lt;/p&gt;
1528
1529 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1530 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1531 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1532 </description>
1533 </item>
1534
1535 <item>
1536 <title>OpenSnitch in Debian ready for prime time</title>
1537 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/OpenSnitch_in_Debian_ready_for_prime_time.html</link>
1538 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/OpenSnitch_in_Debian_ready_for_prime_time.html</guid>
1539 <pubDate>Sat, 13 May 2023 12:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
1540 <description>&lt;p&gt;A bit delayed,
1541 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch&quot;&gt;the interactive
1542 application firewall OpenSnitch&lt;/a&gt; package in Debian now got the
1543 latest fixes ready for Debian Bookworm. Because it depend on a
1544 package missing on some architectures, the autopkgtest check of the
1545 testing migration script did not understand that the tests were
1546 actually working, so the migration was delayed. A bug in the package
1547 dependencies is also fixed, so those installing the firewall package
1548 (opensnitch) now also get the GUI admin tool (python3-opensnitch-ui)
1549 installed by default. I am very grateful to Gustavo Iñiguez Goya for
1550 his work on getting the package ready for Debian Bookworm.&lt;/p&gt;
1551
1552 &lt;p&gt;Armed with this package I have discovered some surprising
1553 connections from programs I believed were able to work completly
1554 offline, and it has already proven its worth, at least to me. If you
1555 too want to get more familiar with the kind of programs using
1556 Internett connections on your machine, I recommend testing &lt;tt&gt;apt
1557 install opensnitch&lt;/tt&gt; in Bookworm and see what you think.&lt;/p&gt;
1558
1559 &lt;p&gt;The package is still not able to build its eBPF module within
1560 Debian. Not sure how much work it would be to get it working, but
1561 suspect some kernel related packages need to be extended with more
1562 header files to get it working.&lt;/p&gt;
1563
1564 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1565 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1566 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1567 </description>
1568 </item>
1569
1570 <item>
1571 <title>Speech to text, she APTly whispered, how hard can it be?</title>
1572 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Speech_to_text__she_APTly_whispered__how_hard_can_it_be_.html</link>
1573 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Speech_to_text__she_APTly_whispered__how_hard_can_it_be_.html</guid>
1574 <pubDate>Sun, 23 Apr 2023 09:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
1575 <description>&lt;p&gt;While visiting a convention during Easter, it occurred to me that
1576 it would be great if I could have a digital Dictaphone with
1577 transcribing capabilities, providing me with texts to cut-n-paste into
1578 stuff I need to write. The background is that long drives often bring
1579 up the urge to write on texts I am working on, which of course is out
1580 of the question while driving. With the release of
1581 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/openai/whisper/&quot;&gt;OpenAI Whisper&lt;/a&gt;, this
1582 seem to be within reach with Free Software, so I decided to give it a
1583 go. OpenAI Whisper is a Linux based neural network system to read in
1584 audio files and provide text representation of the speech in that
1585 audio recording. It handle multiple languages and according to its
1586 creators even can translate into a different language than the spoken
1587 one. I have not tested the latter feature. It can either use the CPU
1588 or a GPU with CUDA support. As far as I can tell, CUDA in practice
1589 limit that feature to NVidia graphics cards. I have few of those, as
1590 they do not work great with free software drivers, and have not tested
1591 the GPU option. While looking into the matter, I did discover some
1592 work to provide CUDA support on non-NVidia GPUs, and some work with
1593 the library used by Whisper to port it to other GPUs, but have not
1594 spent much time looking into GPU support yet. I&#39;ve so far used an old
1595 X220 laptop as my test machine, and only transcribed using its
1596 CPU.&lt;/p&gt;
1597
1598 &lt;p&gt;As it from a privacy standpoint is unthinkable to use computers
1599 under control of someone else (aka a &quot;cloud&quot; service) to transcribe
1600 ones thoughts and personal notes, I want to run the transcribing
1601 system locally on my own computers. The only sensible approach to me
1602 is to make the effort I put into this available for any Linux user and
1603 to upload the needed packages into Debian. Looking at Debian Bookworm, I
1604 discovered that only three packages were missing,
1605 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/1034307&quot;&gt;tiktoken&lt;/a&gt;,
1606 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/1034144&quot;&gt;triton&lt;/a&gt;, and
1607 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/1034091&quot;&gt;openai-whisper&lt;/a&gt;. For a while
1608 I also believed
1609 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/1034286&quot;&gt;ffmpeg-python&lt;/a&gt; was
1610 needed, but as its
1611 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/kkroening/ffmpeg-python/issues/760&quot;&gt;upstream
1612 seem to have vanished&lt;/a&gt; I found it safer
1613 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/openai/whisper/pull/1242&quot;&gt;to rewrite
1614 whisper&lt;/a&gt; to stop depending on in than to introduce ffmpeg-python
1615 into Debian. I decided to place these packages under the umbrella of
1616 &lt;a href=&quot;https://salsa.debian.org/deeplearning-team&quot;&gt;the Debian Deep
1617 Learning Team&lt;/a&gt;, which seem like the best team to look after such
1618 packages. Discussing the topic within the group also made me aware
1619 that the triton package was already a future dependency of newer
1620 versions of the torch package being planned, and would be needed after
1621 Bookworm is released.&lt;/p&gt;
1622
1623 &lt;p&gt;All required code packages have been now waiting in
1624 &lt;a href=&quot;https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html&quot;&gt;the Debian NEW
1625 queue&lt;/a&gt; since Wednesday, heading for Debian Experimental until
1626 Bookworm is released. An unsolved issue is how to handle the neural
1627 network models used by Whisper. The default behaviour of Whisper is
1628 to require Internet connectivity and download the model requested to
1629 &lt;tt&gt;~/.cache/whisper/&lt;/tt&gt; on first invocation. This obviously would
1630 fail &lt;a href=&quot;https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html&quot;&gt;the
1631 deserted island test of free software&lt;/a&gt; as the Debian packages would
1632 be unusable for someone stranded with only the Debian archive and solar
1633 powered computer on a deserted island.&lt;/p&gt;
1634
1635 &lt;p&gt;Because of this, I would love to include the models in the Debian
1636 mirror system. This is problematic, as the models are very large
1637 files, which would put a heavy strain on the Debian mirror
1638 infrastructure around the globe. The strain would be even higher if
1639 the models change often, which luckily as far as I can tell they do
1640 not. The small model, which according to its creator is most useful
1641 for English and in my experience is not doing a great job there
1642 either, is 462 MiB (deb is 414 MiB). The medium model, which to me
1643 seem to handle English speech fairly well is 1.5 GiB (deb is 1.3 GiB)
1644 and the large model is 2.9 GiB (deb is 2.6 GiB). I would assume
1645 everyone with enough resources would prefer to use the large model for
1646 highest quality. I believe the models themselves would have to go
1647 into the non-free part of the Debian archive, as they are not really
1648 including any useful source code for updating the models. The
1649 &quot;source&quot;, aka the model training set, according to the creators
1650 consist of &quot;680,000 hours of multilingual and multitask supervised
1651 data collected from the web&quot;, which to me reads material with both
1652 unknown copyright terms, unavailable to the general public. In other
1653 words, the source is not available according to the Debian Free
1654 Software Guidelines and the model should be considered non-free.&lt;/p&gt;
1655
1656 &lt;p&gt;I asked the Debian FTP masters for advice regarding uploading a
1657 model package on their IRC channel, and based on the feedback there it
1658 is still unclear to me if such package would be accepted into the
1659 archive. In any case I wrote build rules for a
1660 &lt;a href=&quot;https://salsa.debian.org/deeplearning-team/openai-whisper-model&quot;&gt;OpenAI
1661 Whisper model package&lt;/a&gt; and
1662 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/openai/whisper/pull/1257&quot;&gt;modified the
1663 Whisper code base&lt;/a&gt; to prefer shared files under &lt;tt&gt;/usr/&lt;/tt&gt; and
1664 &lt;tt&gt;/var/&lt;/tt&gt; over user specific files in &lt;tt&gt;~/.cache/whisper/&lt;/tt&gt;
1665 to be able to use these model packages, to prepare for such
1666 possibility. One solution might be to include only one of the models
1667 (small or medium, I guess) in the Debian archive, and ask people to
1668 download the others from the Internet. Not quite sure what to do
1669 here, and advice is most welcome (use the debian-ai mailing list).&lt;/p&gt;
1670
1671 &lt;p&gt;To make it easier to test the new packages while I wait for them to
1672 clear the NEW queue, I created an APT source targeting bookworm. I
1673 selected Bookworm instead of Bullseye, even though I know the latter
1674 would reach more users, is that some of the required dependencies are
1675 missing from Bullseye and I during this phase of testing did not want
1676 to backport a lot of packages just to get up and running.&lt;/p&gt;
1677
1678 &lt;p&gt;Here is a recipe to run as user root if you want to test OpenAI
1679 Whisper using Debian packages on your Debian Bookworm installation,
1680 first adding the APT repository GPG key to the list of trusted keys,
1681 then setting up the APT repository and finally installing the packages
1682 and one of the models:&lt;/p&gt;
1683
1684 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1685 curl https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/D78F5C4796F353D211B119E28200D9B589641240.asc \
1686 -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/pere-whisper.asc
1687 mkdir -p /etc/apt/sources.list.d
1688 cat &gt; /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pere-whisper.list &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
1689 deb https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/ bookworm main
1690 deb-src https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/ bookworm main
1691 EOF
1692 apt update
1693 apt install openai-whisper
1694 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1695
1696 &lt;p&gt;The package work for me, but have not yet been tested on any other
1697 computer than my own. With it, I have been able to (badly) transcribe
1698 a 2 minute 40 second Norwegian audio clip to test using the small
1699 model. This took 11 minutes and around 2.2 GiB of RAM. Transcribing
1700 the same file with the medium model gave a accurate text in 77 minutes
1701 using around 5.2 GiB of RAM. My test machine had too little memory to
1702 test the large model, which I believe require 11 GiB of RAM. In
1703 short, this now work for me using Debian packages, and I hope it will
1704 for you and everyone else once the packages enter Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
1705
1706 &lt;p&gt;Now I can start on the audio recording part of this project.&lt;/p&gt;
1707
1708 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1709 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1710 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1711 </description>
1712 </item>
1713
1714 <item>
1715 <title>rtlsdr-scanner, software defined radio frequency scanner for Linux - nice free software</title>
1716 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/rtlsdr_scanner__software_defined_radio_frequency_scanner_for_Linux____nice_free_software.html</link>
1717 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/rtlsdr_scanner__software_defined_radio_frequency_scanner_for_Linux____nice_free_software.html</guid>
1718 <pubDate>Fri, 7 Apr 2023 23:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
1719 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today I finally found time to track down a useful radio frequency
1720 scanner for my software defined radio. Just for fun I tried to locate
1721 the radios used in the areas, and a good start would be to scan all
1722 the frequencies to see what is in use. I&#39;ve tried to find a useful
1723 program earlier, but ran out of time before I managed to find a useful
1724 tool. This time I was more successful, and after a few false leads I
1725 found a description of
1726 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.kali.org/tools/rtlsdr-scanner/&quot;&gt;rtlsdr-scanner
1727 over at the Kali site&lt;/a&gt;, and was able to track down
1728 &lt;a href=&quot;https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/rtlsdr-scanner.git&quot;&gt;the
1729 Kali package git repository&lt;/a&gt; to build a deb package for the
1730 scanner. Sadly the package is missing from the Debian project itself,
1731 at least in Debian Bullseye. Two runtime dependencies,
1732 &lt;a href=&quot;https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/python-visvis.git&quot;&gt;python-visvis&lt;/a&gt;
1733 and
1734 &lt;a href=&quot;https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/python-rtlsdr.git&quot;&gt;python-rtlsdr&lt;/a&gt;
1735 had to be built and installed separately. Luckily &#39;&lt;tt&gt;gbp
1736 buildpackage&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; handled them just fine and no further packages had
1737 to be manually built. The end result worked out of the box after
1738 installation.&lt;/p&gt;
1739
1740 &lt;p&gt;My initial scans for FM channels worked just fine, so I knew the
1741 scanner was functioning. But when I tried to scan every frequency
1742 from 100 to 1000 MHz, the program stopped unexpectedly near the
1743 completion. After some debugging I discovered USB software radio I
1744 used rejected frequencies above 948 MHz, triggering a unreported
1745 exception breaking the scan. Changing the scan to end at 957 worked
1746 better. I similarly found the lower limit to be around 15, and ended
1747 up with the following full scan:&lt;/p&gt;
1748
1749 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2023-04-07-radio-freq-scanning.png&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2023-04-07-radio-freq-scanning.png&quot; width=&quot;100%&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1750
1751 &lt;p&gt;Saving the scan did not work, but exporting it as a CSV file worked
1752 just fine. I ended up with around 477k CVS lines with dB level for
1753 the given frequency.&lt;/p&gt;
1754
1755 &lt;p&gt;The save failure seem to be a missing UTF-8 encoding issue in the
1756 python code. Will see if I can find time to send a patch
1757 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/CdeMills/RTLSDR-Scanner/&quot;&gt;upstream&lt;/a&gt;
1758 later to fix this exception:&lt;/p&gt;
1759
1760 &lt;pre&gt;
1761 Traceback (most recent call last):
1762 File &quot;/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/main_window.py&quot;, line 485, in __on_save
1763 save_plot(fullName, self.scanInfo, self.spectrum, self.locations)
1764 File &quot;/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/file.py&quot;, line 408, in save_plot
1765 handle.write(json.dumps(data, indent=4))
1766 TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not &#39;str&#39;
1767 Traceback (most recent call last):
1768 File &quot;/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/main_window.py&quot;, line 485, in __on_save
1769 save_plot(fullName, self.scanInfo, self.spectrum, self.locations)
1770 File &quot;/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/file.py&quot;, line 408, in save_plot
1771 handle.write(json.dumps(data, indent=4))
1772 TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not &#39;str&#39;
1773 &lt;/pre&gt;
1774
1775 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1776 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1777 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1778 </description>
1779 </item>
1780
1781 <item>
1782 <title>OpenSnitch available in Debian Sid and Bookworm</title>
1783 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/OpenSnitch_available_in_Debian_Sid_and_Bookworm.html</link>
1784 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/OpenSnitch_available_in_Debian_Sid_and_Bookworm.html</guid>
1785 <pubDate>Sat, 25 Feb 2023 20:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
1786 <description>&lt;p&gt;Thanks to the efforts of the OpenSnitch lead developer Gustavo
1787 Iñiguez Goya allowing me to sponsor the upload,
1788 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch&quot;&gt;the interactive
1789 application firewall OpenSnitch&lt;/a&gt; is now available in Debian
1790 Testing, soon to become the next stable release of Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
1791
1792 &lt;p&gt;This is a package which set up a network firewall on one or more
1793 machines, which is controlled by a graphical user interface that will
1794 ask the user if a program should be allowed to connect to the local
1795 network or the Internet. If some background daemon is trying to dial
1796 home, it can be blocked from doing so with a simple mouse click, or by
1797 default simply by not doing anything when the GUI question dialog pop
1798 up. A list of all programs discovered using the network is provided
1799 in the GUI, giving the user an overview of how the machine(s) programs
1800 use the network.&lt;/p&gt;
1801
1802 &lt;p&gt;OpenSnitch was uploaded for NEW processing about a month ago, and I
1803 had little hope of it getting accepted and shaping up in time for the
1804 package freeze, but the Debian ftpmasters proved to be amazingly quick
1805 at checking out the package and it was accepted into the archive about
1806 week after the first upload. It is now team maintained under the Go
1807 language team umbrella. A few fixes to the default setup is only in
1808 Sid, and should migrate to Testing/Bookworm in a week.&lt;/p&gt;
1809
1810 &lt;p&gt;During testing I ran into an
1811 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch/issues/813&quot;&gt;issue
1812 with Minecraft server broadcasts disappearing&lt;/a&gt;, which was quickly
1813 resolved by the developer with a patch and a proposed configuration
1814 change. I&#39;ve been told this was caused by the Debian packages default
1815 use if /proc/ information to track down kernel status, instead of the
1816 newer eBPF module that can be used. The reason is simply that
1817 upstream and I have failed to find a way to build the eBPF modules for
1818 OpenSnitch without a complete configured Linux kernel source tree,
1819 which as far as we can tell is unavailable as a build dependency in
1820 Debian. We tried unsuccessfully so far to use the kernel-headers
1821 package. It would be great if someone could provide some clues how to
1822 build eBPF modules on build daemons in Debian, possibly without the full
1823 kernel source.&lt;/p&gt;
1824
1825 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1826 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1827 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1828 </description>
1829 </item>
1830
1831 <item>
1832 <title>Is the desktop recommending your program for opening its files?</title>
1833 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Is_the_desktop_recommending_your_program_for_opening_its_files_.html</link>
1834 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Is_the_desktop_recommending_your_program_for_opening_its_files_.html</guid>
1835 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Jan 2023 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
1836 <description>&lt;p&gt;Linux desktop systems
1837 &lt;a href=&quot;https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html&quot;&gt;have
1838 standardized&lt;/a&gt; how programs present themselves to the desktop
1839 system. If a package include a .desktop file in
1840 /usr/share/applications/, Gnome, KDE, LXDE, Xfce and the other desktop
1841 environments will pick up the file and use its content to generate the
1842 menu of available programs in the system. A lesser known fact is that
1843 a package can also explain to the desktop system how to recognize the
1844 files created by the program in question, and use it to open these
1845 files on request, for example via a GUI file browser.&lt;/p&gt;
1846
1847 &lt;p&gt;A while back I ran into a package that did not tell the desktop
1848 system how to recognize its files and was not used to open its files
1849 in the file browser and fixed it. In the process I wrote a simple
1850 debian/tests/ script to ensure the setup keep working. It might be
1851 useful for other packages too, to ensure any future version of the
1852 package keep handling its own files.&lt;/p&gt;
1853
1854 &lt;p&gt;For this to work the file format need a useful MIME type that can
1855 be used to identify the format. If the file format do not yet have a
1856 MIME type, it should define one and preferably also
1857 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml&quot;&gt;register
1858 it with IANA&lt;/a&gt; to ensure the MIME type string is reserved.&lt;/p&gt;
1859
1860 &lt;p&gt;The script uses the &lt;tt&gt;xdg-mime&lt;/tt&gt; program from xdg-utils to
1861 query the database of standardized package information and ensure it
1862 return sensible values. It also need the location of an example file
1863 for xdg-mime to guess the format of.&lt;/p&gt;
1864
1865 &lt;pre&gt;
1866 #!/bin/sh
1867 #
1868 # Author: Petter Reinholdtsen
1869 # License: GPL v2 or later at your choice.
1870 #
1871 # Validate the MIME setup, making sure motor types have
1872 # application/vnd.openmotor+yaml associated with them and is connected
1873 # to the openmotor desktop file.
1874
1875 retval=0
1876
1877 mimetype=&quot;application/vnd.openmotor+yaml&quot;
1878 testfile=&quot;test/data/real/o3100/motor.ric&quot;
1879 mydesktopfile=&quot;openmotor.desktop&quot;
1880
1881 filemime=&quot;$(xdg-mime query filetype &quot;$testfile&quot;)&quot;
1882
1883 if [ &quot;$mimetype&quot; != &quot;$filemime&quot; ] ; then
1884 retval=1
1885 echo &quot;error: xdg-mime claim motor file MIME type is $filemine, not $mimetype&quot;
1886 else
1887 echo &quot;success: xdg-mime report correct mime type $mimetype for motor file&quot;
1888 fi
1889
1890 desktop=$(xdg-mime query default &quot;$mimetype&quot;)
1891
1892 if [ &quot;$mydesktopfile&quot; != &quot;$desktop&quot; ]; then
1893 retval=1
1894 echo &quot;error: xdg-mime claim motor file should be handled by $desktop, not $mydesktopfile&quot;
1895 else
1896 echo &quot;success: xdg-mime agree motor file should be handled by $mydesktopfile&quot;
1897 fi
1898
1899 exit $retval
1900 &lt;/pre&gt;
1901
1902 &lt;p&gt;It is a simple way to ensure your users are not very surprised when
1903 they try to open one of your file formats in their file browser.&lt;/p&gt;
1904
1905 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1906 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1907 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1908 </description>
1909 </item>
1910
1911 <item>
1912 <title>Opensnitch, the application level interactive firewall, heading into the Debian archive</title>
1913 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Opensnitch__the_application_level_interactive_firewall__heading_into_the_Debian_archive.html</link>
1914 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Opensnitch__the_application_level_interactive_firewall__heading_into_the_Debian_archive.html</guid>
1915 <pubDate>Sun, 22 Jan 2023 23:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
1916 <description>&lt;p&gt;While reading a
1917 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sneak.berlin/20230115/macos-scans-your-local-files-now/&quot;&gt;blog
1918 post claiming MacOS X recently started scanning local files and
1919 reporting information about them to Apple&lt;/a&gt;, even on a machine where
1920 all such callback features had been disabled, I came across a
1921 description of the Little Snitch application for MacOS X. It seemed
1922 like a very nice tool to have in the tool box, and I decided to see if
1923 something similar was available for Linux.&lt;/p&gt;
1924
1925 &lt;p&gt;It did not take long to find
1926 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch&quot;&gt;the OpenSnitch
1927 package&lt;/a&gt;, which has been in development since 2017, and now is in
1928 version 1.5.0. It has had a
1929 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/909567&quot;&gt;request for Debian
1930 packaging&lt;/a&gt; since 2018, but no-one completed the job so far. Just
1931 for fun, I decided to see if I could help, and I was very happy to
1932 discover that
1933 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch/issues/304&quot;&gt;upstream
1934 want a Debian package too&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1935
1936 &lt;p&gt;After struggling a bit with getting the program to run, figuring
1937 out building Go programs (and a little failed detour to look at eBPF
1938 builds too - help needed), I am very happy to report that I am
1939 sponsoring upstream to maintain the package in Debian, and it has
1940 since this morning been waiting in NEW for the ftpmasters to have a
1941 look. Perhaps it can get into the archive in time for the Bookworm
1942 release?&lt;/p&gt;
1943
1944 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1945 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1946 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1947 </description>
1948 </item>
1949
1950 <item>
1951 <title>LinuxCNC MQTT publisher component</title>
1952 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/LinuxCNC_MQTT_publisher_component.html</link>
1953 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/LinuxCNC_MQTT_publisher_component.html</guid>
1954 <pubDate>Sun, 8 Jan 2023 19:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
1955 <description>&lt;p&gt;I watched &lt;a href=&quot;https://yewtu.be/watch?v=jmKUV3aNLjk&quot;&gt;a 2015
1956 video from Andreas Schiffler&lt;/a&gt; the other day, where he set up
1957 &lt;a href=&quot;https://linuxcnc.org/&quot;&gt;LinuxCNC&lt;/a&gt; to send status
1958 information to the MQTT broker IBM Bluemix. As I also use MQTT for
1959 graphing, it occured to me that a generic MQTT LinuxCNC component
1960 would be useful and I set out to implement it. Today I got the first
1961 draft limping along and submitted as
1962 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/pull/2253&quot;&gt;a patch to the
1963 LinuxCNC project&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1964
1965 &lt;p&gt;The simple part was setting up the MQTT publishing code in Python.
1966 I already have set up other parts submitting data to my Mosquito MQTT
1967 broker, so I could reuse that code. Writing a LinuxCNC component in
1968 Python as new to me, but using existing examples in the code
1969 repository and the extensive documentation, this was fairly straight
1970 forward. The hardest part was creating a automated test for the
1971 component to ensure it was working. Testing it in a simulated
1972 LinuxCNC machine proved very useful, as I discovered features I needed
1973 that I had not thought of yet, and adjusted the code quite a bit to
1974 make it easier to test without a operational MQTT broker
1975 available.&lt;/p&gt;
1976
1977 &lt;p&gt;The draft is ready and working, but I am unsure which LinuxCNC HAL
1978 pins I should collect and publish by default (in other words, the
1979 default set of information pieces published), and how to get the
1980 machine name from the LinuxCNC INI file. The latter is a minor
1981 detail, but I expect it would be useful in a setup with several
1982 machines available. I am hoping for feedback from the experienced
1983 LinuxCNC developers and users, to make the component even better
1984 before it can go into the mainland LinuxCNC code base.&lt;/p&gt;
1985
1986 &lt;p&gt;Since I started on the MQTT component, I came across
1987 &lt;a href=&quot;https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Bqa2grG0XtA&quot;&gt;another video from Kent
1988 VanderVelden&lt;/a&gt; where he combine LinuxCNC with a set of screen glasses
1989 controlled by a Raspberry Pi, and it occured to me that it would
1990 be useful for such use cases if LinuxCNC also provided a REST API for
1991 querying its status. I hope to start on such component once the MQTT
1992 component is working well.&lt;/p&gt;
1993
1994 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1995 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1996 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1997 </description>
1998 </item>
1999
2000 <item>
2001 <title>ONVIF IP camera management tool finally in Debian</title>
2002 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/ONVIF_IP_camera_management_tool_finally_in_Debian.html</link>
2003 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/ONVIF_IP_camera_management_tool_finally_in_Debian.html</guid>
2004 <pubDate>Sat, 24 Dec 2022 08:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
2005 <description>&lt;p&gt;Merry Christmas to you all. Here is a small gift to all those with
2006 IP cameras following the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.onvif.org/&quot;&gt;ONVIF
2007 specification&lt;/a&gt;. There is finally a nice command line and GUI tool
2008 in Debian to manage ONVIF IP cameras. After working with upstream for
2009 a few months and sponsoring the upload, I am very happy to report that
2010 the &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/libonvif&quot;&gt;libonvif package&lt;/a&gt;
2011 entered Debian Sid last night.&lt;/p&gt;
2012
2013 &lt;p&gt;The package provide a C library to communicate with such cameras, a
2014 command line tool to locate and update settings of (like password) the
2015 cameras and a GUI tool to configure and control the units as well as
2016 preview the video from the camera. Libonvif is available on Both
2017 Linux and Windows and the GUI tool uses the Qt library. The main
2018 competitors are non-free software, while libonvif is GNU GPL licensed.
2019 I am very glad Debian users in the future can control their cameras
2020 using a free software system provided by Debian. But the ONVIF world
2021 is full of slightly broken firmware, where the cameras pretend to
2022 follow the ONVIF specification but fail to set some configuration
2023 values or refuse to provide video to more than one recipient at the
2024 time, and the onvif project is quite young and might take a while
2025 before it completely work with your camera. Upstream seem eager to
2026 improve the library, so handling any broken camera might be just &lt;a
2027 href=&quot;https://github.com/sr99622/libonvif/&quot;&gt;a bug report away&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2028
2029 &lt;p&gt;The package just cleared NEW, and need a new source only upload
2030 before it can enter testing. This will happen in the next few
2031 days.&lt;/p&gt;
2032
2033 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2034 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2035 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2036 </description>
2037 </item>
2038
2039 <item>
2040 <title>Managing and using ONVIF IP cameras with Linux</title>
2041 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Managing_and_using_ONVIF_IP_cameras_with_Linux.html</link>
2042 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Managing_and_using_ONVIF_IP_cameras_with_Linux.html</guid>
2043 <pubDate>Wed, 19 Oct 2022 12:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
2044 <description>&lt;p&gt;Recently I have been looking at how to control and collect data
2045 from a handful IP cameras using Linux. I both wanted to change their
2046 settings and to make their imagery available via a free software
2047 service under my control. Here is a summary of the tools I found.&lt;/p&gt;
2048
2049 &lt;p&gt;First I had to identify the cameras and their protocols. As far as
2050 I could tell, they were using some SOAP looking protocol and their
2051 internal web server seem to only work with Microsoft Internet Explorer
2052 with some proprietary binary plugin, which in these days of course is
2053 a security disaster and also made it impossible for me to use the
2054 camera web interface. Luckily I discovered that the SOAP looking
2055 protocol is actually following &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.onvif.org/&quot;&gt;the
2056 ONVIF specification&lt;/a&gt;, which seem to be supported by a lot of IP
2057 cameras these days.&lt;/p&gt;
2058
2059 &lt;p&gt;Once the protocol was identified, I was able to find what appear to
2060 be the most popular way to configure ONVIF cameras, the free software
2061 Windows tool named
2062 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/projects/onvifdm/&quot;&gt;ONVIF Device
2063 Manager&lt;/a&gt;. Lacking any other options at the time, I tried
2064 unsuccessfully to get it running using Wine, but was missing a dotnet
2065 40 library and I found no way around it to run it on Linux.&lt;/p&gt;
2066
2067 &lt;p&gt;The next tool I found to configure the cameras were a non-free Linux Qt
2068 client &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lingodigit.com/onvif_nvcdemo.html&quot;&gt;ONVIF
2069 Device Tool&lt;/a&gt;. I did not like its terms of use, so did not spend
2070 much time on it.&lt;/p&gt;
2071
2072 &lt;p&gt;To collect the video and make it available in a web interface, I
2073 found the Zoneminder tool in Debian. A recent version was able to
2074 automatically detect and configure ONVIF devices, so I could use it to
2075 set up motion detection in and collection of the camera output. I had
2076 initial problems getting the ONVIF autodetection to work, as both
2077 Firefox and Chromium &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/1001188&quot;&gt;refused
2078 the inter-tab communication&lt;/a&gt; being used by the Zoneminder web
2079 pages, but managed to get konqueror to work. Apparently the &quot;Enhanced
2080 Tracking Protection&quot; in Firefox cause the problem. I ended up
2081 upgrading to the Bookworm edition of Zoneminder in the process to try
2082 to fix the issue, and believe the problem might be solved now.&lt;/p&gt;
2083
2084 &lt;p&gt;In the process I came across the nice Linux GUI tool
2085 &lt;a href=&quot;https://gitlab.com/caspermeijn/onvifviewer/&quot;&gt;ONVIF Viewer&lt;/a&gt;
2086 allowing me to preview the camera output and validate the login
2087 passwords required. Sadly its author has grown tired of maintaining
2088 the software, so it might not see any future updates. Which is sad,
2089 as the viewer is sightly unstable and the picture tend to lock up.
2090 Note, this lockup might be due to limitations in the cameras and not
2091 the viewer implementation. I suspect the camera is only able to
2092 provide pictures to one client at the time, and the Zoneminder feed
2093 might interfere with the GUI viewer. I have
2094 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/1000820&quot;&gt;asked for the tool to be
2095 included in Debian&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2096
2097 &lt;p&gt;Finally, I found what appear to be very nice Linux free software
2098 replacement for the Windows tool, named
2099 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/sr99622/libonvif/&quot;&gt;libonvif&lt;/a&gt;. It
2100 provide a C library to talk to ONVIF devices as well as a command line
2101 and GUI tool using the library. Using the GUI tool I was able to change
2102 the admin passwords and update other settings of the cameras. I have
2103 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/1021980&quot;&gt;asked for the package to be
2104 included in Debian&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2105
2106 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2107 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2108 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2109
2110 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2022-10-20&lt;/strong&gt;: Since my initial publication of
2111 this text, I got several suggestions for more free software Linux
2112 tools. There is &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/quatanium/python-onvif&quot;&gt;a
2113 ONVIF python library&lt;/a&gt; (already
2114 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/824240&quot;&gt;requested into Debian&lt;/a&gt;) and
2115 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/FalkTannhaeuser/python-onvif-zeep&quot;&gt;a python 3
2116 fork&lt;/a&gt; using a different SOAP dependency. There is also
2117 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/onvif/&quot;&gt;support for
2118 ONVIF in Home Assistant&lt;/a&gt;, and there is an alternative to Zoneminder
2119 called &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.shinobi.video/&quot;&gt;Shinobi&lt;/a&gt;. The latter
2120 two are not included in Debian either. I have not tested any of these
2121 so far.&lt;/p&gt;
2122 </description>
2123 </item>
2124
2125 <item>
2126 <title>Time to translate the Bullseye edition of the Debian Administrator&#39;s Handbook</title>
2127 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_to_translate_the_Bullseye_edition_of_the_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html</link>
2128 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_to_translate_the_Bullseye_edition_of_the_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html</guid>
2129 <pubDate>Mon, 12 Sep 2022 15:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
2130 <description>&lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img align=&quot;center&quot; src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2020-10-20-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;60%&quot;/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2131
2132 &lt;p&gt;(The picture is of the previous edition.)&lt;/p&gt;
2133
2134 &lt;p&gt;Almost two years after the previous Norwegian Bokmål translation of
2135 the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://debian-handbook.info/&quot;&gt;The Debian Administrator&#39;s
2136 Handbook&lt;/a&gt;&quot; was published, a new edition is finally being prepared. The
2137 english text is updated, and it is time to start working on the
2138 translations. Around 37 percent of the strings have been updated, one
2139 way or another, and the translations starting from a complete Debian Buster
2140 edition now need to bring their translation up from 63% to 100%. The
2141 complete book is licensed using a Creative Commons license, and has
2142 been published in several languages over the years. The translations
2143 are done by volunteers to bring Linux in their native tongue. The
2144 last time I checked, it complete text was available in English,
2145 Norwegian Bokmål, German, Indonesian, Brazil Portuguese and Spanish.
2146 In addition, work has been started for Arabic (Morocco), Catalan,
2147 Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish,
2148 Dutch, French, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish,
2149 Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Turkish and Vietnamese.&lt;/p&gt;
2150
2151 &lt;p&gt;The translation is conducted on
2152 &lt;a href=&quot;https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/&quot;&gt;the
2153 hosted weblate project page&lt;/a&gt;. Prospective translators are
2154 recommeded to subscribe to
2155 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators&quot;&gt;the
2156 translators mailing list&lt;/a&gt; and should also check out
2157 &lt;a href=&quot;https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/&quot;&gt;the instructions for
2158 contributors&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2159
2160 &lt;p&gt;I am one of the Norwegian Bokmål translators of this book, and we
2161 have just started. Your contribution is most welcome.&lt;/p&gt;
2162
2163 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2164 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2165 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2166 </description>
2167 </item>
2168
2169 <item>
2170 <title>Automatic LinuxCNC servo PID tuning?</title>
2171 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatic_LinuxCNC_servo_PID_tuning_.html</link>
2172 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatic_LinuxCNC_servo_PID_tuning_.html</guid>
2173 <pubDate>Sat, 16 Jul 2022 22:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
2174 <description>&lt;p&gt;While working on a CNC with servo motors controlled by the
2175 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxCNC&quot;&gt;LinuxCNC&lt;/a&gt;
2176 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller&quot;&gt;PID
2177 controller&lt;/a&gt;, I recently had to learn how to tune the collection of values
2178 that control such mathematical machinery that a PID controller is. It
2179 proved to be a lot harder than I hoped, and I still have not succeeded
2180 in getting the Z PID controller to successfully defy gravity, nor X
2181 and Y to move accurately and reliably. But while climbing up this
2182 rather steep learning curve, I discovered that some motor control
2183 systems are able to tune their PID controllers. I got the impression
2184 from the documentation that LinuxCNC were not. This proved to be not
2185 true.&lt;/p&gt;
2186
2187 &lt;p&gt;The LinuxCNC
2188 &lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxcnc.org/docs/html/man/man9/pid.9.html&quot;&gt;pid
2189 component&lt;/a&gt; is the recommended PID controller to use. It uses eight
2190 constants &lt;tt&gt;Pgain&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;Igain&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;Dgain&lt;/tt&gt;,
2191 &lt;tt&gt;bias&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;FF0&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;FF1&lt;/tt&gt;, &lt;tt&gt;FF2&lt;/tt&gt; and
2192 &lt;tt&gt;FF3&lt;/tt&gt; to calculate the output value based on current and wanted
2193 state, and all of these need to have a sensible value for the
2194 controller to behave properly. Note, there are even more values
2195 involved, theser are just the most important ones. In my case I need
2196 the X, Y and Z axes to follow the requested path with little error.
2197 This has proved quite a challenge for someone who have never tuned a
2198 PID controller before, but there is at least some help to be found.
2199
2200 &lt;p&gt;I discovered that included in LinuxCNC was this old PID component
2201 at_pid claiming to have auto tuning capabilities. Sadly it had been
2202 neglected since 2011, and could not be used as a plug in replacement
2203 for the default pid component. One would have to rewriting the
2204 LinuxCNC HAL setup to test at_pid. This was rather sad, when I wanted
2205 to quickly test auto tuning to see if it did a better job than me at
2206 figuring out good P, I and D values to use.&lt;/p&gt;
2207
2208 &lt;p&gt;I decided to have a look if the situation could be improved. This
2209 involved trying to understand the code and history of the pid and
2210 at_pid components. Apparently they had a common ancestor, as code
2211 structure, comments and variable names were quite close to each other.
2212 Sadly this was not reflected in the git history, making it hard to
2213 figure out what really happened. My guess is that the author of
2214 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/blob/master/src/hal/components/at_pid.c&quot;&gt;at_pid.c&lt;/a&gt;
2215 took a version of
2216 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/blob/master/src/hal/components/pid.c&quot;&gt;pid.c&lt;/a&gt;,
2217 rewrote it to follow the structure he wished pid.c to have, then added
2218 support for auto tuning and finally got it included into the LinuxCNC
2219 repository. The restructuring and lack of early history made it
2220 harder to figure out which part of the code were relevant to the auto
2221 tuning, and which part of the code needed to be updated to work the
2222 same way as the current pid.c implementation. I started by trying to
2223 isolate relevant changes in pid.c, and applying them to at_pid.c. My
2224 aim was to make sure the at_pid component could replace the pid
2225 component with a simple change in the HAL setup loadrt line, without
2226 having to &quot;rewire&quot; the rest of the HAL configuration. After a few
2227 hours following this approach, I had learned quite a lot about the
2228 code structure of both components, while concluding I was heading down
2229 the wrong rabbit hole, and should get back to the surface and find a
2230 different path.&lt;/p&gt;
2231
2232 &lt;p&gt;For the second attempt, I decided to throw away all the PID control
2233 related part of the original at_pid.c, and instead isolate and lift
2234 the auto tuning part of the code and inject it into a copy of pid.c.
2235 This ensured compatibility with the current pid component, while
2236 adding auto tuning as a run time option. To make it easier to identify
2237 the relevant parts in the future, I wrapped all the auto tuning code
2238 with &#39;#ifdef AUTO_TUNER&#39;. The end result behave just like the current
2239 pid component by default, as that part of the code is identical. The
2240 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/pull/1820&quot;&gt;end result
2241 entered the LinuxCNC master branch&lt;/a&gt; a few days ago.&lt;/p&gt;
2242
2243 &lt;p&gt;To enable auto tuning, one need to set a few HAL pins in the PID
2244 component. The most important ones are &lt;tt&gt;tune-effort&lt;/tt&gt;,
2245 &lt;tt&gt;tune-mode&lt;/tt&gt; and &lt;tt&gt;tune-start&lt;/tt&gt;. But lets take a step
2246 back, and see what the auto tuning code will do. I do not know the
2247 mathematical foundation of the at_pid algorithm, but from observation
2248 I can tell that the algorithm will, when enabled, produce a square
2249 wave pattern centered around the &lt;tt&gt;bias&lt;/tt&gt; value on the output pin
2250 of the PID controller. This can be seen using the HAL Scope provided
2251 by LinuxCNC. In my case, this is translated into voltage (+-10V) sent
2252 to the motor controller, which in turn is translated into motor speed.
2253 So at_pid will ask the motor to move the axis back and forth. The
2254 number of cycles in the pattern is controlled by the
2255 &lt;tt&gt;tune-cycles&lt;/tt&gt; pin, and the extremes of the wave pattern is
2256 controlled by the &lt;tt&gt;tune-effort&lt;/tt&gt; pin. Of course, trying to
2257 change the direction of a physical object instantly (as in going
2258 directly from a positive voltage to the equivalent negative voltage)
2259 do not change velocity instantly, and it take some time for the object
2260 to slow down and move in the opposite direction. This result in a
2261 more smooth movement wave form, as the axis in question were vibrating
2262 back and forth. When the axis reached the target speed in the
2263 opposing direction, the auto tuner change direction again. After
2264 several of these changes, the average time delay between the &#39;peaks&#39;
2265 and &#39;valleys&#39; of this movement graph is then used to calculate
2266 proposed values for Pgain, Igain and Dgain, and insert them into the
2267 HAL model to use by the pid controller. The auto tuned settings are
2268 not great, but htye work a lot better than the values I had been able
2269 to cook up on my own, at least for the horizontal X and Y axis. But I
2270 had to use very small &lt;tt&gt;tune-effort&lt;tt&gt; values, as my motor
2271 controllers error out if the voltage change too quickly. I&#39;ve been
2272 less lucky with the Z axis, which is moving a heavy object up and
2273 down, and seem to confuse the algorithm. The Z axis movement became a
2274 lot better when I introduced a &lt;tt&gt;bias&lt;/tt&gt; value to counter the
2275 gravitational drag, but I will have to work a lot more on the Z axis
2276 PID values.&lt;/p&gt;
2277
2278 &lt;p&gt;Armed with this knowledge, it is time to look at how to do the
2279 tuning. Lets say the HAL configuration in question load the PID
2280 component for X, Y and Z like this:&lt;/p&gt;
2281
2282 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2283 loadrt pid names=pid.x,pid.y,pid.z
2284 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2285
2286 &lt;p&gt;Armed with the new and improved at_pid component, the new line will
2287 look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
2288
2289 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2290 loadrt at_pid names=pid.x,pid.y,pid.z
2291 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2292
2293 &lt;p&gt;The rest of the HAL setup can stay the same. This work because the
2294 components are referenced by name. If the component had used count=3
2295 instead, all use of pid.# had to be changed to at_pid.#.&lt;/p&gt;
2296
2297 &lt;p&gt;To start tuning the X axis, move the axis to the middle of its
2298 range, to make sure it do not hit anything when it start moving back
2299 and forth. Next, set the &lt;tt&gt;tune-effort&lt;/tt&gt; to a low number in the
2300 output range. I used 0.1 as my initial value. Next, assign 1 to the
2301 &lt;tt&gt;tune-mode&lt;/tt&gt; value. Note, this will disable the pid controlling
2302 part and feed 0 to the output pin, which in my case initially caused a
2303 lot of drift. In my case it proved to be a good idea with X and Y to
2304 tune the motor driver to make sure 0 voltage stopped the motor
2305 rotation. On the other hand, for the Z axis this proved to be a bad
2306 idea, so it will depend on your setup. It might help to set the
2307 &lt;tt&gt;bias&lt;/tt&gt; value to a output value that reduce or eliminate the
2308 axis drift. Finally, after setting &lt;tt&gt;tune-mode&lt;/tt&gt;, set
2309 &lt;tt&gt;tune-start&lt;/tt&gt; to 1 to activate the auto tuning. If all go well,
2310 your axis will vibrate for a few seconds and when it is done, new
2311 values for Pgain, Igain and Dgain will be active. To test them,
2312 change &lt;tt&gt;tune-mode&lt;/tt&gt; back to 0. Note that this might cause the
2313 machine to suddenly jerk as it bring the axis back to its commanded
2314 position, which it might have drifted away from during tuning. To
2315 summarize with some halcmd lines:&lt;/p&gt;
2316
2317 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2318 setp pid.x.tune-effort 0.1
2319 setp pid.x.tune-mode 1
2320 setp pid.x.tune-start 1
2321 # wait for the tuning to complete
2322 setp pid.x.tune-mode 0
2323 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2324
2325 &lt;p&gt;After doing this task quite a few times while trying to figure out
2326 how to properly tune the PID controllers on the machine in, I decided
2327 to figure out if this process could be automated, and wrote a script
2328 to do the entire tuning process from power on. The end result will
2329 ensure the machine is powered on and ready to run, home all axis if it
2330 is not already done, check that the extra tuning pins are available,
2331 move the axis to its mid point, run the auto tuning and re-enable the
2332 pid controller when it is done. It can be run several times. Check
2333 out the
2334 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/SebKuzminsky/MazakVQC1540/blob/bon-dev/scripts/run-auto-pid-tuner&quot;&gt;run-auto-pid-tuner&lt;/a&gt;
2335 script on github if you want to learn how it is done.&lt;/p&gt;
2336
2337 &lt;p&gt;My hope is that this little adventure can inspire someone who know
2338 more about motor PID controller tuning can implement even better
2339 algorithms for automatic PID tuning in LinuxCNC, making life easier
2340 for both me and all the others that want to use LinuxCNC but lack the
2341 in depth knowledge needed to tune PID controllers well.&lt;/p&gt;
2342
2343 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2344 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2345 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2346 </description>
2347 </item>
2348
2349 <item>
2350 <title>LinuxCNC translators life just got a bit easier</title>
2351 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/LinuxCNC_translators_life_just_got_a_bit_easier.html</link>
2352 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/LinuxCNC_translators_life_just_got_a_bit_easier.html</guid>
2353 <pubDate>Fri, 3 Jun 2022 21:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
2354 <description>&lt;p&gt;Back in oktober last year, when I started looking at the
2355 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxCNC&quot;&gt;LinuxCNC&lt;/a&gt; system, I
2356 proposed to change the documentation build system make life easier for
2357 translators. The original system consisted of independently written
2358 documentation files for each language, with no automated way to track
2359 changes done in other translations and no help for the translators to
2360 know how much was left to translated. By using
2361 &lt;a href=&quot;https://po4a.org/&quot;&gt;the po4a system&lt;/a&gt; to generate POT and PO
2362 files from the English documentation, this can be improved. A small
2363 team of LinuxCNC contributors got together and today our labour
2364 finally payed off. Since a few hours ago, it is now possible to
2365 translate &lt;a href=&quot;https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/linuxcnc/&quot;&gt;the
2366 LinuxCNC documentation on Weblate&lt;/a&gt;, alongside the program itself.&lt;/p&gt;
2367
2368 &lt;p&gt;The effort to migrate the documentation to use po4a has been both
2369 slow and frustrating. I am very happy we finally made it.&lt;/p&gt;
2370
2371 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2372 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2373 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2374 </description>
2375 </item>
2376
2377 <item>
2378 <title>geteltorito make CD firmware upgrades a breeze</title>
2379 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/geteltorito_make_CD_firmware_upgrades_a_breeze.html</link>
2380 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/geteltorito_make_CD_firmware_upgrades_a_breeze.html</guid>
2381 <pubDate>Wed, 20 Apr 2022 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
2382 <description>&lt;p&gt;Recently I wanted to upgrade the firmware of my thinkpad, and
2383 located the firmware download page from Lenovo (which annoyingly do
2384 not allow access via Tor, forcing me to hand them more personal
2385 information that I would like). The
2386 &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.lenovo.com/no/en/search?query=thinkpad firmware bios upgrade iso&amp;SearchType=Customer search&amp;searchLocation=Masthead&quot;&gt;download
2387 from Lenovo&lt;/a&gt; is a bootable ISO image, which is a bit of a problem
2388 when all I got available is a USB memory stick. I tried booting the
2389 ISO as a USB stick, but this did not work. But genisoimage came to
2390 the rescue.&lt;/p&gt;
2391
2392 &lt;P&gt;The geteltorito program in
2393 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tracker.debian.org/cdrkit&quot;&gt;the genisoimage binary
2394 package&lt;/a&gt; is able to convert the bootable ISO image to a bootable
2395 USB stick using a simple command line recipe, which I then can write
2396 to the most recently inserted USB stick:&lt;/p&gt;
2397
2398 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2399 geteltorito -o usbstick.img lenovo-firmware.iso
2400 sudo dd bs=10M if=usbstick.img of=$(ls -tr /dev/sd?|tail -1)
2401 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2402
2403 &lt;p&gt;This USB stick booted the firmware upgrader just fine, and in a few
2404 minutes my machine had the latest and greatest BIOS firmware in place.&lt;/p&gt;
2405 </description>
2406 </item>
2407
2408 <item>
2409 <title>Run your industrial metal working machine using Debian?</title>
2410 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Run_your_industrial_metal_working_machine_using_Debian_.html</link>
2411 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Run_your_industrial_metal_working_machine_using_Debian_.html</guid>
2412 <pubDate>Wed, 2 Mar 2022 18:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
2413 <description>&lt;p&gt;After many months of hard work by the good people involved in
2414 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxCNC&quot;&gt;LinuxCNC&lt;/a&gt;, the
2415 system was accepted Sunday
2416 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/linuxcnc&quot;&gt;into Debian&lt;/a&gt;.
2417 Once it was available from Debian, I was surprised to discover from
2418 &lt;a href=&quot;https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=linuxcnc&quot;&gt;its
2419 popularity-contest numbers&lt;/a&gt; that people have been reporting its use
2420 since 2012. &lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxcnc.org/&quot;&gt;Its project site&lt;/a&gt; might
2421 be a good place to check out, but sadly is not working when visiting
2422 via Tor.&lt;/p&gt;
2423
2424 &lt;p&gt;But what is LinuxCNC, you are probably wondering? Perhaps a
2425 Wikipedia quote is in place?&lt;/p&gt;
2426
2427 &lt;blockquote&gt;
2428 &quot;LinuxCNC is a software system for numerical control of
2429 machines such as milling machines, lathes, plasma cutters, routers,
2430 cutting machines, robots and hexapods. It can control up to 9 axes or
2431 joints of a CNC machine using G-code (RS-274NGC) as input. It has
2432 several GUIs suited to specific kinds of usage (touch screen,
2433 interactive development).&quot;
2434 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
2435
2436 &lt;p&gt;It can even control 3D printers. And even though the Wikipedia
2437 page indicate that it can only work with hard real time kernel
2438 features, it can also work with the user space soft real time features
2439 provided by the Debian kernel.
2440 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/linuxcnc/linuxcnc&quot;&gt;The source code&lt;/a&gt; is
2441 available from Github. The last few months I&#39;ve been involved in the
2442 translation setup for the program and documentation. Translators are
2443 most welcome to
2444 &lt;a href=&quot;https://hosted.weblate.org/engage/linuxcnc/&quot;&gt;join the
2445 effort&lt;/a&gt; using Weblate.&lt;/p&gt;
2446
2447 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2448 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2449 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2450 </description>
2451 </item>
2452
2453 <item>
2454 <title>Debian still an excellent choice for Lego builders</title>
2455 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_still_an_excellent_choice_for_Lego_builders.html</link>
2456 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_still_an_excellent_choice_for_Lego_builders.html</guid>
2457 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Oct 2021 07:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
2458 <description>&lt;p&gt;The Debian Lego team saw a lot of activity the last few weeks. All
2459 the packages under the team umbrella has been updated to fix
2460 packaging, lintian issues and BTS reports. In addition, a new and
2461 inspiring team member appeared on both the
2462 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth-lists.debian.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/debian-lego-team&quot;&gt;debian-lego-team
2463 Team mailing list&lt;/a&gt; and
2464 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego&quot;&gt;IRC channel
2465 #debian-lego&lt;/a&gt;. If you are interested in Lego CAD design and LEGO
2466 Mindstorms programming, check out the
2467 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;team wiki page&lt;/a&gt; to
2468 see what Debian can offer the Lego enthusiast.&lt;/p&gt;
2469
2470 &lt;p&gt;Patches has been sent upstream, causing new upstream releases, one
2471 even the first one in more than ten years, and old upstreams was
2472 released with new ones. There are still a lot of work left, and the
2473 team welcome more members to help us make sure Debian is the Linux
2474 distribution of choice for Lego builders. If you want to contribute,
2475 join us in the IRC channel and become part of
2476 &lt;a href=&quot;https://salsa.debian.org/debian-lego-team/&quot;&gt;the team on
2477 Salsa&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2478
2479 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2480 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2481 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2482 </description>
2483 </item>
2484
2485 <item>
2486 <title>Six complete translations of The Debian Administrator&#39;s Handbook for Buster</title>
2487 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Six_complete_translations_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_for_Buster.html</link>
2488 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Six_complete_translations_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_for_Buster.html</guid>
2489 <pubDate>Mon, 5 Jul 2021 19:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
2490 <description>&lt;p&gt;I am happy observe that the &lt;a href=&quot;https://debian-handbook.info/&quot;&gt;The
2491 Debian Administrator&#39;s Handbook&lt;/a&gt; is available in six languages now.
2492 I am not sure which one of these are completely proof read, but the
2493 complete book is available in these languages:
2494
2495 &lt;ul&gt;
2496
2497 &lt;li&gt;English&lt;/li&gt;
2498 &lt;li&gt;Norwegian Bokmål&lt;/li&gt;
2499 &lt;li&gt;German&lt;/li&gt;
2500 &lt;li&gt;Indonesian&lt;/li&gt;
2501 &lt;li&gt;Brazil Portuguese&lt;/li&gt;
2502 &lt;li&gt;Spanish&lt;/li&gt;
2503
2504 &lt;/ul&gt;
2505
2506 &lt;p&gt;This is the list of languages more than 70% complete, in other
2507 words with not too much left to do:&lt;/p&gt;
2508
2509 &lt;ul&gt;
2510
2511 &lt;li&gt;Chinese (Simplified) - 90%&lt;/li&gt;
2512 &lt;li&gt;French - 79%&lt;/li&gt;
2513 &lt;li&gt;Italian - 79%&lt;/li&gt;
2514 &lt;li&gt;Japanese - 77%&lt;/li&gt;
2515 &lt;li&gt;Arabic (Morocco) - 75%&lt;/li&gt;
2516 &lt;li&gt;Persian - 71%&lt;/li&gt;
2517
2518 &lt;/ul&gt;
2519
2520 &lt;p&gt;I wonder how long it will take to bring these to 100%.&lt;/p&gt;
2521
2522 &lt;p&gt;Then there is the list of languages about halfway done:&lt;/p&gt;
2523
2524 &lt;ul&gt;
2525
2526 &lt;li&gt;Russian - 63%&lt;/li&gt;
2527 &lt;li&gt;Swedish - 53%&lt;/li&gt;
2528 &lt;li&gt;Chinese (Traditional) - 46%&lt;/li&gt;
2529 &lt;li&gt;Catalan - 45%&lt;/li&gt;
2530
2531 &lt;/ul&gt;
2532
2533 &lt;p&gt;Several are on to a good start:&lt;/p&gt;
2534
2535 &lt;ul&gt;
2536
2537 &lt;li&gt;Dutch - 26%&lt;/li&gt;
2538 &lt;li&gt;Vietnamese - 25%&lt;/li&gt;
2539 &lt;li&gt;Polish - 23%&lt;/li&gt;
2540 &lt;li&gt;Czech - 22%&lt;/li&gt;
2541 &lt;li&gt;Turkish - 18%&lt;/li&gt;
2542
2543 &lt;/ul&gt;
2544
2545 &lt;p&gt;Finally, there are the ones just getting started:&lt;/p&gt;
2546
2547 &lt;ul&gt;
2548
2549 &lt;li&gt;Korean - 4%&lt;/li&gt;
2550 &lt;li&gt;Croatian - 2%&lt;/li&gt;
2551 &lt;li&gt;Greek - 2%&lt;/li&gt;
2552 &lt;li&gt;Danish - 1%&lt;/li&gt;
2553 &lt;li&gt;Romanian - 1%&lt;/li&gt;
2554
2555 &lt;/ul&gt;
2556
2557 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help provide a Debian instruction book in your own
2558 language, visit
2559 &lt;a href=&quot;https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/#languages&quot;&gt;Weblate&lt;/a&gt;
2560 to contribute to the translations.&lt;/p&gt;
2561
2562 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2563 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2564 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2565 </description>
2566 </item>
2567
2568 <item>
2569 <title>Latest Jami back in Debian Testing, and scriptable using dbus</title>
2570 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Latest_Jami_back_in_Debian_Testing__and_scriptable_using_dbus.html</link>
2571 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Latest_Jami_back_in_Debian_Testing__and_scriptable_using_dbus.html</guid>
2572 <pubDate>Tue, 12 Jan 2021 17:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
2573 <description>&lt;p&gt;After a lot of hard work by its maintainer Alexandre Viau and
2574 others, the decentralized communication platform
2575 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jami_(software)&quot;&gt;Jami&lt;/a&gt;
2576 (earlier known as Ring), managed to get
2577 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring&quot;&gt;its latest version&lt;/a&gt;
2578 into Debian Testing. Several of its dependencies has caused build and
2579 propagation problems, which all seem to be solved now.&lt;/p&gt;
2580
2581 &lt;p&gt;In addition to the fact that Jami is decentralized, similar to how
2582 bittorrent is decentralized, I first of all like how it is not
2583 connected to external IDs like phone numbers. This allow me to set up
2584 computers to send me notifications using Jami without having to find
2585 get a phone number for each computer. Automatic notification via Jami
2586 is also made trivial thanks to the provided client side API (as a DBus
2587 service). Here is my bourne shell script demonstrating how to let any
2588 system send a message to any Jami address. It will create a new
2589 identity before sending the message, if no Jami identity exist
2590 already:&lt;/p&gt;
2591
2592 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2593 #!/bin/sh
2594 #
2595 # Usage: $0 &lt;jami-address&gt; &lt;message&gt;
2596 #
2597 # Send &lt;message&gt; to &lt;jami-address&gt;, create local jami account if
2598 # missing.
2599 #
2600 # License: GPL v2 or later at your choice
2601 # Author: Petter Reinholdtsen
2602
2603
2604 if [ -z &quot;$HOME&quot; ] ; then
2605 echo &quot;error: missing \$HOME, required for dbus to work&quot;
2606 exit 1
2607 fi
2608
2609 # First, get dbus running if not already running
2610 DBUSLAUNCH=/usr/bin/dbus-launch
2611 PIDFILE=/run/asterisk/dbus-session.pid
2612 if [ -e $PIDFILE ] ; then
2613 . $PIDFILE
2614 if ! kill -0 $DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID 2&gt;/dev/null ; then
2615 unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
2616 fi
2617 fi
2618 if [ -z &quot;$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS&quot; ] &amp;&amp; [ -x &quot;$DBUSLAUNCH&quot; ]; then
2619 DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=&quot;unix:path=$HOME/.dbus&quot;
2620 dbus-daemon --session --address=&quot;$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS&quot; --nofork --nopidfile --syslog-only &lt; /dev/null &gt; /dev/null 2&gt;&amp;1 3&gt;&amp;1 &amp;
2621 DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID=$!
2622 (
2623 echo DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID=$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID
2624 echo DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=\&quot;&quot;$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS&quot;\&quot;
2625 echo export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
2626 ) &gt; $PIDFILE
2627 . $PIDFILE
2628 fi &amp;
2629
2630 dringop() {
2631 part=&quot;$1&quot;; shift
2632 op=&quot;$1&quot;; shift
2633 dbus-send --session \
2634 --dest=&quot;cx.ring.Ring&quot; /cx/ring/Ring/$part cx.ring.Ring.$part.$op $*
2635 }
2636
2637 dringopreply() {
2638 part=&quot;$1&quot;; shift
2639 op=&quot;$1&quot;; shift
2640 dbus-send --session --print-reply \
2641 --dest=&quot;cx.ring.Ring&quot; /cx/ring/Ring/$part cx.ring.Ring.$part.$op $*
2642 }
2643
2644 firstaccount() {
2645 dringopreply ConfigurationManager getAccountList | \
2646 grep string | awk -F&#39;&quot;&#39; &#39;{print $2}&#39; | head -n 1
2647 }
2648
2649 account=$(firstaccount)
2650
2651 if [ -z &quot;$account&quot; ] ; then
2652 echo &quot;Missing local account, trying to create it&quot;
2653 dringop ConfigurationManager addAccount \
2654 dict:string:string:&quot;Account.type&quot;,&quot;RING&quot;,&quot;Account.videoEnabled&quot;,&quot;false&quot;
2655 account=$(firstaccount)
2656 if [ -z &quot;$account&quot; ] ; then
2657 echo &quot;unable to create local account&quot;
2658 exit 1
2659 fi
2660 fi
2661
2662 # Not using dringopreply to ensure $2 can contain spaces
2663 dbus-send --print-reply --session \
2664 --dest=cx.ring.Ring \
2665 /cx/ring/Ring/ConfigurationManager \
2666 cx.ring.Ring.ConfigurationManager.sendTextMessage \
2667 string:&quot;$account&quot; string:&quot;$1&quot; \
2668 dict:string:string:&quot;text/plain&quot;,&quot;$2&quot;
2669 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2670
2671 &lt;p&gt;If you want to check it out yourself, visit the
2672 &lt;a href=&quot;https://jami.net/&quot;&gt;the Jami system project page&lt;/a&gt; to learn
2673 more, and install the latest Jami client from Debian Unstable or
2674 Testing.&lt;/p&gt;
2675
2676 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2677 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2678 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2679 </description>
2680 </item>
2681
2682 <item>
2683 <title>Buster based Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator&#39;s Handbook</title>
2684 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Buster_based_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html</link>
2685 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Buster_based_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html</guid>
2686 <pubDate>Tue, 20 Oct 2020 18:35:00 +0200</pubDate>
2687 <description>&lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img align=&quot;center&quot; src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2020-10-20-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;60%&quot;/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2688
2689 &lt;p&gt;I am happy to report that we finally made it! Norwegian Bokmål
2690 became the first translation published on paper of the new Buster
2691 based edition of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://debian-handbook.info/&quot;&gt;The Debian
2692 Administrator&#39;s Handbook&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. The print proof reading copy arrived
2693 some days ago, and it looked good, so now the book is approved for
2694 general distribution. This updated paperback edition &lt;a
2695 href=&quot;https://debian-handbook.info/get/#norwegian&quot;&gt;is available from
2696 lulu.com&lt;/a&gt;. The book is also available for download in electronic
2697 form as PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, and can also be
2698 &lt;a href=&quot;https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/&quot;&gt;read online&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2699
2700 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to wrap up this Creative Common licensed project,
2701 which concludes several months of work by several volunteers. The
2702 number of Linux related books published in Norwegian are few, and I
2703 really hope this one will gain many readers, as it is packed with deep
2704 knowledge on Linux and the Debian ecosystem. The book will be
2705 available for various Internet book stores like Amazon and Barnes &amp;
2706 Noble soon, but I recommend buying
2707 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/roland-mas-and-rapha%C3%ABl-hertzog/h%C3%A5ndbok-for-debian-administratoren/paperback/product-9j7qwq.html&quot;&gt;Håndbok
2708 for Debian-administratoren&lt;/a&gt;&quot; directly from the source at Lulu.
2709
2710 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2711 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2712 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2713 </description>
2714 </item>
2715
2716 <item>
2717 <title>Buster update of Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator&#39;s Handbook almost done</title>
2718 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Buster_update_of_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_almost_done.html</link>
2719 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Buster_update_of_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_almost_done.html</guid>
2720 <pubDate>Fri, 11 Sep 2020 09:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
2721 <description>&lt;p&gt;Thanks to the good work of several volunteers, the updated edition
2722 of the Norwegian translation for
2723 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://debian-handbook.info/&quot;&gt;The Debian Administrator&#39;s
2724 Handbook&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is now almost completed. After many months of proof
2725 reading, I consider the proof reading complete enough for us to move
2726 to the next step, and have asked for the print version to be prepared
2727 and sent of to the print on demand service lulu.com. While it is
2728 still not to late if you find any incorrect translations on
2729 &lt;a href=&quot;https://hosted.weblate.org/languages/nb_NO/debian-handbook/&quot;&gt;the
2730 hosted Weblate service&lt;/a&gt;, but it will be soon. :) You can check out
2731 &lt;a href=&quot; https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/&quot;&gt;the Buster
2732 edition on the web&lt;/a&gt; until the print edition is ready.&lt;/p&gt;
2733
2734 &lt;p&gt;The book will be for sale on lulu.com and various web book stores,
2735 with links available from the web site for the book linked to above.
2736 I hope a lot of readers find it useful.&lt;/p&gt;
2737
2738 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2739 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2740 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2741 </description>
2742 </item>
2743
2744 <item>
2745 <title>Working on updated Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator&#39;s Handbook</title>
2746 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Working_on_updated_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html</link>
2747 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Working_on_updated_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html</guid>
2748 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Jul 2020 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
2749 <description>&lt;p&gt;Three years ago, the first Norwegian Bokmål edition of
2750 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://debian-handbook.info/&quot;&gt;The Debian Administrator&#39;s
2751 Handbook&lt;/a&gt;&quot; was published. This was based on Debian Jessie. Now a
2752 new and updated version based on Buster is getting ready. Work on the
2753 updated Norwegian Bokmål edition has been going on for a few months
2754 now, and yesterday, we reached the first mile stone, with 100% of the
2755 texts being translated. A lot of proof reading remains, of course,
2756 but a major step towards a new edition has been taken.&lt;/p&gt;
2757
2758 &lt;p&gt;The book is translated by volunteers, and we would love to get some
2759 help with the proof reading. The translation uses
2760 &lt;a href=&quot;https://hosted.weblate.org/languages/nb_NO/debian-handbook/&quot;&gt;the
2761 hosted Weblate service&lt;/a&gt;, and we welcome everyone to have a look and
2762 submit improvements and suggestions. There is also a proof readers
2763 PDF available on request, get in touch if you want to help out that
2764 way.&lt;/p&gt;
2765
2766 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2767 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2768 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2769 </description>
2770 </item>
2771
2772 <item>
2773 <title>Secure Socket API - a simple and powerful approach for TLS support in software</title>
2774 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Secure_Socket_API___a_simple_and_powerful_approach_for_TLS_support_in_software.html</link>
2775 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Secure_Socket_API___a_simple_and_powerful_approach_for_TLS_support_in_software.html</guid>
2776 <pubDate>Sat, 6 Jun 2020 12:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
2777 <description>&lt;p&gt;As a member of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;Norwegian Unix
2778 User Group&lt;/a&gt;, I have the pleasure of receiving the
2779 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/&quot;&gt;USENIX&lt;/a&gt; magazine
2780 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/&quot;&gt;;login:&lt;/a&gt;
2781 several times a year. I rarely have time to read all the articles,
2782 but try to at least skim through them all as there is a lot of nice
2783 knowledge passed on there. I even carry the latest issue with me most
2784 of the time to try to get through all the articles when I have a few
2785 spare minutes.&lt;/p&gt;
2786
2787 &lt;p&gt;The other day I came across a nice article titled
2788 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/winter2018/oneill&quot;&gt;The
2789 Secure Socket API: TLS as an Operating System Service&lt;/a&gt;&quot; with a
2790 marvellous idea I hope can make it all the way into the POSIX standard.
2791 The idea is as simple as it is powerful. By introducing a new
2792 socket() option IPPROTO_TLS to use TLS, and a system wide service to
2793 handle setting up TLS connections, one both make it trivial to add TLS
2794 support to any program currently using the POSIX socket API, and gain
2795 system wide control over certificates, TLS versions and encryption
2796 systems used. Instead of doing this:&lt;/p&gt;
2797
2798 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2799 int socket = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP);
2800 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2801
2802 &lt;p&gt;the program code would be doing this:&lt;p&gt;
2803
2804 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2805 int socket = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TLS);
2806 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2807
2808 &lt;p&gt;According to the ;login: article, converting a C program to use TLS
2809 would normally modify only 5-10 lines in the code, which is amazing
2810 when compared to using for example the OpenSSL API.&lt;/p&gt;
2811
2812 &lt;p&gt;The project has set up the
2813 &lt;a href=&quot;https://securesocketapi.org/&quot;&gt;https://securesocketapi.org/&lt;/a&gt;
2814 web site to spread the idea, and the code for a kernel module and the
2815 associated system daemon is available from two github repositories:
2816 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/markoneill/ssa&quot;&gt;ssa&lt;/a&gt; and
2817 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/markoneill/ssa-daemon&quot;&gt;ssa-daemon&lt;/a&gt;.
2818 Unfortunately there is no explicit license information with the code,
2819 so its copyright status is unclear. A
2820 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/markoneill/ssa/issues/2&quot;&gt;request to solve
2821 this&lt;/a&gt; about it has been unsolved since 2018-08-17.&lt;/p&gt;
2822
2823 &lt;p&gt;I love the idea of extending socket() to gain TLS support, and
2824 understand why it is an advantage to implement this as a kernel module
2825 and system wide service daemon, but can not help to think that it
2826 would be a lot easier to get projects to move to this way of setting
2827 up TLS if it was done with a user space approach where programs
2828 wanting to use this API approach could just link with a wrapper
2829 library.&lt;/p&gt;
2830
2831 &lt;p&gt;I recommend you check out this simple and powerful approach to more
2832 secure network connections. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2833
2834 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2835 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2836 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2837 </description>
2838 </item>
2839
2840 <item>
2841 <title>Jami as a Zoom client, a trick for password protected rooms...</title>
2842 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Jami_as_a_Zoom_client__a_trick_for_password_protected_rooms___.html</link>
2843 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Jami_as_a_Zoom_client__a_trick_for_password_protected_rooms___.html</guid>
2844 <pubDate>Fri, 8 May 2020 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
2845 <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago,
2846 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Jami_Ring__finally_functioning_peer_to_peer_communication_client.html&quot;&gt;I
2847 wrote&lt;/a&gt; about &lt;a href=&quot;https://jami.net/&quot;&gt;the Jami communication
2848 client&lt;/a&gt;, capable of peer-to-peer encrypted communication. It
2849 handle both messages, audio and video. It uses distributed hash
2850 tables instead of central infrastructure to connect its users to each
2851 other, which in my book is a plus. I mentioned briefly that it could
2852 also work as a SIP client, which came in handy when the higher
2853 educational sector in Norway started to promote Zoom as its video
2854 conferencing solution. I am reluctant to use the official Zoom client
2855 software, due to their &lt;a href=&quot;https://zoom.us/terms&quot;&gt;copyright
2856 license clauses&lt;/a&gt; prohibiting users to reverse engineer (for example
2857 to check the security) and benchmark it, and thus prefer to connect to
2858 Zoom meetings with free software clients.&lt;/p&gt;
2859
2860 &lt;p&gt;Jami worked OK as a SIP client to Zoom as long as there was no
2861 password set on the room. The Jami daemon leak memory like crazy
2862 (approximately 1 GiB a minute) when I am connected to the video
2863 conference, so I had to restart the client every 7-10 minutes, which
2864 is not great. I tried to get other SIP Linux clients to work
2865 without success, so I decided I would have to live with this wart
2866 until someone managed to fix the leak in the dring code base. But
2867 another problem showed up once the rooms were password protected. I
2868 could not get my dial tone signaling through from Jami to Zoom, and
2869 dial tone signaling is used to enter the password when connecting to
2870 Zoom. I tried a lot of different permutations with my Jami and
2871 Asterisk setup to try to figure out why the signaling did not get
2872 through, only to finally discover that the fundamental problem seem to
2873 be that Zoom is simply not able to receive dial tone signaling when
2874 connecting via SIP. There seem to be nothing wrong with the Jami and
2875 Asterisk end, it is simply broken in the Zoom end. I got help from a
2876 very skilled VoIP engineer figuring out this last part. And being a
2877 very skilled engineer, he was also able to locate a solution for me.
2878 Or to be exact, a workaround that solve my initial problem of
2879 connecting to password protected Zoom rooms using Jami.&lt;/p&gt;
2880
2881 &lt;p&gt;So, how do you do this, I am sure you are wondering by now. The
2882 trick is already
2883 &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/202405539-H-323-SIP-Room-Connector-Dial-Strings#sip&quot;&gt;documented
2884 from Zoom&lt;/a&gt;, and it is to modify the SIP address to include the room
2885 password. What is most surprising about this is that the
2886 automatically generated email from Zoom with instructions on how to
2887 connect via SIP do not mention this. The SIP address to use normally
2888 consist of the room ID (a number), an @ character and the IP address
2889 of the Zoom SIP gateway. But Zoom understand a lot more than just the
2890 room ID in front of the at sign. The format is &quot;&lt;tt&gt;[Meeting
2891 ID].[Password].[Layout].[Host Key]&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;, and you can here see how you
2892 can both enter password, control the layout (full screen, active
2893 presence and gallery) and specify the host key to start the meeting.
2894 The full SIP address entered into Jami to provide the password will
2895 then look like this (all using made up numbers):&lt;/p&gt;
2896
2897 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
2898 &lt;tt&gt;sip:657837644.522827@192.168.169.170&lt;/tt&gt;
2899 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2900
2901 &lt;p&gt;Now if only jami would reduce its memory usage, I could even
2902 recommend this setup to others. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2903
2904 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2905 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2906 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2907 </description>
2908 </item>
2909
2910 <item>
2911 <title>GnuCOBOL, a free platform to learn and use COBOL - nice free software</title>
2912 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/GnuCOBOL__a_free_platform_to_learn_and_use_COBOL___nice_free_software.html</link>
2913 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/GnuCOBOL__a_free_platform_to_learn_and_use_COBOL___nice_free_software.html</guid>
2914 <pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2020 13:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
2915 <description>&lt;p&gt;The curiosity got the better of me when
2916 &lt;a href=&quot;https://developers.slashdot.org/story/20/04/06/1424246/new-jersey-desperately-needs-cobol-programmers&quot;&gt;Slashdot
2917 reported&lt;/a&gt; that New Jersey was desperately looking for
2918 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL&quot;&gt;COBOL&lt;/a&gt; programmers,
2919 and a few days later it was reported that
2920 &lt;a href=&quot;https://onezero.medium.com/ibm-rallies-cobol-engineers-to-save-overloaded-unemployment-systems-eeadf13eddce&quot;&gt;IBM
2921 tried to locate COBOL programmers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2922
2923 &lt;p&gt;I thus decided to have a look at free software alternatives to
2924 learn COBOL, and had the pleasure to find
2925 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/projects/open-cobol/&quot;&gt;GnuCOBOL&lt;/a&gt; was
2926 already &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gnucobol&quot;&gt;in
2927 Debian&lt;/a&gt;. It used to be called Open Cobol, and is a &quot;compiler&quot;
2928 transforming COBOL code to C or C++ before giving it to GCC or Visual
2929 Studio to build binaries.&lt;/p&gt;
2930
2931 &lt;p&gt;I managed to get in touch with upstream, and was impressed with the
2932 quick response, and also was happy to see a new Debian maintainer
2933 taking over when the original one recently asked to be replaced. A
2934 new Debian upload was done as recently as yesterday.&lt;/p&gt;
2935
2936 &lt;p&gt;Using the Debian package, I was able to follow a simple COBOL
2937 introduction and make and run simple COBOL programs. It was fun to
2938 learn a new programming language. If you want to test for yourself,
2939 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuCOBOL&quot;&gt;the GnuCOBOL Wikipedia
2940 page&lt;/a&gt; have a few simple examples to get you startet.&lt;/p&gt;
2941
2942 &lt;p&gt;As I do not have much experience with COBOL, I do not know how
2943 standard compliant it is, but it claim to pass most tests from COBOL
2944 test suite, which sound good to me. It is nice to know it is possible
2945 to learn COBOL using software without any usage restrictions, and I am
2946 very happy such nice free software project as this is available. If
2947 you as me is curious about COBOL, check it out.&lt;/p&gt;
2948
2949 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2950 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2951 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2952 </description>
2953 </item>
2954
2955 <item>
2956 <title>Jami/Ring, finally functioning peer to peer communication client</title>
2957 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Jami_Ring__finally_functioning_peer_to_peer_communication_client.html</link>
2958 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Jami_Ring__finally_functioning_peer_to_peer_communication_client.html</guid>
2959 <pubDate>Wed, 19 Jun 2019 08:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
2960 <description>&lt;p&gt;Some years ago, in 2016, I
2961 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html&quot;&gt;wrote
2962 for the first time about&lt;/a&gt; the Ring peer to peer messaging system.
2963 It would provide messaging without any central server coordinating the
2964 system and without requiring all users to register a phone number or
2965 own a mobile phone. Back then, I could not get it to work, and put it
2966 aside until it had seen more development. A few days ago I decided to
2967 give it another try, and am happy to report that this time I am able
2968 to not only send and receive messages, but also place audio and video
2969 calls. But only if UDP is not blocked into your network.&lt;/p&gt;
2970
2971 &lt;p&gt;The Ring system changed name earlier this year to
2972 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jami_(software)&quot;&gt;Jami&lt;/a&gt;. I
2973 tried doing web search for &#39;ring&#39; when I discovered it for the first
2974 time, and can only applaud this change as it is impossible to find
2975 something called Ring among the noise of other uses of that word. Now
2976 you can search for &#39;jami&#39; and this client and
2977 &lt;a href=&quot;https://jami.net/&quot;&gt;the Jami system&lt;/a&gt; is the first hit at
2978 least on duckduckgo.&lt;/p&gt;
2979
2980 &lt;p&gt;Jami will by default encrypt messages as well as audio and video
2981 calls, and try to send them directly between the communicating parties
2982 if possible. If this proves impossible (for example if both ends are
2983 behind NAT), it will use a central SIP TURN server maintained by the
2984 Jami project. Jami can also be a normal SIP client. If the SIP
2985 server is unencrypted, the audio and video calls will also be
2986 unencrypted. This is as far as I know the only case where Jami will
2987 do anything without encryption.&lt;/p&gt;
2988
2989 &lt;p&gt;Jami is available for several platforms: Linux, Windows, MacOSX,
2990 Android, iOS, and Android TV. It is included in Debian already. Jami
2991 also work for those using F-Droid without any Google connections,
2992 while Signal do not.
2993 &lt;a href=&quot;https://git.jami.net/savoirfairelinux/ring-project/wikis/technical/Protocol&quot;&gt;The
2994 protocol&lt;/a&gt; is described in the Ring project wiki. The system uses a
2995 distributed hash table (DHT) system (similar to BitTorrent) running
2996 over UDP. On one of the networks I use, I discovered Jami failed to
2997 work. I tracked this down to the fact that incoming UDP packages
2998 going to ports 1-49999 were blocked, and the DHT would pick a random
2999 port and end up in the low range most of the time. After talking to
3000 the developers, I solved this by enabling the dhtproxy in the
3001 settings, thus using TCP to talk to a central DHT proxy instead of
3002
3003 peering directly with others. I&#39;ve been told the developers are
3004 working on allowing DHT to use TCP to avoid this problem. I also ran
3005 into a problem when trying to talk to the version of Ring included in
3006 Debian Stable (Stretch). Apparently the protocol changed between
3007 beta2 and the current version, making these clients incompatible.
3008 Hopefully the protocol will not be made incompatible in the
3009 future.&lt;/p&gt;
3010
3011 &lt;p&gt;It is worth noting that while looking at Jami and its features, I
3012 came across another communication platform I have not tested yet. The
3013 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tox_(protocol)&quot;&gt;Tox protocol&lt;/a&gt;
3014 and &lt;a href=&quot;https://tox.chat/&quot;&gt;family of Tox clients&lt;/a&gt;. It might
3015 become the topic of a future blog post.&lt;/p&gt;
3016
3017 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3018 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3019 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3020 </description>
3021 </item>
3022
3023 <item>
3024 <title>Strategispillet Unknown Horizons nå tilgjengelig på bokmål</title>
3025 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Strategispillet_Unknown_Horizons_n__tilgjengelig_p__bokm_l.html</link>
3026 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Strategispillet_Unknown_Horizons_n__tilgjengelig_p__bokm_l.html</guid>
3027 <pubDate>Wed, 23 Jan 2019 07:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
3028 <description>&lt;p&gt;I høst ble jeg inspirert til å bidra til oversettelsen av
3029 &lt;a href=&quot;http://unknown-horizons.org/&quot;&gt;strategispillet Unknown
3030 Horizons&lt;/a&gt;, og oversatte de nesten 200 strengene i prosjektet til
3031 bokmål. Deretter har jeg gått å ventet på at det kom en ny utgave som
3032 inneholdt disse oversettelsene. Nå er endelig ventetiden over. Den
3033 nye versjonen kom på nyåret, og ble
3034 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/unknown-horizons&quot;&gt;lastet opp i
3035 Debian&lt;/a&gt; for noen få dager siden. I går kveld fikk jeg testet det ut, og
3036 må innrømme at oversettelsene fungerer fint. Fant noen få tekster som
3037 måtte justeres, men ikke noe alvorlig. Har oppdatert
3038 &lt;a href=&quot;https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/uh/&quot;&gt;oversettelsen på
3039 Weblate&lt;/a&gt;, slik at neste utgave vil være enda bedre. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3040
3041 &lt;p&gt;Spillet er et ressursstyringsspill ala Civilization, og er morsomt
3042 å spille for oss som liker slikt. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3043
3044 &lt;p&gt;Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
3045 det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner
3046 til min adresse
3047 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.
3048 Merk, betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3049 </description>
3050 </item>
3051
3052 <item>
3053 <title>Debian now got everything you need to program Micro:bit</title>
3054 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_now_got_everything_you_need_to_program_Micro_bit.html</link>
3055 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_now_got_everything_you_need_to_program_Micro_bit.html</guid>
3056 <pubDate>Tue, 22 Jan 2019 17:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
3057 <description>&lt;p&gt;I am amazed and very pleased to discover that since a few days ago,
3058 everything you need to program the &lt;a href=&quot;https://microbit.org/&quot;&gt;BBC
3059 micro:bit&lt;/a&gt; is available from the Debian archive. All this is
3060 thanks to the hard work of Nick Morrott and the Debian python
3061 packaging team. The micro:bit project recommend the mu-editor to
3062 program the microcomputer, as this editor will take care of all the
3063 machinery required to injekt/flash micropython alongside the program
3064 into the micro:bit, as long as the pieces are available.&lt;/p&gt;
3065
3066 &lt;p&gt;There are three main pieces involved. The first to enter Debian
3067 was
3068 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/python-uflash&quot;&gt;python-uflash&lt;/a&gt;,
3069 which was accepted into the archive 2019-01-12. The next one was
3070 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/mu-editor&quot;&gt;mu-editor&lt;/a&gt;, which
3071 showed up 2019-01-13. The final and hardest part to to into the
3072 archive was
3073 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/firmware-microbit-micropython&quot;&gt;firmware-microbit-micropython&lt;/a&gt;,
3074 which needed to get its build system and dependencies into Debian
3075 before it was accepted 2019-01-20. The last one is already in Debian
3076 Unstable and should enter Debian Testing / Buster in three days. This
3077 all allow any user of the micro:bit to get going by simply running
3078 &#39;apt install mu-editor&#39; when using Testing or Unstable, and once
3079 Buster is released as stable, all the users of Debian stable will be
3080 catered for.&lt;/p&gt;
3081
3082 &lt;p&gt;As a minor final touch, I added rules to
3083 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram&quot;&gt;the isenkram
3084 package&lt;/a&gt; for recognizing micro:bit and recommend the mu-editor
3085 package. This make sure any user of the isenkram desktop daemon will
3086 get a popup suggesting to install mu-editor then the USB cable from
3087 the micro:bit is inserted for the first time.&lt;/p&gt;
3088
3089 &lt;p&gt;This should make it easier to have fun.&lt;/p&gt;
3090
3091 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3092 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3093 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3094 </description>
3095 </item>
3096
3097 <item>
3098 <title>Learn to program with Minetest on Debian</title>
3099 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Learn_to_program_with_Minetest_on_Debian.html</link>
3100 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Learn_to_program_with_Minetest_on_Debian.html</guid>
3101 <pubDate>Sat, 15 Dec 2018 15:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
3102 <description>&lt;p&gt;A fun way to learn how to program
3103 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.python.org/&quot;&gt;Python&lt;/a&gt; is to follow the
3104 instructions in the book
3105 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://nostarch.com/programwithminecraft&quot;&gt;Learn to program
3106 with Minecraft&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, which introduces programming in Python to people
3107 who like to play with Minecraft. The book uses a Python library to
3108 talk to a TCP/IP socket with an API accepting build instructions and
3109 providing information about the current players in a Minecraft world.
3110 The TCP/IP API was first created for the Minecraft implementation for
3111 Raspberry Pi, and has since been ported to some server versions of
3112 Minecraft. The book contain recipes for those using Windows, MacOSX
3113 and Raspian. But a little known fact is that you can follow the same
3114 recipes using the free software construction game
3115 &lt;a href=&quot;https://minetest.net/&quot;&gt;Minetest&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3116
3117 &lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/sprintingkiwi/pycraft_mod&quot;&gt;a
3118 Minetest module implementing the same API&lt;/a&gt;, making it possible to
3119 use the Python programs coded to talk to Minecraft with Minetest too.
3120 I
3121 &lt;a href=&quot;https://ftp-master.debian.org/new/minetest-mod-pycraft_0.20%2Bgit20180331.0376a0a%2Bdfsg-1.html&quot;&gt;uploaded
3122 this module&lt;/a&gt; to Debian two weeks ago, and as soon as it clears the
3123 FTP masters NEW queue, learning to program Python with Minetest on
3124 Debian will be a simple &#39;apt install&#39; away. The Debian package is
3125 maintained as part of the Debian Games team, and
3126 &lt;a href=&quot;https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/unfinished/minetest-mod-pycraft&quot;&gt;the
3127 packaging rules&lt;/a&gt; are currently located under &#39;unfinished&#39; on
3128 Salsa.&lt;/p&gt;
3129
3130 &lt;p&gt;You will most likely need to install several of the Minetest
3131 modules in Debian for the examples included with the library to work
3132 well, as there are several blocks used by the example scripts that are
3133 provided via modules in Minetest. Without the required blocks, a
3134 simple stone block is used instead. My initial testing with a analog
3135 clock did not get gold arms as instructed in the python library, but
3136 instead used stone arms.&lt;/p&gt;
3137
3138 &lt;p&gt;I tried to find a way to add the API to the desktop version of
3139 Minecraft, but were unable to find any working recipes. The
3140 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.epiphanydigest.com/tag/minecraft-python-api/&quot;&gt;recipes&lt;/a&gt;
3141 I &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/kbsriram/mcpiapi&quot;&gt;found&lt;/a&gt; are only
3142 working with a standalone Minecraft server setup. Are there any
3143 options to use with the normal desktop version?&lt;/p&gt;
3144
3145 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3146 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3147 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3148 </description>
3149 </item>
3150
3151 <item>
3152 <title>Time for an official MIME type for patches?</title>
3153 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_for_an_official_MIME_type_for_patches_.html</link>
3154 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_for_an_official_MIME_type_for_patches_.html</guid>
3155 <pubDate>Thu, 1 Nov 2018 08:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
3156 <description>&lt;p&gt;As part of my involvement in
3157 &lt;a href=&quot;https://gitlab.com/OsloMet-ABI/nikita-noark5-core&quot;&gt;the Nikita
3158 archive API project&lt;/a&gt;, I&#39;ve been importing a fairly large lump of
3159 emails into a test instance of the archive to see how well this would
3160 go. I picked a subset of &lt;a href=&quot;https://notmuchmail.org/&quot;&gt;my
3161 notmuch email database&lt;/a&gt;, all public emails sent to me via
3162 @lists.debian.org, giving me a set of around 216 000 emails to import.
3163 In the process, I had a look at the various attachments included in
3164 these emails, to figure out what to do with attachments, and noticed
3165 that one of the most common attachment formats do not have
3166 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml&quot;&gt;an
3167 official MIME type&lt;/a&gt; registered with IANA/IETF. The output from
3168 diff, ie the input for patch, is on the top 10 list of formats
3169 included in these emails. At the moment people seem to use either
3170 text/x-patch or text/x-diff, but neither is officially registered. It
3171 would be better if one official MIME type were registered and used
3172 everywhere.&lt;/p&gt;
3173
3174 &lt;p&gt;To try to get one official MIME type for these files, I&#39;ve brought
3175 up the topic on
3176 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/media-types&quot;&gt;the
3177 media-types mailing list&lt;/a&gt;. If you are interested in discussion
3178 which MIME type to use as the official for patch files, or involved in
3179 making software using a MIME type for patches, perhaps you would like
3180 to join the discussion?&lt;/p&gt;
3181
3182 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3183 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3184 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3185 </description>
3186 </item>
3187
3188 <item>
3189 <title>Automatic Google Drive sync using grive in Debian</title>
3190 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatic_Google_Drive_sync_using_grive_in_Debian.html</link>
3191 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatic_Google_Drive_sync_using_grive_in_Debian.html</guid>
3192 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Oct 2018 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
3193 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days, I rescued a Windows victim over to Debian. To try to
3194 rescue the remains, I helped set up automatic sync with Google Drive.
3195 I did not find any sensible Debian package handling this
3196 automatically, so I rebuild the grive2 source from
3197 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webupd8.org/&quot;&gt;the Ubuntu UPD8 PPA&lt;/a&gt; to do the
3198 task and added a autostart desktop entry and a small shell script to
3199 run in the background while the user is logged in to do the sync.
3200 Here is a sketch of the setup for future reference.&lt;/p&gt;
3201
3202 &lt;p&gt;I first created &lt;tt&gt;~/googledrive&lt;/tt&gt;, entered the directory and
3203 ran &#39;&lt;tt&gt;grive -a&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; to authenticate the machine/user. Next, I
3204 created a autostart hook in &lt;tt&gt;~/.config/autostart/grive.desktop&lt;/tt&gt;
3205 to start the sync when the user log in:&lt;/p&gt;
3206
3207 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3208 [Desktop Entry]
3209 Name=Google drive autosync
3210 Type=Application
3211 Exec=/home/user/bin/grive-sync
3212 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3213
3214 &lt;p&gt;Finally, I wrote the &lt;tt&gt;~/bin/grive-sync&lt;/tt&gt; script to sync
3215 ~/googledrive/ with the files in Google Drive.&lt;/p&gt;
3216
3217 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3218 #!/bin/sh
3219 set -e
3220 cd ~/
3221 cleanup() {
3222 if [ &quot;$syncpid&quot; ] ; then
3223 kill $syncpid
3224 fi
3225 }
3226 trap cleanup EXIT INT QUIT
3227 /usr/lib/grive/grive-sync.sh listen googledrive 2&gt;&amp;1 | sed &quot;s%^%$0:%&quot; &amp;
3228 syncpdi=$!
3229 while true; do
3230 if ! xhost &gt;/dev/null 2&gt;&amp;1 ; then
3231 echo &quot;no DISPLAY, exiting as the user probably logged out&quot;
3232 exit 1
3233 fi
3234 if [ ! -e /run/user/1000/grive-sync.sh_googledrive ] ; then
3235 /usr/lib/grive/grive-sync.sh sync googledrive
3236 fi
3237 sleep 300
3238 done 2&gt;&amp;1 | sed &quot;s%^%$0:%&quot;
3239 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3240
3241 &lt;p&gt;Feel free to use the setup if you want. It can be assumed to be
3242 GNU GPL v2 licensed (or any later version, at your leisure), but I
3243 doubt this code is possible to claim copyright on.&lt;/p&gt;
3244
3245 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3246 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3247 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3248 </description>
3249 </item>
3250
3251 <item>
3252 <title>Using the Kodi API to play Youtube videos</title>
3253 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_the_Kodi_API_to_play_Youtube_videos.html</link>
3254 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_the_Kodi_API_to_play_Youtube_videos.html</guid>
3255 <pubDate>Sun, 2 Sep 2018 23:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
3256 <description>&lt;p&gt;I continue to explore my Kodi installation, and today I wanted to
3257 tell it to play a youtube URL I received in a chat, without having to
3258 insert search terms using the on-screen keyboard. After searching the
3259 web for API access to the Youtube plugin and testing a bit, I managed
3260 to find a recipe that worked. If you got a kodi instance with its API
3261 available from http://kodihost/jsonrpc, you can try the following to
3262 have check out a nice cover band.&lt;/p&gt;
3263
3264 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;curl --silent --header &#39;Content-Type: application/json&#39; \
3265 --data-binary &#39;{ &quot;id&quot;: 1, &quot;jsonrpc&quot;: &quot;2.0&quot;, &quot;method&quot;: &quot;Player.Open&quot;,
3266 &quot;params&quot;: {&quot;item&quot;: { &quot;file&quot;:
3267 &quot;plugin://plugin.video.youtube/play/?video_id=LuRGVM9O0qg&quot; } } }&#39; \
3268 http://projector.local/jsonrpc&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3269
3270 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve extended kodi-stream program to take a video source as its
3271 first argument. It can now handle direct video links, youtube links
3272 and &#39;desktop&#39; to stream my desktop to Kodi. It is almost like a
3273 Chromecast. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3274
3275 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3276 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3277 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3278 </description>
3279 </item>
3280
3281 <item>
3282 <title>Sharing images with friends and family using RSS and EXIF/XMP metadata</title>
3283 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Sharing_images_with_friends_and_family_using_RSS_and_EXIF_XMP_metadata.html</link>
3284 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Sharing_images_with_friends_and_family_using_RSS_and_EXIF_XMP_metadata.html</guid>
3285 <pubDate>Tue, 31 Jul 2018 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
3286 <description>&lt;p&gt;For a while now, I have looked for a sensible way to share images
3287 with my family using a self hosted solution, as it is unacceptable to
3288 place images from my personal life under the control of strangers
3289 working for data hoarders like Google or Dropbox. The last few days I
3290 have drafted an approach that might work out, and I would like to
3291 share it with you. I would like to publish images on a server under
3292 my control, and point some Internet connected display units using some
3293 free and open standard to the images I published. As my primary
3294 language is not limited to ASCII, I need to store metadata using
3295 UTF-8. Many years ago, I hoped to find a digital photo frame capable
3296 of reading a RSS feed with image references (aka using the
3297 &amp;lt;enclosure&amp;gt; RSS tag), but was unable to find a current supplier
3298 of such frames. In the end I gave up that approach.&lt;/p&gt;
3299
3300 &lt;p&gt;Some months ago, I discovered that
3301 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/&quot;&gt;XScreensaver&lt;/a&gt; is able to
3302 read images from a RSS feed, and used it to set up a screen saver on
3303 my home info screen, showing images from the Daily images feed from
3304 NASA. This proved to work well. More recently I discovered that
3305 &lt;a href=&quot;https://kodi.tv&quot;&gt;Kodi&lt;/a&gt; (both using
3306 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.openelec.tv/&quot;&gt;OpenELEC&lt;/a&gt; and
3307 &lt;a href=&quot;https://libreelec.tv&quot;&gt;LibreELEC&lt;/a&gt;) provide the
3308 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/grinsted/script.screensaver.feedreader&quot;&gt;Feedreader&lt;/a&gt;
3309 screen saver capable of reading a RSS feed with images and news. For
3310 fun, I used it this summer to test Kodi on my parents TV by hooking up
3311 a Raspberry PI unit with LibreELEC, and wanted to provide them with a
3312 screen saver showing selected pictures from my selection.&lt;/p&gt;
3313
3314 &lt;p&gt;Armed with motivation and a test photo frame, I set out to generate
3315 a RSS feed for the Kodi instance. I adjusted my &lt;a
3316 href=&quot;https://freedombox.org/&quot;&gt;Freedombox&lt;/a&gt; instance, created
3317 /var/www/html/privatepictures/, wrote a small Perl script to extract
3318 title and description metadata from the photo files and generate the
3319 RSS file. I ended up using Perl instead of python, as the
3320 libimage-exiftool-perl Debian package seemed to handle the EXIF/XMP
3321 tags I ended up using, while python3-exif did not. The relevant EXIF
3322 tags only support ASCII, so I had to find better alternatives. XMP
3323 seem to have the support I need.&lt;/p&gt;
3324
3325 &lt;p&gt;I am a bit unsure which EXIF/XMP tags to use, as I would like to
3326 use tags that can be easily added/updated using normal free software
3327 photo managing software. I ended up using the tags set using this
3328 exiftool command, as these tags can also be set using digiKam:&lt;/p&gt;
3329
3330 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3331 exiftool -headline=&#39;The RSS image title&#39; \
3332 -description=&#39;The RSS image description.&#39; \
3333 -subject+=for-family photo.jpeg
3334 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3335
3336 &lt;p&gt;I initially tried the &quot;-title&quot; and &quot;keyword&quot; tags, but they were
3337 invisible in digiKam, so I changed to &quot;-headline&quot; and &quot;-subject&quot;. I
3338 use the keyword/subject &#39;for-family&#39; to flag that the photo should be
3339 shared with my family. Images with this keyword set are located and
3340 copied into my Freedombox for the RSS generating script to find.&lt;/p&gt;
3341
3342 &lt;p&gt;Are there better ways to do this? Get in touch if you have better
3343 suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;
3344
3345 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3346 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3347 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3348 </description>
3349 </item>
3350
3351 <item>
3352 <title>Simple streaming the Linux desktop to Kodi using GStreamer and RTP</title>
3353 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Simple_streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_GStreamer_and_RTP.html</link>
3354 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Simple_streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_GStreamer_and_RTP.html</guid>
3355 <pubDate>Thu, 12 Jul 2018 17:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
3356 <description>&lt;p&gt;Last night, I wrote
3357 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html&quot;&gt;a
3358 recipe to stream a Linux desktop using VLC to a instance of Kodi&lt;/a&gt;.
3359 During the day I received valuable feedback, and thanks to the
3360 suggestions I have been able to rewrite the recipe into a much simpler
3361 approach requiring no setup at all. It is a single script that take
3362 care of it all.&lt;/p&gt;
3363
3364 &lt;p&gt;This new script uses GStreamer instead of VLC to capture the
3365 desktop and stream it to Kodi. This fixed the video quality issue I
3366 saw initially. It further removes the need to add a m3u file on the
3367 Kodi machine, as it instead connects to
3368 &lt;a href=&quot;https://kodi.wiki/view/JSON-RPC_API/v8&quot;&gt;the JSON-RPC API in
3369 Kodi&lt;/a&gt; and simply ask Kodi to play from the stream created using
3370 GStreamer. Streaming the desktop to Kodi now become trivial. Copy
3371 the script below, run it with the DNS name or IP address of the kodi
3372 server to stream to as the only argument, and watch your screen show
3373 up on the Kodi screen. Note, it depend on multicast on the local
3374 network, so if you need to stream outside the local network, the
3375 script must be modified. Also note, I have no idea if audio work, as
3376 I only care about the picture part.&lt;/p&gt;
3377
3378 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3379 #!/bin/sh
3380 #
3381 # Stream the Linux desktop view to Kodi. See
3382 # http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html
3383 # for backgorund information.
3384
3385 # Make sure the stream is stopped in Kodi and the gstreamer process is
3386 # killed if something go wrong (for example if curl is unable to find the
3387 # kodi server). Do the same when interrupting this script.
3388 kodicmd() {
3389 host=&quot;$1&quot;
3390 cmd=&quot;$2&quot;
3391 params=&quot;$3&quot;
3392 curl --silent --header &#39;Content-Type: application/json&#39; \
3393 --data-binary &quot;{ \&quot;id\&quot;: 1, \&quot;jsonrpc\&quot;: \&quot;2.0\&quot;, \&quot;method\&quot;: \&quot;$cmd\&quot;, \&quot;params\&quot;: $params }&quot; \
3394 &quot;http://$host/jsonrpc&quot;
3395 }
3396 cleanup() {
3397 if [ -n &quot;$kodihost&quot; ] ; then
3398 # Stop the playing when we end
3399 playerid=$(kodicmd &quot;$kodihost&quot; Player.GetActivePlayers &quot;{}&quot; |
3400 jq .result[].playerid)
3401 kodicmd &quot;$kodihost&quot; Player.Stop &quot;{ \&quot;playerid\&quot; : $playerid }&quot; &gt; /dev/null
3402 fi
3403 if [ &quot;$gstpid&quot; ] &amp;&amp; kill -0 &quot;$gstpid&quot; &gt;/dev/null 2&gt;&amp;1; then
3404 kill &quot;$gstpid&quot;
3405 fi
3406 }
3407 trap cleanup EXIT INT
3408
3409 if [ -n &quot;$1&quot; ]; then
3410 kodihost=$1
3411 shift
3412 else
3413 kodihost=kodi.local
3414 fi
3415
3416 mcast=239.255.0.1
3417 mcastport=1234
3418 mcastttl=1
3419
3420 pasrc=$(pactl list | grep -A2 &#39;Source #&#39; | grep &#39;Name: .*\.monitor$&#39; | \
3421 cut -d&quot; &quot; -f2|head -1)
3422 gst-launch-1.0 ximagesrc use-damage=0 ! video/x-raw,framerate=30/1 ! \
3423 videoconvert ! queue2 ! \
3424 x264enc bitrate=8000 speed-preset=superfast tune=zerolatency qp-min=30 \
3425 key-int-max=15 bframes=2 ! video/x-h264,profile=high ! queue2 ! \
3426 mpegtsmux alignment=7 name=mux ! rndbuffersize max=1316 min=1316 ! \
3427 udpsink host=$mcast port=$mcastport ttl-mc=$mcastttl auto-multicast=1 sync=0 \
3428 pulsesrc device=$pasrc ! audioconvert ! queue2 ! avenc_aac ! queue2 ! mux. \
3429 &gt; /dev/null 2&gt;&amp;1 &amp;
3430 gstpid=$!
3431
3432 # Give stream a second to get going
3433 sleep 1
3434
3435 # Ask kodi to start streaming using its JSON-RPC API
3436 kodicmd &quot;$kodihost&quot; Player.Open \
3437 &quot;{\&quot;item\&quot;: { \&quot;file\&quot;: \&quot;udp://@$mcast:$mcastport\&quot; } }&quot; &gt; /dev/null
3438
3439 # wait for gst to end
3440 wait &quot;$gstpid&quot;
3441 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3442
3443 &lt;p&gt;I hope you find the approach useful. I know I do.&lt;/p&gt;
3444
3445 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3446 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3447 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3448 </description>
3449 </item>
3450
3451 <item>
3452 <title>Streaming the Linux desktop to Kodi using VLC and RTSP</title>
3453 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html</link>
3454 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html</guid>
3455 <pubDate>Thu, 12 Jul 2018 02:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
3456 <description>&lt;p&gt;PS: See
3457 &lt;ahref=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Simple_streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_GStreamer_and_RTP.html&quot;&gt;the
3458 followup post&lt;/a&gt; for a even better approach.&lt;/p&gt;
3459
3460 &lt;p&gt;A while back, I was asked by a friend how to stream the desktop to
3461 my projector connected to Kodi. I sadly had to admit that I had no
3462 idea, as it was a task I never had tried. Since then, I have been
3463 looking for a way to do so, preferable without much extra software to
3464 install on either side. Today I found a way that seem to kind of
3465 work. Not great, but it is a start.&lt;/p&gt;
3466
3467 &lt;p&gt;I had a look at several approaches, for example
3468 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/mfoetsch/dlna_live_streaming&quot;&gt;using uPnP
3469 DLNA as described in 2011&lt;/a&gt;, but it required a uPnP server, fuse and
3470 local storage enough to store the stream locally. This is not going
3471 to work well for me, lacking enough free space, and it would
3472 impossible for my friend to get working.&lt;/p&gt;
3473
3474 &lt;p&gt;Next, it occurred to me that perhaps I could use VLC to create a
3475 video stream that Kodi could play. Preferably using
3476 broadcast/multicast, to avoid having to change any setup on the Kodi
3477 side when starting such stream. Unfortunately, the only recipe I
3478 could find using multicast used the rtp protocol, and this protocol
3479 seem to not be supported by Kodi.&lt;/p&gt;
3480
3481 &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the rtsp protocol is working! Unfortunately I
3482 have to specify the IP address of the streaming machine in both the
3483 sending command and the file on the Kodi server. But it is showing my
3484 desktop, and thus allow us to have a shared look on the big screen at
3485 the programs I work on.&lt;/p&gt;
3486
3487 &lt;p&gt;I did not spend much time investigating codeces. I combined the
3488 rtp and rtsp recipes from
3489 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Streaming_HowTo/Command_Line_Examples/&quot;&gt;the
3490 VLC Streaming HowTo/Command Line Examples&lt;/a&gt;, and was able to get
3491 this working on the desktop/streaming end.&lt;/p&gt;
3492
3493 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3494 vlc screen:// --sout \
3495 &#39;#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{dst=projector.local,port=1234,sdp=rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/test.sdp}&#39;
3496 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3497
3498 &lt;p&gt;I ssh-ed into my Kodi box and created a file like this with the
3499 same IP address:&lt;/p&gt;
3500
3501 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3502 echo rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/test.sdp \
3503 &gt; /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
3504 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3505
3506 &lt;p&gt;Note the 192.168.11.4 IP address is my desktops IP address. As far
3507 as I can tell the IP must be hardcoded for this to work. In other
3508 words, if someone elses machine is going to do the steaming, you have
3509 to update screenstream.m3u on the Kodi machine and adjust the vlc
3510 recipe. To get started, locate the file in Kodi and select the m3u
3511 file while the VLC stream is running. The desktop then show up in my
3512 big screen. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3513
3514 &lt;p&gt;When using the same technique to stream a video file with audio,
3515 the audio quality is really bad. No idea if the problem is package
3516 loss or bad parameters for the transcode. I do not know VLC nor Kodi
3517 enough to tell.&lt;/p&gt;
3518
3519 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2018-07-12&lt;/strong&gt;: Johannes Schauer send me a few
3520 succestions and reminded me about an important step. The &quot;screen:&quot;
3521 input source is only available once the vlc-plugin-access-extra
3522 package is installed on Debian. Without it, you will see this error
3523 message: &quot;VLC is unable to open the MRL &#39;screen://&#39;. Check the log
3524 for details.&quot; He further found that it is possible to drop some parts
3525 of the VLC command line to reduce the amount of hardcoded information.
3526 It is also useful to consider using cvlc to avoid having the VLC
3527 window in the desktop view. In sum, this give us this command line on
3528 the source end
3529
3530 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3531 cvlc screen:// --sout \
3532 &#39;#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{sdp=rtsp://:8080/}&#39;
3533 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3534
3535 &lt;p&gt;and this on the Kodi end&lt;p&gt;
3536
3537 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3538 echo rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/ \
3539 &gt; /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
3540 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3541
3542 &lt;p&gt;Still bad image quality, though. But I did discover that streaming
3543 a DVD using dvdsimple:///dev/dvd as the source had excellent video and
3544 audio quality, so I guess the issue is in the input or transcoding
3545 parts, not the rtsp part. I&#39;ve tried to change the vb and ab
3546 parameters to use more bandwidth, but it did not make a
3547 difference.&lt;/p&gt;
3548
3549 &lt;p&gt;I further received a suggestion from Einar Haraldseid to try using
3550 gstreamer instead of VLC, and this proved to work great! He also
3551 provided me with the trick to get Kodi to use a multicast stream as
3552 its source. By using this monstrous oneliner, I can stream my desktop
3553 with good video quality in reasonable framerate to the 239.255.0.1
3554 multicast address on port 1234:
3555
3556 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3557 gst-launch-1.0 ximagesrc use-damage=0 ! video/x-raw,framerate=30/1 ! \
3558 videoconvert ! queue2 ! \
3559 x264enc bitrate=8000 speed-preset=superfast tune=zerolatency qp-min=30 \
3560 key-int-max=15 bframes=2 ! video/x-h264,profile=high ! queue2 ! \
3561 mpegtsmux alignment=7 name=mux ! rndbuffersize max=1316 min=1316 ! \
3562 udpsink host=239.255.0.1 port=1234 ttl-mc=1 auto-multicast=1 sync=0 \
3563 pulsesrc device=$(pactl list | grep -A2 &#39;Source #&#39; | \
3564 grep &#39;Name: .*\.monitor$&#39; | cut -d&quot; &quot; -f2|head -1) ! \
3565 audioconvert ! queue2 ! avenc_aac ! queue2 ! mux.
3566 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3567
3568 &lt;p&gt;and this on the Kodi end&lt;p&gt;
3569
3570 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3571 echo udp://@239.255.0.1:1234 \
3572 &gt; /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
3573 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3574
3575 &lt;p&gt;Note the trick to pick a valid pulseaudio source. It might not
3576 pick the one you need. This approach will of course lead to trouble
3577 if more than one source uses the same multicast port and address.
3578 Note the ttl-mc=1 setting, which limit the multicast packages to the
3579 local network. If the value is increased, your screen will be
3580 broadcasted further, one network &quot;hop&quot; for each increase (read up on
3581 multicast to learn more. :)!&lt;/p&gt;
3582
3583 &lt;p&gt;Having cracked how to get Kodi to receive multicast streams, I
3584 could use this VLC command to stream to the same multicast address.
3585 The image quality is way better than the rtsp approach, but gstreamer
3586 seem to be doing a better job.&lt;/p&gt;
3587
3588 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3589 cvlc screen:// --sout &#39;#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{mux=ts,dst=239.255.0.1,port=1234,sdp=sap}&#39;
3590 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3591
3592 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3593 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3594 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3595 </description>
3596 </item>
3597
3598 <item>
3599 <title>What is the most supported MIME type in Debian in 2018?</title>
3600 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2018_.html</link>
3601 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2018_.html</guid>
3602 <pubDate>Mon, 9 Jul 2018 08:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
3603 <description>&lt;p&gt;Five years ago,
3604 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html&quot;&gt;I
3605 measured what the most supported MIME type in Debian was&lt;/a&gt;, by
3606 analysing the desktop files in all packages in the archive. Since
3607 then, the DEP-11 AppStream system has been put into production, making
3608 the task a lot easier. This made me want to repeat the measurement,
3609 to see how much things changed. Here are the new numbers, for
3610 unstable only this time:
3611
3612 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Unstable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3613
3614 &lt;pre&gt;
3615 count MIME type
3616 ----- -----------------------
3617 56 image/jpeg
3618 55 image/png
3619 49 image/tiff
3620 48 image/gif
3621 39 image/bmp
3622 38 text/plain
3623 37 audio/mpeg
3624 34 application/ogg
3625 33 audio/x-flac
3626 32 audio/x-mp3
3627 30 audio/x-wav
3628 30 audio/x-vorbis+ogg
3629 29 image/x-portable-pixmap
3630 27 inode/directory
3631 27 image/x-portable-bitmap
3632 27 audio/x-mpeg
3633 26 application/x-ogg
3634 25 audio/x-mpegurl
3635 25 audio/ogg
3636 24 text/html
3637 &lt;/pre&gt;
3638
3639 &lt;p&gt;The list was created like this using a sid chroot: &quot;cat
3640 /var/lib/apt/lists/*sid*_dep11_Components-amd64.yml.gz| zcat | awk &#39;/^
3641 - \S+\/\S+$/ {print $2 }&#39; | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
3642
3643 &lt;p&gt;It is interesting to see how image formats have passed text/plain
3644 as the most announced supported MIME type. These days, thanks to the
3645 AppStream system, if you run into a file format you do not know, and
3646 want to figure out which packages support the format, you can find the
3647 MIME type of the file using &quot;file --mime &amp;lt;filename&amp;gt;&quot;, and then
3648 look up all packages announcing support for this format in their
3649 AppStream metadata (XML or .desktop file) using &quot;appstreamcli
3650 what-provides mimetype &amp;lt;mime-type&amp;gt;. For example if you, like
3651 me, want to know which packages support inode/directory, you can get a
3652 list like this:&lt;/p&gt;
3653
3654 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3655 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype inode/directory | grep Package: | sort
3656 Package: anjuta
3657 Package: audacious
3658 Package: baobab
3659 Package: cervisia
3660 Package: chirp
3661 Package: dolphin
3662 Package: doublecmd-common
3663 Package: easytag
3664 Package: enlightenment
3665 Package: ephoto
3666 Package: filelight
3667 Package: gwenview
3668 Package: k4dirstat
3669 Package: kaffeine
3670 Package: kdesvn
3671 Package: kid3
3672 Package: kid3-qt
3673 Package: nautilus
3674 Package: nemo
3675 Package: pcmanfm
3676 Package: pcmanfm-qt
3677 Package: qweborf
3678 Package: ranger
3679 Package: sirikali
3680 Package: spacefm
3681 Package: spacefm
3682 Package: vifm
3683 %
3684 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3685
3686 &lt;p&gt;Using the same method, I can quickly discover that the Sketchup file
3687 format is not yet supported by any package in Debian:&lt;/p&gt;
3688
3689 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3690 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype application/vnd.sketchup.skp
3691 Could not find component providing &#39;mimetype::application/vnd.sketchup.skp&#39;.
3692 %
3693 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3694
3695 &lt;p&gt;Yesterday I used it to figure out which packages support the STL 3D
3696 format:&lt;/p&gt;
3697
3698 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3699 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype application/sla|grep Package
3700 Package: cura
3701 Package: meshlab
3702 Package: printrun
3703 %
3704 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3705
3706 &lt;p&gt;PS: A new version of Cura was uploaded to Debian yesterday.&lt;/p&gt;
3707
3708 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3709 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3710 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3711 </description>
3712 </item>
3713
3714 <item>
3715 <title>Debian APT upgrade without enough free space on the disk...</title>
3716 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_APT_upgrade_without_enough_free_space_on_the_disk___.html</link>
3717 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_APT_upgrade_without_enough_free_space_on_the_disk___.html</guid>
3718 <pubDate>Sun, 8 Jul 2018 12:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
3719 <description>&lt;p&gt;Quite regularly, I let my Debian Sid/Unstable chroot stay untouch
3720 for a while, and when I need to update it there is not enough free
3721 space on the disk for apt to do a normal &#39;apt upgrade&#39;. I normally
3722 would resolve the issue by doing &#39;apt install &amp;lt;somepackages&amp;gt;&#39; to
3723 upgrade only some of the packages in one batch, until the amount of
3724 packages to download fall below the amount of free space available.
3725 Today, I had about 500 packages to upgrade, and after a while I got
3726 tired of trying to install chunks of packages manually. I concluded
3727 that I did not have the spare hours required to complete the task, and
3728 decided to see if I could automate it. I came up with this small
3729 script which I call &#39;apt-in-chunks&#39;:&lt;/p&gt;
3730
3731 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3732 #!/bin/sh
3733 #
3734 # Upgrade packages when the disk is too full to upgrade every
3735 # upgradable package in one lump. Fetching packages to upgrade using
3736 # apt, and then installing using dpkg, to avoid changing the package
3737 # flag for manual/automatic.
3738
3739 set -e
3740
3741 ignore() {
3742 if [ &quot;$1&quot; ]; then
3743 grep -v &quot;$1&quot;
3744 else
3745 cat
3746 fi
3747 }
3748
3749 for p in $(apt list --upgradable | ignore &quot;$@&quot; |cut -d/ -f1 | grep -v &#39;^Listing...&#39;); do
3750 echo &quot;Upgrading $p&quot;
3751 apt clean
3752 apt install --download-only -y $p
3753 for f in /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb; do
3754 if [ -e &quot;$f&quot; ]; then
3755 dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb
3756 break
3757 fi
3758 done
3759 done
3760 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3761
3762 &lt;p&gt;The script will extract the list of packages to upgrade, try to
3763 download the packages needed to upgrade one package, install the
3764 downloaded packages using dpkg. The idea is to upgrade packages
3765 without changing the APT mark for the package (ie the one recording of
3766 the package was manually requested or pulled in as a dependency). To
3767 use it, simply run it as root from the command line. If it fail, try
3768 &#39;apt install -f&#39; to clean up the mess and run the script again. This
3769 might happen if the new packages conflict with one of the old
3770 packages. dpkg is unable to remove, while apt can do this.&lt;/p&gt;
3771
3772 &lt;p&gt;It take one option, a package to ignore in the list of packages to
3773 upgrade. The option to ignore a package is there to be able to skip
3774 the packages that are simply too large to unpack. Today this was
3775 &#39;ghc&#39;, but I have run into other large packages causing similar
3776 problems earlier (like TeX).&lt;/p&gt;
3777
3778 &lt;p&gt;Update 2018-07-08: Thanks to Paul Wise, I am aware of two
3779 alternative ways to handle this. The &quot;unattended-upgrades
3780 --minimal-upgrade-steps&quot; option will try to calculate upgrade sets for
3781 each package to upgrade, and then upgrade them in order, smallest set
3782 first. It might be a better option than my above mentioned script.
3783 Also, &quot;aptutude upgrade&quot; can upgrade single packages, thus avoiding
3784 the need for using &quot;dpkg -i&quot; in the script above.&lt;/p&gt;
3785
3786 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3787 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3788 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3789 </description>
3790 </item>
3791
3792 <item>
3793 <title>Version 3.1 of Cura, the 3D print slicer, is now in Debian</title>
3794 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Version_3_1_of_Cura__the_3D_print_slicer__is_now_in_Debian.html</link>
3795 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Version_3_1_of_Cura__the_3D_print_slicer__is_now_in_Debian.html</guid>
3796 <pubDate>Tue, 13 Feb 2018 06:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
3797 <description>&lt;p&gt;A new version of the
3798 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura&quot;&gt;3D printer slicer
3799 software Cura&lt;/a&gt;, version 3.1.0, is now available in Debian Testing
3800 (aka Buster) and Debian Unstable (aka Sid). I hope you find it
3801 useful. It was uploaded the last few days, and the last update will
3802 enter testing tomorrow. See the
3803 &lt;a href=&quot;https://ultimaker.com/en/products/cura-software/release-notes&quot;&gt;release
3804 notes&lt;/a&gt; for the list of bug fixes and new features. Version 3.2
3805 was announced 6 days ago. We will try to get it into Debian as
3806 well.&lt;/p&gt;
3807
3808 &lt;p&gt;More information related to 3D printing is available on the
3809 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/3DPrinting&quot;&gt;3D printing&lt;/a&gt; and
3810 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/3D-printer&quot;&gt;3D printer&lt;/a&gt; wiki pages
3811 in Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
3812
3813 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3814 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3815 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3816 </description>
3817 </item>
3818
3819 <item>
3820 <title>Cura, the nice 3D print slicer, is now in Debian Unstable</title>
3821 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Cura__the_nice_3D_print_slicer__is_now_in_Debian_Unstable.html</link>
3822 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Cura__the_nice_3D_print_slicer__is_now_in_Debian_Unstable.html</guid>
3823 <pubDate>Sun, 17 Dec 2017 07:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
3824 <description>&lt;p&gt;After several months of working and waiting, I am happy to report
3825 that the nice and user friendly 3D printer slicer software Cura just
3826 entered Debian Unstable. It consist of five packages,
3827 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura&quot;&gt;cura&lt;/a&gt;,
3828 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura-engine&quot;&gt;cura-engine&lt;/a&gt;,
3829 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libarcus&quot;&gt;libarcus&lt;/a&gt;,
3830 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/fdm-materials&quot;&gt;fdm-materials&lt;/a&gt;,
3831 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libsavitar&quot;&gt;libsavitar&lt;/a&gt; and
3832 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/uranium&quot;&gt;uranium&lt;/a&gt;. The last
3833 two, uranium and cura, entered Unstable yesterday. This should make
3834 it easier for Debian users to print on at least the Ultimaker class of
3835 3D printers. My nearest 3D printer is an Ultimaker 2+, so it will
3836 make life easier for at least me. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3837
3838 &lt;p&gt;The work to make this happen was done by Gregor Riepl, and I was
3839 happy to assist him in sponsoring the packages. With the introduction
3840 of Cura, Debian is up to three 3D printer slicers at your service,
3841 Cura, Slic3r and Slic3r Prusa. If you own or have access to a 3D
3842 printer, give it a go. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3843
3844 &lt;p&gt;The 3D printer software is maintained by the 3D printer Debian
3845 team, flocking together on the
3846 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/3dprinter-general&quot;&gt;3dprinter-general&lt;/a&gt;
3847 mailing list and the
3848 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-3dprinting&quot;&gt;#debian-3dprinting&lt;/a&gt;
3849 IRC channel.&lt;/p&gt;
3850
3851 &lt;p&gt;The next step for Cura in Debian is to update the cura package to
3852 version 3.0.3 and then update the entire set of packages to version
3853 3.1.0 which showed up the last few days.&lt;/p&gt;
3854 </description>
3855 </item>
3856
3857 <item>
3858 <title>Generating 3D prints in Debian using Cura and Slic3r(-prusa)</title>
3859 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Generating_3D_prints_in_Debian_using_Cura_and_Slic3r__prusa_.html</link>
3860 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Generating_3D_prints_in_Debian_using_Cura_and_Slic3r__prusa_.html</guid>
3861 <pubDate>Mon, 9 Oct 2017 10:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
3862 <description>&lt;p&gt;At my nearby maker space,
3863 &lt;a href=&quot;http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/&quot;&gt;Sonen&lt;/a&gt;, I heard the story that it
3864 was easier to generate gcode files for theyr 3D printers (Ultimake 2+)
3865 on Windows and MacOS X than Linux, because the software involved had
3866 to be manually compiled and set up on Linux while premade packages
3867 worked out of the box on Windows and MacOS X. I found this annoying,
3868 as the software involved,
3869 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura&quot;&gt;Cura&lt;/a&gt;, is free software
3870 and should be trivial to get up and running on Linux if someone took
3871 the time to package it for the relevant distributions. I even found
3872 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/706656&quot;&gt;a request for adding into
3873 Debian&lt;/a&gt; from 2013, which had seem some activity over the years but
3874 never resulted in the software showing up in Debian. So a few days
3875 ago I offered my help to try to improve the situation.&lt;/p&gt;
3876
3877 &lt;p&gt;Now I am very happy to see that all the packages required by a
3878 working Cura in Debian are uploaded into Debian and waiting in the NEW
3879 queue for the ftpmasters to have a look. You can track the progress
3880 on
3881 &lt;a href=&quot;https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=3dprinter-general%40lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
3882 status page for the 3D printer team&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3883
3884 &lt;p&gt;The uploaded packages are a bit behind upstream, and was uploaded
3885 now to get slots in &lt;a href=&quot;https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html&quot;&gt;the NEW
3886 queue&lt;/a&gt; while we work up updating the packages to the latest
3887 upstream version.&lt;/p&gt;
3888
3889 &lt;p&gt;On a related note, two competitors for Cura, which I found harder
3890 to use and was unable to configure correctly for Ultimaker 2+ in the
3891 short time I spent on it, are already in Debian. If you are looking
3892 for 3D printer &quot;slicers&quot; and want something already available in
3893 Debian, check out
3894 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r&quot;&gt;slic3r&lt;/a&gt; and
3895 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r-prusa&quot;&gt;slic3r-prusa&lt;/a&gt;.
3896 The latter is a fork of the former.&lt;/p&gt;
3897
3898 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3899 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3900 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3901 </description>
3902 </item>
3903
3904 <item>
3905 <title>Visualizing GSM radio chatter using gr-gsm and Hopglass</title>
3906 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Visualizing_GSM_radio_chatter_using_gr_gsm_and_Hopglass.html</link>
3907 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Visualizing_GSM_radio_chatter_using_gr_gsm_and_Hopglass.html</guid>
3908 <pubDate>Fri, 29 Sep 2017 10:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
3909 <description>&lt;p&gt;Every mobile phone announce its existence over radio to the nearby
3910 mobile cell towers. And this radio chatter is available for anyone
3911 with a radio receiver capable of receiving them. Details about the
3912 mobile phones with very good accuracy is of course collected by the
3913 phone companies, but this is not the topic of this blog post. The
3914 mobile phone radio chatter make it possible to figure out when a cell
3915 phone is nearby, as it include the SIM card ID (IMSI). By paying
3916 attention over time, one can see when a phone arrive and when it leave
3917 an area. I believe it would be nice to make this information more
3918 available to the general public, to make more people aware of how
3919 their phones are announcing their whereabouts to anyone that care to
3920 listen.&lt;/p&gt;
3921
3922 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to report that we managed to get something
3923 visualizing this information up and running for
3924 &lt;a href=&quot;http://norwaymakers.org/osf17&quot;&gt;Oslo Skaperfestival 2017&lt;/a&gt;
3925 (Oslo Makers Festival) taking place today and tomorrow at Deichmanske
3926 library. The solution is based on the
3927 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html&quot;&gt;simple
3928 recipe for listening to GSM chatter&lt;/a&gt; I posted a few days ago, and
3929 will show up at the stand of &lt;a href=&quot;http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/&quot;&gt;Åpen
3930 Sone from the Computer Science department of the University of
3931 Oslo&lt;/a&gt;. The presentation will show the nearby mobile phones (aka
3932 IMSIs) as dots in a web browser graph, with lines to the dot
3933 representing mobile base station it is talking to. It was working in
3934 the lab yesterday, and was moved into place this morning.&lt;/p&gt;
3935
3936 &lt;p&gt;We set up a fairly powerful desktop machine using Debian
3937 Buster/Testing with several (five, I believe) RTL2838 DVB-T receivers
3938 connected and visualize the visible cell phone towers using an
3939 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/marlow925/hopglass&quot;&gt;English version of
3940 Hopglass&lt;/a&gt;. A fairly powerfull machine is needed as the
3941 grgsm_livemon_headless processes from
3942 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm&quot;&gt;gr-gsm&lt;/a&gt; converting
3943 the radio signal to data packages is quite CPU intensive.&lt;/p&gt;
3944
3945 &lt;p&gt;The frequencies to listen to, are identified using a slightly
3946 patched scan-and-livemon (to set the --args values for each receiver),
3947 and the Hopglass data is generated using the
3948 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/IMSI-catcher/tree/meshviewer-output&quot;&gt;patches
3949 in my meshviewer-output branch&lt;/a&gt;. For some reason we could not get
3950 more than four SDRs working. There is also a geographical map trying
3951 to show the location of the base stations, but I believe their
3952 coordinates are hardcoded to some random location in Germany, I
3953 believe. The code should be replaced with code to look up location in
3954 a text file, a sqlite database or one of the online databases
3955 mentioned in
3956 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher/issues/14&quot;&gt;the github
3957 issue for the topic&lt;/a&gt;.
3958
3959 &lt;p&gt;If this sound interesting, visit the stand at the festival!&lt;/p&gt;
3960 </description>
3961 </item>
3962
3963 <item>
3964 <title>Easier recipe to observe the cell phones around you</title>
3965 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html</link>
3966 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html</guid>
3967 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Sep 2017 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
3968 <description>&lt;p&gt;A little more than a month ago I wrote
3969 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html&quot;&gt;how
3970 to observe the SIM card ID (aka IMSI number) of mobile phones talking
3971 to nearby mobile phone base stations using Debian GNU/Linux and a
3972 cheap USB software defined radio&lt;/a&gt;, and thus being able to pinpoint
3973 the location of people and equipment (like cars and trains) with an
3974 accuracy of a few kilometer. Since then we have worked to make the
3975 procedure even simpler, and it is now possible to do this without any
3976 manual frequency tuning and without building your own packages.&lt;/p&gt;
3977
3978 &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm&quot;&gt;gr-gsm&lt;/a&gt;
3979 package is now included in Debian testing and unstable, and the
3980 IMSI-catcher code no longer require root access to fetch and decode
3981 the GSM data collected using gr-gsm.&lt;/p&gt;
3982
3983 &lt;p&gt;Here is an updated recipe, using packages built by Debian and a git
3984 clone of two python scripts:&lt;/p&gt;
3985
3986 &lt;ol&gt;
3987
3988 &lt;li&gt;Start with a Debian machine running the Buster version (aka
3989 testing).&lt;/li&gt;
3990
3991 &lt;li&gt;Run &#39;&lt;tt&gt;apt install gr-gsm python-numpy python-scipy
3992 python-scapy&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; as root to install required packages.&lt;/li&gt;
3993
3994 &lt;li&gt;Fetch the code decoding GSM packages using &#39;&lt;tt&gt;git clone
3995 github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher.git&lt;/tt&gt;&#39;.&lt;/li&gt;
3996
3997 &lt;li&gt;Insert USB software defined radio supported by GNU Radio.&lt;/li&gt;
3998
3999 &lt;li&gt;Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run &#39;&lt;tt&gt;python
4000 scan-and-livemon&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; to locate the frequency of nearby base
4001 stations and start listening for GSM packages on one of them.&lt;/li&gt;
4002
4003 &lt;li&gt;Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run &#39;&lt;tt&gt;python
4004 simple_IMSI-catcher.py&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; to display the collected information.&lt;/li&gt;
4005
4006 &lt;/ol&gt;
4007
4008 &lt;p&gt;Note, due to a bug somewhere the scan-and-livemon program (actually
4009 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/issues/336&quot;&gt;its underlying
4010 program grgsm_scanner&lt;/a&gt;) do not work with the HackRF radio. It does
4011 work with RTL 8232 and other similar USB radio receivers you can get
4012 very cheaply
4013 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=rtl+2832&quot;&gt;for example
4014 from ebay&lt;/a&gt;), so for now the solution is to scan using the RTL radio
4015 and only use HackRF for fetching GSM data.&lt;/p&gt;
4016
4017 &lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, a cell phone only show up on one of the
4018 frequencies at the time, so if you are going to track and count every
4019 cell phone around you, you need to listen to all the frequencies used.
4020 To listen to several frequencies, use the --numrecv argument to
4021 scan-and-livemon to use several receivers. Further, I am not sure if
4022 phones using 3G or 4G will show as talking GSM to base stations, so
4023 this approach might not see all phones around you. I typically see
4024 0-400 IMSI numbers an hour when looking around where I live.&lt;/p&gt;
4025
4026 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve tried to run the scanner on a
4027 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi&quot;&gt;Raspberry Pi 2 and 3
4028 running Debian Buster&lt;/a&gt;, but the grgsm_livemon_headless process seem
4029 to be too CPU intensive to keep up. When GNU Radio print &#39;O&#39; to
4030 stdout, I am told there it is caused by a buffer overflow between the
4031 radio and GNU Radio, caused by the program being unable to read the
4032 GSM data fast enough. If you see a stream of &#39;O&#39;s from the terminal
4033 where you started scan-and-livemon, you need a give the process more
4034 CPU power. Perhaps someone are able to optimize the code to a point
4035 where it become possible to set up RPi3 based GSM sniffers? I tried
4036 using Raspbian instead of Debian, but there seem to be something wrong
4037 with GNU Radio on raspbian, causing glibc to abort().&lt;/p&gt;
4038 </description>
4039 </item>
4040
4041 <item>
4042 <title>Simpler recipe on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher using Debian</title>
4043 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html</link>
4044 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html</guid>
4045 <pubDate>Wed, 9 Aug 2017 23:59:00 +0200</pubDate>
4046 <description>&lt;p&gt;On friday, I came across an interesting article in the Norwegian
4047 web based ICT news magazine digi.no on
4048 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digi.no/artikler/sikkerhetsforsker-lagde-enkel-imsi-catcher-for-60-kroner-na-kan-mobiler-kartlegges-av-alle/398588&quot;&gt;how
4049 to collect the IMSI numbers of nearby cell phones&lt;/a&gt; using the cheap
4050 DVB-T software defined radios. The article refered to instructions
4051 and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjwgNd_as30&quot;&gt;a recipe by
4052 Keld Norman on Youtube on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher&lt;/a&gt;, and I decided to test them out.&lt;/p&gt;
4053
4054 &lt;p&gt;The instructions said to use Ubuntu, install pip using apt (to
4055 bypass apt), use pip to install pybombs (to bypass both apt and pip),
4056 and the ask pybombs to fetch and build everything you need from
4057 scratch. I wanted to see if I could do the same on the most recent
4058 Debian packages, but this did not work because pybombs tried to build
4059 stuff that no longer build with the most recent openssl library or
4060 some other version skew problem. While trying to get this recipe
4061 working, I learned that the apt-&gt;pip-&gt;pybombs route was a long detour,
4062 and the only piece of software dependency missing in Debian was the
4063 gr-gsm package. I also found out that the lead upstream developer of
4064 gr-gsm (the name stand for GNU Radio GSM) project already had a set of
4065 Debian packages provided in an Ubuntu PPA repository. All I needed to
4066 do was to dget the Debian source package and built it.&lt;/p&gt;
4067
4068 &lt;p&gt;The IMSI collector is a python script listening for packages on the
4069 loopback network device and printing to the terminal some specific GSM
4070 packages with IMSI numbers in them. The code is fairly short and easy
4071 to understand. The reason this work is because gr-gsm include a tool
4072 to read GSM data from a software defined radio like a DVB-T USB stick
4073 and other software defined radios, decode them and inject them into a
4074 network device on your Linux machine (using the loopback device by
4075 default). This proved to work just fine, and I&#39;ve been testing the
4076 collector for a few days now.&lt;/p&gt;
4077
4078 &lt;p&gt;The updated and simpler recipe is thus to&lt;/p&gt;
4079
4080 &lt;ol&gt;
4081
4082 &lt;li&gt;start with a Debian machine running Stretch or newer,&lt;/li&gt;
4083
4084 &lt;li&gt;build and install the gr-gsm package available from
4085 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/&quot;&gt;http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;
4086
4087 &lt;li&gt;clone the git repostory from &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher&quot;&gt;https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;
4088
4089 &lt;li&gt;run grgsm_livemon and adjust the frequency until the terminal
4090 where it was started is filled with a stream of text (meaning you
4091 found a GSM station).&lt;/li&gt;
4092
4093 &lt;li&gt;go into the IMSI-catcher directory and run &#39;sudo python simple_IMSI-catcher.py&#39; to extract the IMSI numbers.&lt;/li&gt;
4094
4095 &lt;/ol&gt;
4096
4097 &lt;p&gt;To make it even easier in the future to get this sniffer up and
4098 running, I decided to package
4099 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/&quot;&gt;the gr-gsm project&lt;/a&gt;
4100 for Debian (&lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/871055&quot;&gt;WNPP
4101 #871055&lt;/a&gt;), and the package was uploaded into the NEW queue today.
4102 Luckily the gnuradio maintainer has promised to help me, as I do not
4103 know much about gnuradio stuff yet.&lt;/p&gt;
4104
4105 &lt;p&gt;I doubt this &quot;IMSI cacher&quot; is anywhere near as powerfull as
4106 commercial tools like
4107 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thespyphone.com/portable-imsi-imei-catcher/&quot;&gt;The
4108 Spy Phone Portable IMSI / IMEI Catcher&lt;/a&gt; or the
4109 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker&quot;&gt;Harris
4110 Stingray&lt;/a&gt;, but I hope the existance of cheap alternatives can make
4111 more people realise how their whereabouts when carrying a cell phone
4112 is easily tracked. Seeing the data flow on the screen, realizing that
4113 I live close to a police station and knowing that the police is also
4114 wearing cell phones, I wonder how hard it would be for criminals to
4115 track the position of the police officers to discover when there are
4116 police near by, or for foreign military forces to track the location
4117 of the Norwegian military forces, or for anyone to track the location
4118 of government officials...&lt;/p&gt;
4119
4120 &lt;p&gt;It is worth noting that the data reported by the IMSI-catcher
4121 script mentioned above is only a fraction of the data broadcasted on
4122 the GSM network. It will only collect one frequency at the time,
4123 while a typical phone will be using several frequencies, and not all
4124 phones will be using the frequencies tracked by the grgsm_livemod
4125 program. Also, there is a lot of radio chatter being ignored by the
4126 simple_IMSI-catcher script, which would be collected by extending the
4127 parser code. I wonder if gr-gsm can be set up to listen to more than
4128 one frequency?&lt;/p&gt;
4129 </description>
4130 </item>
4131
4132 <item>
4133 <title>Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator&#39;s Handbook is now available</title>
4134 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_is_now_available.html</link>
4135 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_is_now_available.html</guid>
4136 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Jul 2017 21:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
4137 <description>&lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img align=&quot;center&quot; src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-07-25-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.png&quot;/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4138
4139 &lt;p&gt;I finally received a copy of the Norwegian Bokmål edition of
4140 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://debian-handbook.info/&quot;&gt;The Debian Administrator&#39;s
4141 Handbook&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. This test copy arrived in the mail a few days ago, and
4142 I am very happy to hold the result in my hand. We spent around one and a half year translating it. This paperbook edition
4143 &lt;a href=&quot;https://debian-handbook.info/get/#norwegian&quot;&gt;is available
4144 from lulu.com&lt;/a&gt;. If you buy it quickly, you save 25% on the list
4145 price. The book is also available for download in electronic form as
4146 PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, as can be
4147 &lt;a href=&quot;https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/&quot;&gt;read online
4148 as a web page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4149
4150 &lt;p&gt;This is the second book I publish (the first was the book
4151 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Lawrence Lessig
4152 in
4153 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html&quot;&gt;English&lt;/a&gt;,
4154 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html&quot;&gt;French&lt;/a&gt;
4155 and
4156 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html&quot;&gt;Norwegian
4157 Bokmål&lt;/a&gt;), and I am very excited to finally wrap up this
4158 project. I hope
4159 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lulu.com/shop/rapha%C3%ABl-hertzog-and-roland-mas/h%C3%A5ndbok-for-debian-administratoren/paperback/product-23262290.html&quot;&gt;Håndbok
4160 for Debian-administratoren&lt;/a&gt;&quot; will be well received.&lt;/p&gt;
4161 </description>
4162 </item>
4163
4164 <item>
4165 <title>Når nynorskoversettelsen svikter til eksamen...</title>
4166 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/N_r_nynorskoversettelsen_svikter_til_eksamen___.html</link>
4167 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/N_r_nynorskoversettelsen_svikter_til_eksamen___.html</guid>
4168 <pubDate>Sat, 3 Jun 2017 08:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
4169 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aftenposten.no/norge/Krever-at-elever-ma-fa-annullert-eksamen-etter-rot-med-oppgavetekster-622459b.html&quot;&gt;Aftenposten
4170 melder i dag&lt;/a&gt; om feil i eksamensoppgavene for eksamen i politikk og
4171 menneskerettigheter, der teksten i bokmåls og nynorskutgaven ikke var
4172 like. Oppgaveteksten er gjengitt i artikkelen, og jeg ble nysgjerring
4173 på om den fri oversetterløsningen
4174 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.apertium.org/&quot;&gt;Apertium&lt;/a&gt; ville gjort en bedre
4175 jobb enn Utdanningsdirektoratet. Det kan se slik ut.&lt;/p&gt;
4176
4177 &lt;p&gt;Her er bokmålsoppgaven fra eksamenen:&lt;/p&gt;
4178
4179 &lt;blockquote&gt;
4180 &lt;p&gt;Drøft utfordringene knyttet til nasjonalstatenes og andre aktørers
4181 rolle og muligheter til å håndtere internasjonale utfordringer, som
4182 for eksempel flykningekrisen.&lt;/p&gt;
4183
4184 &lt;p&gt;Vedlegge er eksempler på tekster som kan gi relevante perspektiver
4185 på temaet:&lt;/p&gt;
4186 &lt;ol&gt;
4187 &lt;li&gt;Flykningeregnskapet 2016, UNHCR og IDMC
4188 &lt;li&gt;«Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet, 26. november 2015
4189 &lt;/ol&gt;
4190
4191 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
4192
4193 &lt;p&gt;Dette oversetter Apertium slik:&lt;/p&gt;
4194
4195 &lt;blockquote&gt;
4196 &lt;p&gt;Drøft utfordringane knytte til nasjonalstatane sine og rolla til
4197 andre aktørar og høve til å handtera internasjonale utfordringar, som
4198 til dømes *flykningekrisen.&lt;/p&gt;
4199
4200 &lt;p&gt;Vedleggja er døme på tekster som kan gje relevante perspektiv på
4201 temaet:&lt;/p&gt;
4202
4203 &lt;ol&gt;
4204 &lt;li&gt;*Flykningeregnskapet 2016, *UNHCR og *IDMC&lt;/li&gt;
4205 &lt;li&gt;«*Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet, 26. november 2015&lt;/li&gt;
4206 &lt;/ol&gt;
4207
4208 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
4209
4210 &lt;p&gt;Ord som ikke ble forstått er markert med stjerne (*), og trenger
4211 ekstra språksjekk. Men ingen ord er forsvunnet, slik det var i
4212 oppgaven elevene fikk presentert på eksamen. Jeg mistenker dog at
4213 &quot;andre aktørers rolle og muligheter til ...&quot; burde vært oversatt til
4214 &quot;rolla til andre aktørar og deira høve til ...&quot; eller noe slikt, men
4215 det er kanskje flisespikking. Det understreker vel bare at det alltid
4216 trengs korrekturlesning etter automatisk oversettelse.&lt;/p&gt;
4217 </description>
4218 </item>
4219
4220 <item>
4221 <title>Detecting NFS hangs on Linux without hanging yourself...</title>
4222 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Detecting_NFS_hangs_on_Linux_without_hanging_yourself___.html</link>
4223 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Detecting_NFS_hangs_on_Linux_without_hanging_yourself___.html</guid>
4224 <pubDate>Thu, 9 Mar 2017 15:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
4225 <description>&lt;p&gt;Over the years, administrating thousand of NFS mounting linux
4226 computers at the time, I often needed a way to detect if the machine
4227 was experiencing NFS hang. If you try to use &lt;tt&gt;df&lt;/tt&gt; or look at a
4228 file or directory affected by the hang, the process (and possibly the
4229 shell) will hang too. So you want to be able to detect this without
4230 risking the detection process getting stuck too. It has not been
4231 obvious how to do this. When the hang has lasted a while, it is
4232 possible to find messages like these in dmesg:&lt;/p&gt;
4233
4234 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
4235 nfs: server nfsserver not responding, still trying
4236 &lt;br&gt;nfs: server nfsserver OK
4237 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4238
4239 &lt;p&gt;It is hard to know if the hang is still going on, and it is hard to
4240 be sure looking in dmesg is going to work. If there are lots of other
4241 messages in dmesg the lines might have rotated out of site before they
4242 are noticed.&lt;/p&gt;
4243
4244 &lt;p&gt;While reading through the nfs client implementation in linux kernel
4245 code, I came across some statistics that seem to give a way to detect
4246 it. The om_timeouts sunrpc value in the kernel will increase every
4247 time the above log entry is inserted into dmesg. And after digging a
4248 bit further, I discovered that this value show up in
4249 /proc/self/mountstats on Linux.&lt;/p&gt;
4250
4251 &lt;p&gt;The mountstats content seem to be shared between files using the
4252 same file system context, so it is enough to check one of the
4253 mountstats files to get the state of the mount point for the machine.
4254 I assume this will not show lazy umounted NFS points, nor NFS mount
4255 points in a different process context (ie with a different filesystem
4256 view), but that does not worry me.&lt;/p&gt;
4257
4258 &lt;p&gt;The content for a NFS mount point look similar to this:&lt;/p&gt;
4259
4260 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4261 [...]
4262 device /dev/mapper/Debian-var mounted on /var with fstype ext3
4263 device nfsserver:/mnt/nfsserver/home0 mounted on /mnt/nfsserver/home0 with fstype nfs statvers=1.1
4264 opts: rw,vers=3,rsize=65536,wsize=65536,namlen=255,acregmin=3,acregmax=60,acdirmin=30,acdirmax=60,soft,nolock,proto=tcp,timeo=600,retrans=2,sec=sys,mountaddr=129.240.3.145,mountvers=3,mountport=4048,mountproto=udp,local_lock=all
4265 age: 7863311
4266 caps: caps=0x3fe7,wtmult=4096,dtsize=8192,bsize=0,namlen=255
4267 sec: flavor=1,pseudoflavor=1
4268 events: 61063112 732346265 1028140 35486205 16220064 8162542 761447191 71714012 37189 3891185 45561809 110486139 4850138 420353 15449177 296502 52736725 13523379 0 52182 9016896 1231 0 0 0 0 0
4269 bytes: 166253035039 219519120027 0 0 40783504807 185466229638 11677877 45561809
4270 RPC iostats version: 1.0 p/v: 100003/3 (nfs)
4271 xprt: tcp 925 1 6810 0 0 111505412 111480497 109 2672418560317 0 248 53869103 22481820
4272 per-op statistics
4273 NULL: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
4274 GETATTR: 61063106 61063108 0 9621383060 6839064400 453650 77291321 78926132
4275 SETATTR: 463469 463470 0 92005440 66739536 63787 603235 687943
4276 LOOKUP: 17021657 17021657 0 3354097764 4013442928 57216 35125459 35566511
4277 ACCESS: 14281703 14290009 5 2318400592 1713803640 1709282 4865144 7130140
4278 READLINK: 125 125 0 20472 18620 0 1112 1118
4279 READ: 4214236 4214237 0 715608524 41328653212 89884 22622768 22806693
4280 WRITE: 8479010 8494376 22 187695798568 1356087148 178264904 51506907 231671771
4281 CREATE: 171708 171708 0 38084748 46702272 873 1041833 1050398
4282 MKDIR: 3680 3680 0 773980 993920 26 23990 24245
4283 SYMLINK: 903 903 0 233428 245488 6 5865 5917
4284 MKNOD: 80 80 0 20148 21760 0 299 304
4285 REMOVE: 429921 429921 0 79796004 61908192 3313 2710416 2741636
4286 RMDIR: 3367 3367 0 645112 484848 22 5782 6002
4287 RENAME: 466201 466201 0 130026184 121212260 7075 5935207 5961288
4288 LINK: 289155 289155 0 72775556 67083960 2199 2565060 2585579
4289 READDIR: 2933237 2933237 0 516506204 13973833412 10385 3190199 3297917
4290 READDIRPLUS: 1652839 1652839 0 298640972 6895997744 84735 14307895 14448937
4291 FSSTAT: 6144 6144 0 1010516 1032192 51 9654 10022
4292 FSINFO: 2 2 0 232 328 0 1 1
4293 PATHCONF: 1 1 0 116 140 0 0 0
4294 COMMIT: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
4295
4296 device binfmt_misc mounted on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc with fstype binfmt_misc
4297 [...]
4298 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4299
4300 &lt;p&gt;The key number to look at is the third number in the per-op list.
4301 It is the number of NFS timeouts experiences per file system
4302 operation. Here 22 write timeouts and 5 access timeouts. If these
4303 numbers are increasing, I believe the machine is experiencing NFS
4304 hang. Unfortunately the timeout value do not start to increase right
4305 away. The NFS operations need to time out first, and this can take a
4306 while. The exact timeout value depend on the setup. For example the
4307 defaults for TCP and UDP mount points are quite different, and the
4308 timeout value is affected by the soft, hard, timeo and retrans NFS
4309 mount options.&lt;/p&gt;
4310
4311 &lt;p&gt;The only way I have been able to get working on Debian and RedHat
4312 Enterprise Linux for getting the timeout count is to peek in /proc/.
4313 But according to
4314 &lt;ahref=&quot;http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/816-4555/netmonitor-12/index.html&quot;&gt;Solaris
4315 10 System Administration Guide: Network Services&lt;/a&gt;, the &#39;nfsstat -c&#39;
4316 command can be used to get these timeout values. But this do not work
4317 on Linux, as far as I can tell. I
4318 &lt;ahref=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/857043&quot;&gt;asked Debian about this&lt;/a&gt;,
4319 but have not seen any replies yet.&lt;/p&gt;
4320
4321 &lt;p&gt;Is there a better way to figure out if a Linux NFS client is
4322 experiencing NFS hangs? Is there a way to detect which processes are
4323 affected? Is there a way to get the NFS mount going quickly once the
4324 network problem causing the NFS hang has been cleared? I would very
4325 much welcome some clues, as we regularly run into NFS hangs.&lt;/p&gt;
4326 </description>
4327 </item>
4328
4329 <item>
4330 <title>Norwegian Bokmål translation of The Debian Administrator&#39;s Handbook complete, proofreading in progress</title>
4331 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_complete__proofreading_in_progress.html</link>
4332 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_complete__proofreading_in_progress.html</guid>
4333 <pubDate>Fri, 3 Mar 2017 14:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
4334 <description>&lt;p&gt;For almost a year now, we have been working on making a Norwegian
4335 Bokmål edition of &lt;a href=&quot;https://debian-handbook.info/&quot;&gt;The Debian
4336 Administrator&#39;s Handbook&lt;/a&gt;. Now, thanks to the tireless effort of
4337 Ole-Erik, Ingrid and Andreas, the initial translation is complete, and
4338 we are working on the proof reading to ensure consistent language and
4339 use of correct computer science terms. The plan is to make the book
4340 available on paper, as well as in electronic form. For that to
4341 happen, the proof reading must be completed and all the figures need
4342 to be translated. If you want to help out, get in touch.&lt;/p&gt;
4343
4344 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/debian-handbook/debian-handbook-nb-NO.pdf&quot;&gt;A
4345
4346 fresh PDF edition&lt;/a&gt; in A4 format (the final book will have smaller
4347 pages) of the book created every morning is available for
4348 proofreading. If you find any errors, please
4349 &lt;a href=&quot;https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/&quot;&gt;visit
4350 Weblate and correct the error&lt;/a&gt;. The
4351 &lt;a href=&quot;http://l.github.io/debian-handbook/stat/nb-NO/index.html&quot;&gt;state
4352 of the translation including figures&lt;/a&gt; is a useful source for those
4353 provide Norwegian bokmål screen shots and figures.&lt;/p&gt;
4354 </description>
4355 </item>
4356
4357 <item>
4358 <title>Unlimited randomness with the ChaosKey?</title>
4359 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Unlimited_randomness_with_the_ChaosKey_.html</link>
4360 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Unlimited_randomness_with_the_ChaosKey_.html</guid>
4361 <pubDate>Wed, 1 Mar 2017 20:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
4362 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I ordered a small batch of
4363 &lt;a href=&quot;http://altusmetrum.org/ChaosKey/&quot;&gt;the ChaosKey&lt;/a&gt;, a small
4364 USB dongle for generating entropy created by Bdale Garbee and Keith
4365 Packard. Yesterday it arrived, and I am very happy to report that it
4366 work great! According to its designers, to get it to work out of the
4367 box, you need the Linux kernel version 4.1 or later. I tested on a
4368 Debian Stretch machine (kernel version 4.9), and there it worked just
4369 fine, increasing the available entropy very quickly. I wrote a small
4370 test oneliner to test. It first print the current entropy level,
4371 drain /dev/random, and then print the entropy level for five seconds.
4372 Here is the situation without the ChaosKey inserted:&lt;/p&gt;
4373
4374 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4375 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
4376 dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
4377 for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
4378 cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
4379 sleep 1; \
4380 done
4381 300
4382 0+1 oppføringer inn
4383 0+1 oppføringer ut
4384 28 byte kopiert, 0,000264565 s, 106 kB/s
4385 4
4386 8
4387 12
4388 17
4389 21
4390 %
4391 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4392
4393 &lt;p&gt;The entropy level increases by 3-4 every second. In such case any
4394 application requiring random bits (like a HTTPS enabled web server)
4395 will halt and wait for more entrpy. And here is the situation with
4396 the ChaosKey inserted:&lt;/p&gt;
4397
4398 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4399 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
4400 dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
4401 for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
4402 cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
4403 sleep 1; \
4404 done
4405 1079
4406 0+1 oppføringer inn
4407 0+1 oppføringer ut
4408 104 byte kopiert, 0,000487647 s, 213 kB/s
4409 433
4410 1028
4411 1031
4412 1035
4413 1038
4414 %
4415 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4416
4417 &lt;p&gt;Quite the difference. :) I bought a few more than I need, in case
4418 someone want to buy one here in Norway. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4419
4420 &lt;p&gt;Update: The dongle was presented at Debconf last year. You might
4421 find &lt;a href=&quot;https://debconf16.debconf.org/talks/94/&quot;&gt;the talk
4422 recording illuminating&lt;/a&gt;. It explains exactly what the source of
4423 randomness is, if you are unable to spot it from the schema drawing
4424 available from the ChaosKey web site linked at the start of this blog
4425 post.&lt;/p&gt;
4426 </description>
4427 </item>
4428
4429 <item>
4430 <title>Where did that package go? &amp;mdash; geolocated IP traceroute</title>
4431 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Where_did_that_package_go___mdash__geolocated_IP_traceroute.html</link>
4432 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Where_did_that_package_go___mdash__geolocated_IP_traceroute.html</guid>
4433 <pubDate>Mon, 9 Jan 2017 12:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
4434 <description>&lt;p&gt;Did you ever wonder where the web trafic really flow to reach the
4435 web servers, and who own the network equipment it is flowing through?
4436 It is possible to get a glimpse of this from using traceroute, but it
4437 is hard to find all the details. Many years ago, I wrote a system to
4438 map the Norwegian Internet (trying to figure out if our plans for a
4439 network game service would get low enough latency, and who we needed
4440 to talk to about setting up game servers close to the users. Back
4441 then I used traceroute output from many locations (I asked my friends
4442 to run a script and send me their traceroute output) to create the
4443 graph and the map. The output from traceroute typically look like
4444 this:
4445
4446 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4447 traceroute to www.stortinget.no (85.88.67.10), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
4448 1 uio-gw10.uio.no (129.240.202.1) 0.447 ms 0.486 ms 0.621 ms
4449 2 uio-gw8.uio.no (129.240.24.229) 0.467 ms 0.578 ms 0.675 ms
4450 3 oslo-gw1.uninett.no (128.39.65.17) 0.385 ms 0.373 ms 0.358 ms
4451 4 te3-1-2.br1.fn3.as2116.net (193.156.90.3) 1.174 ms 1.172 ms 1.153 ms
4452 5 he16-1-1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (195.0.244.234) 2.627 ms he16-1-1.cr2.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.244.48) 3.172 ms he16-1-1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (195.0.244.234) 2.857 ms
4453 6 ae1.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.242.39) 0.662 ms 0.637 ms ae0.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.242.23) 0.622 ms
4454 7 89.191.10.146 (89.191.10.146) 0.931 ms 0.917 ms 0.955 ms
4455 8 * * *
4456 9 * * *
4457 [...]
4458 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4459
4460 &lt;p&gt;This show the DNS names and IP addresses of (at least some of the)
4461 network equipment involved in getting the data traffic from me to the
4462 www.stortinget.no server, and how long it took in milliseconds for a
4463 package to reach the equipment and return to me. Three packages are
4464 sent, and some times the packages do not follow the same path. This
4465 is shown for hop 5, where three different IP addresses replied to the
4466 traceroute request.&lt;/p&gt;
4467
4468 &lt;p&gt;There are many ways to measure trace routes. Other good traceroute
4469 implementations I use are traceroute (using ICMP packages) mtr (can do
4470 both ICMP, UDP and TCP) and scapy (python library with ICMP, UDP, TCP
4471 traceroute and a lot of other capabilities). All of them are easily
4472 available in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4473
4474 &lt;p&gt;This time around, I wanted to know the geographic location of
4475 different route points, to visualize how visiting a web page spread
4476 information about the visit to a lot of servers around the globe. The
4477 background is that a web site today often will ask the browser to get
4478 from many servers the parts (for example HTML, JSON, fonts,
4479 JavaScript, CSS, video) required to display the content. This will
4480 leak information about the visit to those controlling these servers
4481 and anyone able to peek at the data traffic passing by (like your ISP,
4482 the ISPs backbone provider, FRA, GCHQ, NSA and others).&lt;/p&gt;
4483
4484 &lt;p&gt;Lets pick an example, the Norwegian parliament web site
4485 www.stortinget.no. It is read daily by all members of parliament and
4486 their staff, as well as political journalists, activits and many other
4487 citizens of Norway. A visit to the www.stortinget.no web site will
4488 ask your browser to contact 8 other servers: ajax.googleapis.com,
4489 insights.hotjar.com, script.hotjar.com, static.hotjar.com,
4490 stats.g.doubleclick.net, www.google-analytics.com,
4491 www.googletagmanager.com and www.netigate.se. I extracted this by
4492 asking &lt;a href=&quot;http://phantomjs.org/&quot;&gt;PhantomJS&lt;/a&gt; to visit the
4493 Stortinget web page and tell me all the URLs PhantomJS downloaded to
4494 render the page (in HAR format using
4495 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/examples/netsniff.js&quot;&gt;their
4496 netsniff example&lt;/a&gt;. I am very grateful to Gorm for showing me how
4497 to do this). My goal is to visualize network traces to all IP
4498 addresses behind these DNS names, do show where visitors personal
4499 information is spread when visiting the page.&lt;/p&gt;
4500
4501 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml&quot;&gt;&lt;img
4502 src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geoip-small.png&quot; alt=&quot;map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using GeoIP&quot;/&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4503
4504 &lt;p&gt;When I had a look around for options, I could not find any good
4505 free software tools to do this, and decided I needed my own traceroute
4506 wrapper outputting KML based on locations looked up using GeoIP. KML
4507 is easy to work with and easy to generate, and understood by several
4508 of the GIS tools I have available. I got good help from by NUUG
4509 colleague Anders Einar with this, and the result can be seen in
4510 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/kmltraceroute&quot;&gt;my
4511 kmltraceroute git repository&lt;/a&gt;. Unfortunately, the quality of the
4512 free GeoIP databases I could find (and the for-pay databases my
4513 friends had access to) is not up to the task. The IP addresses of
4514 central Internet infrastructure would typically be placed near the
4515 controlling companies main office, and not where the router is really
4516 located, as you can see from &lt;a href=&quot;www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml&quot;&gt;the
4517 KML file I created&lt;/a&gt; using the GeoLite City dataset from MaxMind.
4518
4519 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg&quot;&gt;&lt;img
4520 src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy-small.png&quot; alt=&quot;scapy traceroute graph for URLs used by www.stortinget.no&quot;/&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4521
4522 &lt;p&gt;I also had a look at the visual traceroute graph created by
4523 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/&quot;&gt;the scrapy project&lt;/a&gt;,
4524 showing IP network ownership (aka AS owner) for the IP address in
4525 question.
4526 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg&quot;&gt;The
4527 graph display a lot of useful information about the traceroute in SVG
4528 format&lt;/a&gt;, and give a good indication on who control the network
4529 equipment involved, but it do not include geolocation. This graph
4530 make it possible to see the information is made available at least for
4531 UNINETT, Catchcom, Stortinget, Nordunet, Google, Amazon, Telia, Level
4532 3 Communications and NetDNA.&lt;/p&gt;
4533
4534 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://geotraceroute.com/index.php?node=4&amp;host=www.stortinget.no&quot;&gt;&lt;img
4535 src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-small.png&quot; alt=&quot;example geotraceroute view for www.stortinget.no&quot;/&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4536
4537 &lt;p&gt;In the process, I came across the
4538 &lt;a href=&quot;https://geotraceroute.com/&quot;&gt;web service GeoTraceroute&lt;/a&gt; by
4539 Salim Gasmi. Its methology of combining guesses based on DNS names,
4540 various location databases and finally use latecy times to rule out
4541 candidate locations seemed to do a very good job of guessing correct
4542 geolocation. But it could only do one trace at the time, did not have
4543 a sensor in Norway and did not make the geolocations easily available
4544 for postprocessing. So I contacted the developer and asked if he
4545 would be willing to share the code (he refused until he had time to
4546 clean it up), but he was interested in providing the geolocations in a
4547 machine readable format, and willing to set up a sensor in Norway. So
4548 since yesterday, it is possible to run traces from Norway in this
4549 service thanks to a sensor node set up by
4550 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;the NUUG assosiation&lt;/a&gt;, and get the
4551 trace in KML format for further processing.&lt;/p&gt;
4552
4553 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.kml&quot;&gt;&lt;img
4554 src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.png&quot; alt=&quot;map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using geotraceroute&quot;/&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4555
4556 &lt;p&gt;Here we can see a lot of trafic passes Sweden on its way to
4557 Denmark, Germany, Holland and Ireland. Plenty of places where the
4558 Snowden confirmations verified the traffic is read by various actors
4559 without your best interest as their top priority.&lt;/p&gt;
4560
4561 &lt;p&gt;Combining KML files is trivial using a text editor, so I could loop
4562 over all the hosts behind the urls imported by www.stortinget.no and
4563 ask for the KML file from GeoTraceroute, and create a combined KML
4564 file with all the traces (unfortunately only one of the IP addresses
4565 behind the DNS name is traced this time. To get them all, one would
4566 have to request traces using IP number instead of DNS names from
4567 GeoTraceroute). That might be the next step in this project.&lt;/p&gt;
4568
4569 &lt;p&gt;Armed with these tools, I find it a lot easier to figure out where
4570 the IP traffic moves and who control the boxes involved in moving it.
4571 And every time the link crosses for example the Swedish border, we can
4572 be sure Swedish Signal Intelligence (FRA) is listening, as GCHQ do in
4573 Britain and NSA in USA and cables around the globe. (Hm, what should
4574 we tell them? :) Keep that in mind if you ever send anything
4575 unencrypted over the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;
4576
4577 &lt;p&gt;PS: KML files are drawn using
4578 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ivanrublev.me/kml/&quot;&gt;the KML viewer from Ivan
4579 Rublev&lt;a/&gt;, as it was less cluttered than the local Linux application
4580 Marble. There are heaps of other options too.&lt;/p&gt;
4581
4582 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4583 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4584 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4585 </description>
4586 </item>
4587
4588 <item>
4589 <title>Appstream just learned how to map hardware to packages too!</title>
4590 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Appstream_just_learned_how_to_map_hardware_to_packages_too_.html</link>
4591 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Appstream_just_learned_how_to_map_hardware_to_packages_too_.html</guid>
4592 <pubDate>Fri, 23 Dec 2016 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
4593 <description>&lt;p&gt;I received a very nice Christmas present today. As my regular
4594 readers probably know, I have been working on the
4595 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;the Isenkram
4596 system&lt;/a&gt; for many years. The goal of the Isenkram system is to make
4597 it easier for users to figure out what to install to get a given piece
4598 of hardware to work in Debian, and a key part of this system is a way
4599 to map hardware to packages. Isenkram have its own mapping database,
4600 and also uses data provided by each package using the AppStream
4601 metadata format. And today,
4602 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/appstream&quot;&gt;AppStream&lt;/a&gt; in
4603 Debian learned to look up hardware the same way Isenkram is doing it,
4604 ie using fnmatch():&lt;/p&gt;
4605
4606 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4607 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias \
4608 usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
4609 Identifier: pymissile [generic]
4610 Name: pymissile
4611 Summary: Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher
4612 Package: pymissile
4613 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias usb:v0694p0002d0000
4614 Identifier: libnxt [generic]
4615 Name: libnxt
4616 Summary: utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick
4617 Package: libnxt
4618 ---
4619 Identifier: t2n [generic]
4620 Name: t2n
4621 Summary: Simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
4622 Package: t2n
4623 ---
4624 Identifier: python-nxt [generic]
4625 Name: python-nxt
4626 Summary: Python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
4627 Package: python-nxt
4628 ---
4629 Identifier: nbc [generic]
4630 Name: nbc
4631 Summary: C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
4632 Package: nbc
4633 %
4634 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4635
4636 &lt;p&gt;A similar query can be done using the combined AppStream and
4637 Isenkram databases using the isenkram-lookup tool:&lt;/p&gt;
4638
4639 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4640 % isenkram-lookup usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
4641 pymissile
4642 % isenkram-lookup usb:v0694p0002d0000
4643 libnxt
4644 nbc
4645 python-nxt
4646 t2n
4647 %
4648 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4649
4650 &lt;p&gt;You can find modalias values relevant for your machine using
4651 &lt;tt&gt;cat $(find /sys/devices/ -name modalias)&lt;/tt&gt;.
4652
4653 &lt;p&gt;If you want to make this system a success and help Debian users
4654 make the most of the hardware they have, please help
4655 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines&quot;&gt;add AppStream
4656 metadata for your package following the guidelines&lt;/a&gt; documented in
4657 the wiki. So far only 11 packages provide such information, among the
4658 several hundred hardware specific packages in Debian. The Isenkram
4659 database on the other hand contain 101 packages, mostly related to USB
4660 dongles. Most of the packages with hardware mapping in AppStream are
4661 LEGO Mindstorms related, because I have, as part of my involvement in
4662 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;the Debian LEGO
4663 team&lt;/a&gt; given priority to making sure LEGO users get proposed the
4664 complete set of packages in Debian for that particular hardware. The
4665 team also got a nice Christmas present today. The
4666 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nxt-firmware&quot;&gt;nxt-firmware
4667 package&lt;/a&gt; made it into Debian. With this package in place, it is
4668 now possible to use the LEGO Mindstorms NXT unit with only free
4669 software, as the nxt-firmware package contain the source and firmware
4670 binaries for the NXT brick.&lt;/p&gt;
4671
4672 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4673 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4674 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4675 </description>
4676 </item>
4677
4678 <item>
4679 <title>Isenkram updated with a lot more hardware-package mappings</title>
4680 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram_updated_with_a_lot_more_hardware_package_mappings.html</link>
4681 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram_updated_with_a_lot_more_hardware_package_mappings.html</guid>
4682 <pubDate>Tue, 20 Dec 2016 11:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
4683 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;The Isenkram
4684 system&lt;/a&gt; I wrote two years ago to make it easier in Debian to find
4685 and install packages to get your hardware dongles to work, is still
4686 going strong. It is a system to look up the hardware present on or
4687 connected to the current system, and map the hardware to Debian
4688 packages. It can either be done using the tools in isenkram-cli or
4689 using the user space daemon in the isenkram package. The latter will
4690 notify you, when inserting new hardware, about what packages to
4691 install to get the dongle working. It will even provide a button to
4692 click on to ask packagekit to install the packages.&lt;/p&gt;
4693
4694 &lt;p&gt;Here is an command line example from my Thinkpad laptop:&lt;/p&gt;
4695
4696 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4697 % isenkram-lookup
4698 bluez
4699 cheese
4700 ethtool
4701 fprintd
4702 fprintd-demo
4703 gkrellm-thinkbat
4704 hdapsd
4705 libpam-fprintd
4706 pidgin-blinklight
4707 thinkfan
4708 tlp
4709 tp-smapi-dkms
4710 tp-smapi-source
4711 tpb
4712 %
4713 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4714
4715 &lt;p&gt;It can also list the firware package providing firmware requested
4716 by the load kernel modules, which in my case is an empty list because
4717 I have all the firmware my machine need:
4718
4719 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4720 % /usr/sbin/isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
4721 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules. exiting
4722 %
4723 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4724
4725 &lt;p&gt;The last few days I had a look at several of the around 250
4726 packages in Debian with udev rules. These seem like good candidates
4727 to install when a given hardware dongle is inserted, and I found
4728 several that should be proposed by isenkram. I have not had time to
4729 check all of them, but am happy to report that now there are 97
4730 packages packages mapped to hardware by Isenkram. 11 of these
4731 packages provide hardware mapping using AppStream, while the rest are
4732 listed in the modaliases file provided in isenkram.&lt;/p&gt;
4733
4734 &lt;p&gt;These are the packages with hardware mappings at the moment. The
4735 &lt;strong&gt;marked packages&lt;/strong&gt; are also announcing their hardware
4736 support using AppStream, for everyone to use:&lt;/p&gt;
4737
4738 &lt;p&gt;air-quality-sensor, alsa-firmware-loaders, argyll,
4739 &lt;strong&gt;array-info&lt;/strong&gt;, avarice, avrdude, b43-fwcutter,
4740 bit-babbler, bluez, bluez-firmware, &lt;strong&gt;brltty&lt;/strong&gt;,
4741 &lt;strong&gt;broadcom-sta-dkms&lt;/strong&gt;, calibre, cgminer, cheese, colord,
4742 &lt;strong&gt;colorhug-client&lt;/strong&gt;, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux,
4743 dfu-util, dolphin-emu, ekeyd, ethtool, firmware-ipw2x00, fprintd,
4744 fprintd-demo, &lt;strong&gt;galileo&lt;/strong&gt;, gkrellm-thinkbat, gphoto2,
4745 gpsbabel, gpsbabel-gui, gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, gr-fcdproplus,
4746 gr-osmosdr, gtkpod, hackrf, hdapsd, hdmi2usb-udev, hpijs-ppds, hplip,
4747 ipw3945-source, ipw3945d, kde-config-tablet, kinect-audio-setup,
4748 &lt;strong&gt;libnxt&lt;/strong&gt;, libpam-fprintd, &lt;strong&gt;lomoco&lt;/strong&gt;,
4749 madwimax, minidisc-utils, mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mtkbabel,
4750 &lt;strong&gt;nbc&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;nqc&lt;/strong&gt;, nut-hal-drivers, ola,
4751 open-vm-toolbox, open-vm-tools, openambit, pcgminer, pcmciautils,
4752 pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, printer-driver-splix,
4753 &lt;strong&gt;pymissile&lt;/strong&gt;, python-nxt, qlandkartegt,
4754 qlandkartegt-garmin, rosegarden, rt2x00-source, sispmctl,
4755 soapysdr-module-hackrf, solaar, squeak-plugins-scratch, sunxi-tools,
4756 &lt;strong&gt;t2n&lt;/strong&gt;, thinkfan, thinkfinger-tools, tlp, tp-smapi-dkms,
4757 tp-smapi-source, tpb, tucnak, uhd-host, usbmuxd, viking,
4758 virtualbox-ose-guest-x11, w1retap, xawtv, xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse,
4759 xserver-xorg-input-wacom, xserver-xorg-video-qxl,
4760 xserver-xorg-video-vmware, yubikey-personalization and
4761 zd1211-firmware&lt;/p&gt;
4762
4763 &lt;p&gt;If you know of other packages, please let me know with a wishlist
4764 bug report against the isenkram-cli package, and ask the package
4765 maintainer to
4766 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines&quot;&gt;add AppStream
4767 metadata according to the guidelines&lt;/a&gt; to provide the information
4768 for everyone. In time, I hope to get rid of the isenkram specific
4769 hardware mapping and depend exclusively on AppStream.&lt;/p&gt;
4770
4771 &lt;p&gt;Note, the AppStream metadata for broadcom-sta-dkms is matching too
4772 much hardware, and suggest that the package with with any ethernet
4773 card. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/838735&quot;&gt;bug #838735&lt;/a&gt; for
4774 the details. I hope the maintainer find time to address it soon. In
4775 the mean time I provide an override in isenkram.&lt;/p&gt;
4776 </description>
4777 </item>
4778
4779 <item>
4780 <title>Oolite, a life in space as vagabond and mercenary - nice free software</title>
4781 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Oolite__a_life_in_space_as_vagabond_and_mercenary___nice_free_software.html</link>
4782 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Oolite__a_life_in_space_as_vagabond_and_mercenary___nice_free_software.html</guid>
4783 <pubDate>Sun, 11 Dec 2016 11:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
4784 <description>&lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img width=&quot;70%&quot; src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-12-11-nice-oolite.png&quot;/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4785
4786 &lt;p&gt;In my early years, I played
4787 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Classic_Elite&quot;&gt;the epic game
4788 Elite&lt;/a&gt; on my PC. I spent many months trading and fighting in
4789 space, and reached the &#39;elite&#39; fighting status before I moved on. The
4790 original Elite game was available on Commodore 64 and the IBM PC
4791 edition I played had a 64 KB executable. I am still impressed today
4792 that the authors managed to squeeze both a 3D engine and details about
4793 more than 2000 planet systems across 7 galaxies into a binary so
4794 small.&lt;/p&gt;
4795
4796 &lt;p&gt;I have known about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oolite.org/&quot;&gt;the free
4797 software game Oolite inspired by Elite&lt;/a&gt; for a while, but did not
4798 really have time to test it properly until a few days ago. It was
4799 great to discover that my old knowledge about trading routes were
4800 still valid. But my fighting and flying abilities were gone, so I had
4801 to retrain to be able to dock on a space station. And I am still not
4802 able to make much resistance when I am attacked by pirates, so I
4803 bougth and mounted the most powerful laser in the rear to be able to
4804 put up at least some resistance while fleeing for my life. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4805
4806 &lt;p&gt;When playing Elite in the late eighties, I had to discover
4807 everything on my own, and I had long lists of prices seen on different
4808 planets to be able to decide where to trade what. This time I had the
4809 advantages of the
4810 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Main_Page&quot;&gt;Elite wiki&lt;/a&gt;,
4811 where information about each planet is easily available with common
4812 price ranges and suggested trading routes. This improved my ability
4813 to earn money and I have been able to earn enough to buy a lot of
4814 useful equipent in a few days. I believe I originally played for
4815 months before I could get a docking computer, while now I could get it
4816 after less then a week.&lt;/p&gt;
4817
4818 &lt;p&gt;If you like science fiction and dreamed of a life as a vagabond in
4819 space, you should try out Oolite. It is available for Linux, MacOSX
4820 and Windows, and is included in Debian and derivatives since 2011.&lt;/p&gt;
4821
4822 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4823 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4824 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4825 </description>
4826 </item>
4827
4828 <item>
4829 <title>Quicker Debian installations using eatmydata</title>
4830 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Quicker_Debian_installations_using_eatmydata.html</link>
4831 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Quicker_Debian_installations_using_eatmydata.html</guid>
4832 <pubDate>Fri, 25 Nov 2016 14:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
4833 <description>&lt;p&gt;Two years ago, I did some experiments with eatmydata and the Debian
4834 installation system, observing how using
4835 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html&quot;&gt;eatmydata
4836 could speed up the installation&lt;/a&gt; quite a bit. My testing measured
4837 speedup around 20-40 percent for Debian Edu, where we install around
4838 1000 packages from within the installer. The eatmydata package
4839 provide a way to disable/delay file system flushing. This is a bit
4840 risky in the general case, as files that should be stored on disk will
4841 stay only in memory a bit longer than expected, causing problems if a
4842 machine crashes at an inconvenient time. But for an installation, if
4843 the machine crashes during installation the process is normally
4844 restarted, and avoiding disk operations as much as possible to speed
4845 up the process make perfect sense.
4846
4847 &lt;p&gt;I added code in the Debian Edu specific installation code to enable
4848 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libeatmydata&quot;&gt;eatmydata&lt;/a&gt;,
4849 but did not have time to push it any further. But a few months ago I
4850 picked it up again and worked with the libeatmydata package maintainer
4851 Mattia Rizzolo to make it easier for everyone to get this installation
4852 speedup in Debian. Thanks to our cooperation There is now an
4853 eatmydata-udeb package in Debian testing and unstable, and simply
4854 enabling/installing it in debian-installer (d-i) is enough to get the
4855 quicker installations. It can be enabled using preseeding. The
4856 following untested kernel argument should do the trick:&lt;/p&gt;
4857
4858 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4859 preseed/early_command=&quot;anna-install eatmydata-udeb&quot;
4860 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4861
4862 &lt;p&gt;This should ask d-i to install the package inside the d-i
4863 environment early in the installation sequence. Having it installed
4864 in d-i in turn will make sure the relevant scripts are called just
4865 after debootstrap filled /target/ with the freshly installed Debian
4866 system to configure apt to run dpkg with eatmydata. This is enough to
4867 speed up the installation process. There is a proposal to
4868 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/841153&quot;&gt;extend the idea a bit further
4869 by using /etc/ld.so.preload instead of apt.conf&lt;/a&gt;, but I have not
4870 tested its impact.&lt;/p&gt;
4871
4872 </description>
4873 </item>
4874
4875 <item>
4876 <title>Oversette bokmål til nynorsk, enklere enn du tror takket være Apertium</title>
4877 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Oversette_bokm_l_til_nynorsk__enklere_enn_du_tror_takket_v_re_Apertium.html</link>
4878 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Oversette_bokm_l_til_nynorsk__enklere_enn_du_tror_takket_v_re_Apertium.html</guid>
4879 <pubDate>Thu, 24 Nov 2016 10:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
4880 <description>&lt;p&gt;I Norge er det mange som trenger å skrive både bokmål og nynorsk.
4881 Eksamensoppgaver, offentlige brev og nyheter er eksempler på tekster
4882 der det er krav om skriftspråk. I tillegg til alle skoleoppgavene som
4883 elever over det ganske land skal levere inn hvert år. Det mange ikke
4884 vet er at selv om de kommersielle alternativene
4885 &lt;a href=&quot;https://translate.google.com/&quot;&gt;Google Translate&lt;/a&gt; og
4886 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bing.com/translator/&quot;&gt;Bing Translator&lt;/a&gt; ikke kan
4887 bidra med å oversette mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finnes det et
4888 utmerket fri programvarealternativ som kan. Oversetterverktøyet
4889 Apertium har støtte for en rekke språkkombinasjoner, og takket være
4890 den utrettelige innsatsen til blant annet Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
4891 en bruke webtjenesten til å fylle inn en tekst på bokmål eller
4892 nynorsk, og få den automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
4893 Resultatet er ikke perfekt, men et svært godt utgangspunkt. Av og til
4894 er resultatet så bra at det kan benyttes uten endringer. Jeg vet
4895 f.eks. at store deler av Joomla ble oversatt til nynorsk ved hjelp
4896 Apertium. Høres det ut som noe du kan ha bruk for? Besøk i så fall
4897 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.apertium.org/&quot;&gt;Apertium.org&lt;/a&gt; og fyll inn
4898 teksten din i webskjemaet der.
4899
4900 &lt;p&gt;Hvis du trenger maskinell tilgang til den bakenforliggende
4901 teknologien kan du enten installere pakken
4902 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob&quot;&gt;apertium-nno-nob&lt;/a&gt;
4903 på en Debian-maskin eller bruke web-API-et tilgjengelig fra
4904 api.apertium.org. Se
4905 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy&quot;&gt;API-dokumentasjonen&lt;/a&gt;
4906 for detaljer om web-API-et. Her kan du se hvordan resultatet blir for
4907 denne teksten som ble skrevet på bokmål over maskinoversatt til
4908 nynorsk.&lt;/p&gt;
4909
4910 &lt;hr/&gt;
4911
4912 &lt;p&gt;I Noreg er det mange som treng å skriva både bokmål og nynorsk.
4913 Eksamensoppgåver, offentlege brev og nyhende er døme på tekster der
4914 det er krav om skriftspråk. I tillegg til alle skuleoppgåvene som
4915 elevar over det ganske land skal levera inn kvart år. Det mange ikkje
4916 veit er at sjølv om dei kommersielle alternativa
4917 &lt;a href=&quot;https://translate.google.com/&quot;&gt;Google *Translate&lt;/a&gt; og
4918 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bing.com/translator/&quot;&gt;Bing *Translator&lt;/a&gt; ikkje
4919 kan bidra med å omsetja mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finst det eit
4920 utmerka fri programvarealternativ som kan. Omsetjarverktøyet
4921 *Apertium har støtte for ei rekkje språkkombinasjonar, og takka vera
4922 den utrøyttelege innsatsen til blant anna Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
4923 ein bruka *webtjenesten til å fylla inn ei tekst på bokmål eller
4924 nynorsk, og få den *automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
4925 Resultatet er ikkje perfekt, men eit svært godt utgangspunkt. Av og
4926 til er resultatet så bra at det kan nyttast utan endringar. Eg veit
4927 t.d. at store delar av *Joomla vart omsett til nynorsk ved hjelp
4928 *Apertium. Høyrast det ut som noko du kan ha bruk for? Besøk i så
4929 fall &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.apertium.org/&quot;&gt;*Apertium.org&lt;/a&gt; og fyll inn
4930 teksta di i *webskjemaet der.
4931
4932 &lt;p&gt;Viss du treng *maskinell tilgjenge til den *bakenforliggende
4933 teknologien kan du anten installera pakken
4934 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob&quot;&gt;*apertium-*nno-*nob&lt;/a&gt;
4935 på ein *Debian-maskin eller bruka *web-*API-eit tilgjengeleg frå
4936 *api.*apertium.org. Sjå
4937 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy&quot;&gt;*API-dokumentasjonen&lt;/a&gt;
4938 for detaljar om *web-*API-eit. Her kan du sjå korleis resultatet vert
4939 for denne teksta som vart skreva på bokmål over *maskinoversatt til
4940 nynorsk.&lt;/p&gt;
4941 </description>
4942 </item>
4943
4944 <item>
4945 <title>Coz profiler for multi-threaded software is now in Debian</title>
4946 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Coz_profiler_for_multi_threaded_software_is_now_in_Debian.html</link>
4947 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Coz_profiler_for_multi_threaded_software_is_now_in_Debian.html</guid>
4948 <pubDate>Sun, 13 Nov 2016 12:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
4949 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://coz-profiler.org/&quot;&gt;The Coz profiler&lt;/a&gt;, a nice
4950 profiler able to run benchmarking experiments on the instrumented
4951 multi-threaded program, finally
4952 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/coz-profiler&quot;&gt;made it into
4953 Debian unstable yesterday&lt;/A&gt;. Lluís Vilanova and I have spent many
4954 months since
4955 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html&quot;&gt;I
4956 blogged about the coz tool&lt;/a&gt; in August working with upstream to make
4957 it suitable for Debian. There are still issues with clang
4958 compatibility, inline assembly only working x86 and minimized
4959 JavaScript libraries.&lt;/p&gt;
4960
4961 &lt;p&gt;To test it, install &#39;coz-profiler&#39; using apt and run it like this:&lt;/p&gt;
4962
4963 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
4964 &lt;tt&gt;coz run --- /path/to/binary-with-debug-info&lt;/tt&gt;
4965 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4966
4967 &lt;p&gt;This will produce a profile.coz file in the current working
4968 directory with the profiling information. This is then given to a
4969 JavaScript application provided in the package and available from
4970 &lt;a href=&quot;http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/&quot;&gt;a project web page&lt;/a&gt;.
4971 To start the local copy, invoke it in a browser like this:&lt;/p&gt;
4972
4973 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
4974 &lt;tt&gt;sensible-browser /usr/share/coz-profiler/viewer/index.htm&lt;/tt&gt;
4975 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4976
4977 &lt;p&gt;See the project home page and the
4978 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger&quot;&gt;USENIX
4979 ;login: article on Coz&lt;/a&gt; for more information on how it is
4980 working.&lt;/p&gt;
4981 </description>
4982 </item>
4983
4984 <item>
4985 <title>My own self balancing Lego Segway</title>
4986 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/My_own_self_balancing_Lego_Segway.html</link>
4987 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/My_own_self_balancing_Lego_Segway.html</guid>
4988 <pubDate>Fri, 4 Nov 2016 10:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
4989 <description>&lt;p&gt;A while back I received a Gyro sensor for the NXT
4990 &lt;a href=&quot;mindstorms.lego.com&quot;&gt;Mindstorms&lt;/a&gt; controller as a birthday
4991 present. It had been on my wishlist for a while, because I wanted to
4992 build a Segway like balancing lego robot. I had already built
4993 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nxtprograms.com/NXT2/segway/&quot;&gt;a simple balancing
4994 robot&lt;/a&gt; with the kids, using the light/color sensor included in the
4995 NXT kit as the balance sensor, but it was not working very well. It
4996 could balance for a while, but was very sensitive to the light
4997 condition in the room and the reflective properties of the surface and
4998 would fall over after a short while. I wanted something more robust,
4999 and had
5000 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.hitechnic.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&amp;key=NGY1044&quot;&gt;the
5001 gyro sensor from HiTechnic&lt;/a&gt; I believed would solve it on my
5002 wishlist for some years before it suddenly showed up as a gift from my
5003 loved ones. :)&lt;/p&gt;
5004
5005 &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I have not had time to sit down and play with it
5006 since then. But that changed some days ago, when I was searching for
5007 lego segway information and came across a recipe from HiTechnic for
5008 building
5009 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hitechnic.com/blog/gyro-sensor/htway/&quot;&gt;the
5010 HTWay&lt;/a&gt;, a segway like balancing robot. Build instructions and
5011 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.hitechnic.com/upload/786-HTWayC.nxc&quot;&gt;source
5012 code&lt;/a&gt; was included, so it was just a question of putting it all
5013 together. And thanks to the great work of many Debian developers, the
5014 compiler needed to build the source for the NXT is already included in
5015 Debian, so I was read to go in less than an hour. The resulting robot
5016 do not look very impressive in its simplicity:&lt;/p&gt;
5017
5018 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img width=&quot;70%&quot; src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-robot.jpeg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5019
5020 &lt;p&gt;Because I lack the infrared sensor used to control the robot in the
5021 design from HiTechnic, I had to comment out the last task
5022 (taskControl). I simply placed /* and */ around it get the program
5023 working without that sensor present. Now it balances just fine until
5024 the battery status run low:&lt;/p&gt;
5025
5026 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;video width=&quot;70%&quot; controls=&quot;true&quot;&gt;
5027 &lt;source src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-balancing.ogv&quot; type=&quot;video/ogg&quot;&gt;
5028 &lt;/video&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5029
5030 &lt;p&gt;Now we would like to teach it how to follow a line and take remote
5031 control instructions using the included Bluetooth receiver in the NXT.&lt;/p&gt;
5032
5033 &lt;p&gt;If you, like me, love LEGO and want to make sure we find the tools
5034 they need to work with LEGO in Debian and all our derivative
5035 distributions like Ubuntu, check out
5036 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;the LEGO designers
5037 project page&lt;/a&gt; and join the Debian LEGO team. Personally I own a
5038 RCX and NXT controller (no EV3), and would like to make sure the
5039 Debian tools needed to program the systems I own work as they
5040 should.&lt;/p&gt;
5041 </description>
5042 </item>
5043
5044 <item>
5045 <title>Experience and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile phone</title>
5046 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html</link>
5047 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html</guid>
5048 <pubDate>Mon, 10 Oct 2016 11:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
5049 <description>&lt;p&gt;In July
5050 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html&quot;&gt;I
5051 wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working&lt;/a&gt; without
5052 the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone). It is
5053 time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.&lt;/p&gt;
5054
5055 &lt;p&gt;The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use
5056 it regularly to chat with my loved ones. I had a major snag at the
5057 end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my
5058 setup, identity and keys. The reason behind this major mess was
5059 running out of disk space. To avoid that ever happening again I have
5060 started storing everything in &lt;tt&gt;userdata/&lt;/tt&gt; in git, to be able to
5061 roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake. I
5062 had to use it once after introducing the git backup. When rolling
5063 back to an earlier version, one need to use the &#39;reset session&#39; option
5064 in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the
5065 problem. I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the
5066 protocol to detect rollback attacks. The git repository is rather big
5067 (674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the
5068 content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare
5069 time.&lt;/p&gt;
5070
5071 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve also hit the 90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this
5072 make it impossible to send messages using Signal. I could still
5073 receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send.
5074 I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to
5075 upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no
5076 protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and
5077 thus try to keep the number of support requests down.&lt;/p&gt;
5078
5079 &lt;p&gt;Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly,
5080 making the old patch fail to apply cleanly. Below is an updated
5081 patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal. The
5082 original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console
5083 and call a function from there. I got help from a friend with more
5084 JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI
5085 button instead. This mean that to get started you just need to run
5086 the wrapper and click the &#39;Register without mobile phone&#39; to get going
5087 now. I&#39;ve also modified the timeout code to always set it to 90 days
5088 in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.&lt;/p&gt;
5089
5090 &lt;p&gt;So, the updated recipe for Debian Jessie:&lt;/p&gt;
5091
5092 &lt;ol&gt;
5093
5094 &lt;li&gt;First, install required packages to get the source code and the
5095 browser you need. Signal only work with Chrome/Chromium, as far as I
5096 know, so you need to install it.
5097
5098 &lt;pre&gt;
5099 apt install git tor chromium
5100 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
5101 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
5102
5103 &lt;li&gt;Modify the source code using command listed in the the patch
5104 block below.&lt;/li&gt;
5105
5106 &lt;li&gt;Start Signal using the run-signal-app wrapper (for example using
5107 &lt;tt&gt;`pwd`/run-signal-app&lt;/tt&gt;).
5108
5109 &lt;li&gt;Click on the &#39;Register without mobile phone&#39;, will in a phone
5110 number you can receive calls to the next minute, receive the
5111 verification code and enter it into the form field and press
5112 &#39;Register&#39;. Note, the phone number you use will be user Signal
5113 username, ie the way others can find you on Signal.&lt;/li&gt;
5114
5115 &lt;li&gt;You can now use Signal to contact others. Note, new contacts do
5116 not show up in the contact list until you restart Signal, and there is
5117 no way to assign names to Contacts. There is also no way to create or
5118 update chat groups. I suspect this is because the web app do not have
5119 a associated contact database.&lt;/li&gt;
5120
5121 &lt;/ol&gt;
5122
5123 &lt;p&gt;I am still a bit uneasy about using Signal, because of the way its
5124 main author moxie0 reject federation and accept dependencies to major
5125 corporations like Google (part of the code is fetched from Google) and
5126 Amazon (the central coordination point is owned by Amazon). See for
5127 example
5128 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37&quot;&gt;the
5129 LibreSignal issue tracker&lt;/a&gt; for a thread documenting the authors
5130 view on these issues. But the network effect is strong in this case,
5131 and several of the people I want to communicate with already use
5132 Signal. Perhaps we can all move to &lt;a href=&quot;https://ring.cx/&quot;&gt;Ring&lt;/a&gt;
5133 once it &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/830265&quot;&gt;work on my
5134 laptop&lt;/a&gt;? It already work on Windows and Android, and is included
5135 in &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; and
5136 &lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ring&quot;&gt;Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt;, but not
5137 working on Debian Stable.&lt;/p&gt;
5138
5139 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, this is the patch I apply to the Signal code to get it
5140 working. It switch to the production servers, disable to timeout,
5141 make registration easier and add the shell wrapper:&lt;/p&gt;
5142
5143 &lt;pre&gt;
5144 cd Signal-Desktop; cat &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF | patch -p1
5145 diff --git a/js/background.js b/js/background.js
5146 index 24b4c1d..579345f 100644
5147 --- a/js/background.js
5148 +++ b/js/background.js
5149 @@ -33,9 +33,9 @@
5150 });
5151 });
5152
5153 - var SERVER_URL = &#39;https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org&#39;;
5154 + var SERVER_URL = &#39;https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org&#39;;
5155 var SERVER_PORTS = [80, 4433, 8443];
5156 - var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = &#39;https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com&#39;;
5157 + var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = &#39;https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com&#39;;
5158 var messageReceiver;
5159 window.getSocketStatus = function() {
5160 if (messageReceiver) {
5161 diff --git a/js/expire.js b/js/expire.js
5162 index 639aeae..beb91c3 100644
5163 --- a/js/expire.js
5164 +++ b/js/expire.js
5165 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
5166 ;(function() {
5167 &#39;use strict&#39;;
5168 - var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
5169 + var BUILD_EXPIRATION = Date.now() + (90 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
5170
5171 window.extension = window.extension || {};
5172
5173 diff --git a/js/views/install_view.js b/js/views/install_view.js
5174 index 7816f4f..1d6233b 100644
5175 --- a/js/views/install_view.js
5176 +++ b/js/views/install_view.js
5177 @@ -38,7 +38,8 @@
5178 return {
5179 &#39;click .step1&#39;: this.selectStep.bind(this, 1),
5180 &#39;click .step2&#39;: this.selectStep.bind(this, 2),
5181 - &#39;click .step3&#39;: this.selectStep.bind(this, 3)
5182 + &#39;click .step3&#39;: this.selectStep.bind(this, 3),
5183 + &#39;click .callreg&#39;: function() { extension.install(&#39;standalone&#39;) },
5184 };
5185 },
5186 clearQR: function() {
5187 diff --git a/options.html b/options.html
5188 index dc0f28e..8d709f6 100644
5189 --- a/options.html
5190 +++ b/options.html
5191 @@ -14,7 +14,10 @@
5192 &amp;lt;div class=&#39;nav&#39;&gt;
5193 &amp;lt;h1&gt;{{ installWelcome }}&amp;lt;/h1&gt;
5194 &amp;lt;p&gt;{{ installTagline }}&amp;lt;/p&gt;
5195 - &amp;lt;div&gt; &amp;lt;a class=&#39;button step2&#39;&gt;{{ installGetStartedButton }}&amp;lt;/a&gt; &amp;lt;/div&gt;
5196 + &amp;lt;div&gt; &amp;lt;a class=&#39;button step2&#39;&gt;{{ installGetStartedButton }}&amp;lt;/a&gt;
5197 + &amp;lt;br&gt; &amp;lt;a class=&quot;button callreg&quot;&gt;Register without mobile phone&amp;lt;/a&gt;
5198 +
5199 + &amp;lt;/div&gt;
5200 &amp;lt;span class=&#39;dot step1 selected&#39;&gt;&amp;lt;/span&gt;
5201 &amp;lt;span class=&#39;dot step2&#39;&gt;&amp;lt;/span&gt;
5202 &amp;lt;span class=&#39;dot step3&#39;&gt;&amp;lt;/span&gt;
5203 --- /dev/null 2016-10-07 09:55:13.730181472 +0200
5204 +++ b/run-signal-app 2016-10-10 08:54:09.434172391 +0200
5205 @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
5206 +#!/bin/sh
5207 +set -e
5208 +cd $(dirname $0)
5209 +mkdir -p userdata
5210 +userdata=&quot;`pwd`/userdata&quot;
5211 +if [ -d &quot;$userdata&quot; ] &amp;&amp; [ ! -d &quot;$userdata/.git&quot; ] ; then
5212 + (cd $userdata &amp;&amp; git init)
5213 +fi
5214 +(cd $userdata &amp;&amp; git add . &amp;&amp; git commit -m &quot;Current status.&quot; || true)
5215 +exec chromium \
5216 + --proxy-server=&quot;socks://localhost:9050&quot; \
5217 + --user-data-dir=$userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
5218 EOF
5219 chmod a+rx run-signal-app
5220 &lt;/pre&gt;
5221
5222 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5223 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5224 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5225 </description>
5226 </item>
5227
5228 <item>
5229 <title>Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier</title>
5230 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html</link>
5231 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html</guid>
5232 <pubDate>Fri, 7 Oct 2016 09:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
5233 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;The Isenkram
5234 system&lt;/a&gt; provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
5235 packages support the hardware in a given machine. The command line
5236 tool &lt;tt&gt;isenkram-lookup&lt;/tt&gt; and the tasksel options provide a
5237 convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
5238 hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
5239 firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
5240 a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
5241 while using the computer. For example, if you plug in a smart card
5242 reader, the system will ask if you want to install &lt;tt&gt;pcscd&lt;/tt&gt; if
5243 that package isn&#39;t already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
5244 camera the system will ask if you want to install &lt;tt&gt;cheese&lt;/tt&gt; if
5245 cheese is currently missing. This already work just fine.&lt;/p&gt;
5246
5247 &lt;p&gt;But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
5248 package names. When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
5249 I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
5250 made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
5251 http. This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
5252 as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.&lt;/p&gt;
5253
5254 &lt;p&gt;The hardware is identified using modalias strings. The modalias
5255 design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
5256 made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
5257 globbing. It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
5258 identifiers.&lt;/p&gt;
5259
5260 &lt;p&gt;The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
5261 information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
5262 isenkram propose obsolete packages too. But along came AppStream, a
5263 cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
5264 software packages. When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
5265 people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
5266 modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
5267 mapping hardware to packages. This idea was accepted and AppStream is
5268 now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
5269 distribution neutral way. I wrote
5270 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;a
5271 recipe on how to add such meta-information&lt;/a&gt; in a blog post last
5272 December. If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
5273 announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.&lt;/p&gt;
5274
5275 &lt;p&gt;In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
5276 RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream. The effect is
5277 that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
5278 machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
5279 it working. The intention is that this should allow the local user to
5280 start programming his robot controller right away without having to
5281 guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.&lt;/p&gt;
5282
5283 &lt;p&gt;But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
5284 unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
5285 annoying. The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
5286 the USB device for programming the unit. This used to work, but no
5287 longer in Jessie and Stretch. After some investigation and asking
5288 around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
5289 changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices. The
5290 ConsoleKit mechanism from &lt;tt&gt;/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules&lt;/tt&gt;
5291 no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
5292 plugdev group during login. Michael Biebl told me that this method
5293 was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead. This was good
5294 news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
5295 directory like LDAP. Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
5296 access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
5297 process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
5298 setup. Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
5299 for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.&lt;/p&gt;
5300
5301 &lt;p&gt;The new system uses a udev tag, &#39;uaccess&#39;. It can either be
5302 applied directly for a device, or is applied in
5303 /lib/udev/rules.d/70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices. As the
5304 LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
5305 tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages. Here
5306 is one example. For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
5307 &lt;tt&gt;/lib/udev/rules.d/60-nqc.rules&lt;/tt&gt; file now look like this:
5308
5309 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5310 SUBSYSTEM==&quot;usb&quot;, ACTION==&quot;add&quot;, ATTR{idVendor}==&quot;0694&quot;, ATTR{idProduct}==&quot;0001&quot;, \
5311 SYMLINK+=&quot;rcx-%k&quot;, TAG+=&quot;uaccess&quot;
5312 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5313
5314 &lt;p&gt;The key part is the &#39;TAG+=&quot;uaccess&quot;&#39; at the end. I suspect all
5315 packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
5316 changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
5317 &lt;tt&gt;70-uaccess.rules&lt;/tt&gt;). Perhaps a lintian check should be created
5318 to detect this?&lt;/p&gt;
5319
5320 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
5321 It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
5322 detail like the udev-acl tag used by
5323 &lt;tt&gt;/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules&lt;/tt&gt;. If it is, I guess the
5324 indirect method is the preferred way. Michael
5325 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288&quot;&gt;asked for more
5326 documentation from the systemd project&lt;/a&gt; and I hope it will make
5327 this clearer. For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
5328 is already handled by &lt;tt&gt;70-uaccess.rules&lt;/tt&gt;, and add the tag
5329 directly if no such class exist.&lt;/p&gt;
5330
5331 &lt;p&gt;To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
5332 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram/&quot;&gt;my
5333 blog posts tagged isenkram&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5334
5335 &lt;p&gt;To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
5336 please join us on our IRC channel
5337 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego&quot;&gt;#debian-lego&lt;/a&gt; and join
5338 the &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/&quot;&gt;Debian
5339 LEGO team&lt;/a&gt; in the Alioth project we created yesterday. A mailing
5340 list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
5341
5342 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5343 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5344 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5345 </description>
5346 </item>
5347
5348 <item>
5349 <title>First draft Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator&#39;s Handbook now public</title>
5350 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/First_draft_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_now_public.html</link>
5351 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/First_draft_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_now_public.html</guid>
5352 <pubDate>Tue, 30 Aug 2016 10:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
5353 <description>&lt;p&gt;In April we
5354 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html&quot;&gt;started
5355 to work&lt;/a&gt; on a Norwegian Bokmål edition of the &quot;open access&quot; book on
5356 how to set up and administrate a Debian system. Today I am happy to
5357 report that the first draft is now publicly available. You can find
5358 it on &lt;a href=&quot;https://debian-handbook.info/get/&quot;&gt;get the Debian
5359 Administrator&#39;s Handbook page&lt;/a&gt; (under Other languages). The first
5360 eight chapters have a first draft translation, and we are working on
5361 proofreading the content. If you want to help out, please start
5362 contributing using
5363 &lt;a href=&quot;https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/&quot;&gt;the
5364 hosted weblate project page&lt;/a&gt;, and get in touch using
5365 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators&quot;&gt;the
5366 translators mailing list&lt;/a&gt;. Please also check out
5367 &lt;a href=&quot;https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/&quot;&gt;the instructions for
5368 contributors&lt;/a&gt;. A good way to contribute is to proofread the text
5369 and update weblate if you find errors.&lt;/p&gt;
5370
5371 &lt;p&gt;Our goal is still to make the Norwegian book available on paper as well as
5372 electronic form.&lt;/p&gt;
5373 </description>
5374 </item>
5375
5376 <item>
5377 <title>Coz can help you find bottlenecks in multi-threaded software - nice free software</title>
5378 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html</link>
5379 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html</guid>
5380 <pubDate>Thu, 11 Aug 2016 12:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
5381 <description>&lt;p&gt;This summer, I read a great article
5382 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger&quot;&gt;coz:
5383 This Is the Profiler You&#39;re Looking For&lt;/a&gt;&quot; in USENIX ;login: about
5384 how to profile multi-threaded programs. It presented a system for
5385 profiling software by running experiences in the running program,
5386 testing how run time performance is affected by &quot;speeding up&quot; parts of
5387 the code to various degrees compared to a normal run. It does this by
5388 slowing down parallel threads while the &quot;faster up&quot; code is running
5389 and measure how this affect processing time. The processing time is
5390 measured using probes inserted into the code, either using progress
5391 counters (COZ_PROGRESS) or as latency meters (COZ_BEGIN/COZ_END). It
5392 can also measure unmodified code by measuring complete the program
5393 runtime and running the program several times instead.&lt;/p&gt;
5394
5395 &lt;p&gt;The project and presentation was so inspiring that I would like to
5396 get the system into Debian. I
5397 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=830708&quot;&gt;created
5398 a WNPP request for it&lt;/a&gt; and contacted upstream to try to make the
5399 system ready for Debian by sending patches. The build process need to
5400 be changed a bit to avoid running &#39;git clone&#39; to get dependencies, and
5401 to include the JavaScript web page used to visualize the collected
5402 profiling information included in the source package.
5403 But I expect that should work out fairly soon.&lt;/p&gt;
5404
5405 &lt;p&gt;The way the system work is fairly simple. To run an coz experiment
5406 on a binary with debug symbols available, start the program like this:
5407
5408 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5409 coz run --- program-to-run
5410 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5411
5412 &lt;p&gt;This will create a text file profile.coz with the instrumentation
5413 information. To show what part of the code affect the performance
5414 most, use a web browser and either point it to
5415 &lt;a href=&quot;http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/&quot;&gt;http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/&lt;/a&gt;
5416 or use the copy from git (in the gh-pages branch). Check out this web
5417 site to have a look at several example profiling runs and get an idea what the end result from the profile runs look like. To make the
5418 profiling more useful you include &amp;lt;coz.h&amp;gt; and insert the
5419 COZ_PROGRESS or COZ_BEGIN and COZ_END at appropriate places in the
5420 code, rebuild and run the profiler. This allow coz to do more
5421 targeted experiments.&lt;/p&gt;
5422
5423 &lt;p&gt;A video published by ACM
5424 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0V-p1odPg&quot;&gt;presenting the
5425 Coz profiler&lt;/a&gt; is available from Youtube. There is also a paper
5426 from the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles available
5427 titled
5428 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/curtsinger&quot;&gt;Coz:
5429 finding code that counts with causal profiling&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5430
5431 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz&quot;&gt;The source code&lt;/a&gt;
5432 for Coz is available from github. It will only build with clang
5433 because it uses a
5434 &lt;a href=&quot;https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55606&quot;&gt;C++
5435 feature missing in GCC&lt;/a&gt;, but I&#39;ve submitted
5436 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz/pull/67&quot;&gt;a patch to solve
5437 it&lt;/a&gt; and hope it will be included in the upstream source soon.&lt;/p&gt;
5438
5439 &lt;p&gt;Please get in touch if you, like me, would like to see this piece
5440 of software in Debian. I would very much like some help with the
5441 packaging effort, as I lack the in depth knowledge on how to package
5442 C++ libraries.&lt;/p&gt;
5443 </description>
5444 </item>
5445
5446 <item>
5447 <title>Unlocking HTC Desire HD on Linux using unruu and fastboot</title>
5448 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Unlocking_HTC_Desire_HD_on_Linux_using_unruu_and_fastboot.html</link>
5449 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Unlocking_HTC_Desire_HD_on_Linux_using_unruu_and_fastboot.html</guid>
5450 <pubDate>Thu, 7 Jul 2016 11:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
5451 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved
5452 to be a slight challenge. Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it
5453 again. It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up
5454 &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy&quot;&gt;an
5455 hardened Android installation&lt;/a&gt; from the Tor project blog on a
5456 device I had access to. It is a old mobile phone with a broken
5457 microphone The initial idea had been to just
5458 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_ace&quot;&gt;install
5459 CyanogenMod on it&lt;/a&gt;, but did not quite find time to start on it
5460 until a few days ago.&lt;/p&gt;
5461
5462 &lt;p&gt;The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot
5463 loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select
5464 &#39;fastboot&#39; before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux
5465 machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running &#39;fastboot
5466 oem get_identifier_token&#39;, (5) request the device unlocking key using
5467 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader/&quot;&gt;HTC developer web
5468 site&lt;/a&gt; and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.&lt;/p&gt;
5469
5470 &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029
5471 or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027. This
5472 apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and
5473 running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft
5474 require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not. So I had to
5475 come up with a different approach. I got a lot of help from AndyCap
5476 on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without
5477 him.&lt;/p&gt;
5478
5479 &lt;p&gt;First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from
5480 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.htcdev.com/ruu/PD9810000_Ace_Sense30_S_hboot_2.00.0029.exe&quot;&gt;the
5481 windows binary for HTC Desire HD&lt;/a&gt; downloaded as &#39;the RUU&#39; from HTC.
5482 For this there is is &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/kmdm/unruu/&quot;&gt;a github
5483 project named unruu&lt;/a&gt; using libunshield. The unshield tool did not
5484 recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip,
5485 containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which
5486 devices it would work for.&lt;/p&gt;
5487
5488 &lt;p&gt;Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device. For this I
5489 followed some instructions
5490 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.htc1guru.com/2013/09/new-ruu-zips-posted/&quot;&gt;available
5491 from HTC1Guru.com&lt;/a&gt;, and ran these commands as root on a Linux
5492 machine with Debian testing:&lt;/p&gt;
5493
5494 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5495 adb reboot-bootloader
5496 fastboot oem rebootRUU
5497 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
5498 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
5499 fastboot reboot
5500 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5501
5502 &lt;p&gt;The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect,
5503 as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing.
5504 The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the
5505 device on while holding volume down and the power button should work
5506 too.&lt;/p&gt;
5507
5508 &lt;p&gt;With the new hboot version in place I could start following the
5509 instructions on the HTC developer web site. I got the device token
5510 like this:&lt;/p&gt;
5511
5512 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5513 fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2&gt;&amp;1 | sed &#39;s/(bootloader) //&#39;
5514 &lt;/pre&gt;
5515
5516 &lt;p&gt;And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like
5517 this:&lt;/p&gt;
5518
5519 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5520 fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
5521 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5522
5523 &lt;p&gt;And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I
5524 could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device.
5525 So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone
5526 before I start. We will see what happen next. Perhaps I should
5527 install &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; on it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
5528 </description>
5529 </item>
5530
5531 <item>
5532 <title>How to use the Signal app if you only have a land line (ie no mobile phone)</title>
5533 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html</link>
5534 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html</guid>
5535 <pubDate>Sun, 3 Jul 2016 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
5536 <description>&lt;p&gt;For a while now, I have wanted to test
5537 &lt;a href=&quot;https://whispersystems.org/&quot;&gt;the Signal app&lt;/a&gt;, as it is
5538 said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
5539 friends and family are already using it. As I by choice do not own a
5540 mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected. And I wanted to
5541 have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
5542 machine. But yesterday I managed to get it working. I used the
5543 Github source, compared it to the source in
5544 &lt;a href=&quot;https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US&quot;&gt;the
5545 Signal Chrome app&lt;/a&gt; available from the Chrome web store, applied
5546 patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
5547 asked for the hidden &quot;register without a smart phone&quot; form. Here is
5548 the recipe how I did it.&lt;/p&gt;
5549
5550 &lt;p&gt;First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
5551
5552 &lt;pre&gt;
5553 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
5554 &lt;/pre&gt;
5555
5556 &lt;p&gt;Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be
5557 able to talk to other Signal users:&lt;/p&gt;
5558
5559 &lt;pre&gt;
5560 cat &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF | patch -p0
5561 diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js
5562 --- ./js/background.js 2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
5563 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js 2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
5564 @@ -47,8 +47,8 @@
5565 });
5566 });
5567
5568 - var SERVER_URL = &#39;https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org&#39;;
5569 - var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = &#39;https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com&#39;;
5570 + var SERVER_URL = &#39;https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:4433&#39;;
5571 + var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = &#39;https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com&#39;;
5572 var messageReceiver;
5573 window.getSocketStatus = function() {
5574 if (messageReceiver) {
5575 diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
5576 --- ./js/expire.js 2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
5577 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
5578 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
5579 ;(function() {
5580 &#39;use strict&#39;;
5581 - var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
5582 + var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 1474492690000;
5583
5584 window.extension = window.extension || {};
5585
5586 EOF
5587 &lt;/pre&gt;
5588
5589 &lt;p&gt;The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
5590 an expiration timestamp. This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
5591 It is set 90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
5592 The value is seconds since 1970 times 1000, as far as I can tell.&lt;/p&gt;
5593
5594 &lt;p&gt;Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
5595 script to launch Signal in Chromium.&lt;/p&gt;
5596
5597 &lt;pre&gt;
5598 #!/bin/sh
5599 cd $(dirname $0)
5600 mkdir -p userdata
5601 exec chromium \
5602 --proxy-server=&quot;socks://localhost:9050&quot; \
5603 --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
5604 &lt;/pre&gt;
5605
5606 &lt;p&gt; The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
5607 SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
5608 Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
5609 will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
5610 connections if they use source IP address.&lt;/p&gt;
5611
5612 &lt;p&gt;When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
5613 &quot;Standalone Registration&quot; in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
5614 repository. I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
5615 Chromium debugging tool, visited the &#39;Console&#39; tab and wrote
5616 &#39;extension.install(&quot;standalone&quot;)&#39; on the console prompt to get the
5617 registration form. Then I entered by land line phone number and
5618 pressed &#39;Call&#39;. 5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
5619 repeated the verification code three times. After entering the number
5620 into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
5621 Signal from my laptop.
5622
5623 &lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
5624 whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
5625 but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
5626 setup. It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
5627 content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
5628 exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
5629 So better than many options, but not great. And sadly the usage is
5630 connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
5631 to associate it to my home and person. I would prefer it if only
5632 those I knew could tell who I was on Signal. There are options
5633 avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
5634 using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.&lt;/p&gt;
5635
5636 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2017-01-10&lt;/strong&gt;: There is an updated blog post
5637 on this topic in
5638 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html&quot;&gt;Experience
5639 and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile
5640 phone&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5641 </description>
5642 </item>
5643
5644 <item>
5645 <title>The new &quot;best&quot; multimedia player in Debian?</title>
5646 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html</link>
5647 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html</guid>
5648 <pubDate>Mon, 6 Jun 2016 12:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
5649 <description>&lt;p&gt;When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
5650 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html&quot;&gt;which
5651 multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
5652 MIME types&lt;/a&gt;, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
5653 the various players claimed support for. The range was from 55 to 130
5654 MIME types. I suspect most media formats are supported by all
5655 players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
5656 their desktop files. There are probably also some bogus MIME types
5657 listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.&lt;/p&gt;
5658
5659 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
5660 the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
5661 and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
5662 favorite media player VLC. The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
5663 yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
5664 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport&quot;&gt;Multimedia
5665 player MIME type support status&lt;/a&gt; Debian wiki page.&lt;/p&gt;
5666
5667 &lt;p&gt;The new &quot;best&quot; multimedia player in Debian? It is VLC, followed by
5668 totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
5669 kmplayer. I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
5670 several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
5671 toten and parole.&lt;/p&gt;
5672
5673 &lt;p&gt;A sad observation is that only 14 MIME types are listed as
5674 supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
5675 desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
5676 audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
5677 video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
5678 video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo. Personally I find
5679 it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
5680 players in Debian. As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
5681 formats.&lt;/p&gt;
5682 </description>
5683 </item>
5684
5685 <item>
5686 <title>A program should be able to open its own files on Linux</title>
5687 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html</link>
5688 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html</guid>
5689 <pubDate>Sun, 5 Jun 2016 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
5690 <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
5691 decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
5692 talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine. I
5693 wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
5694 the day before I would give the talk. The next day I took a plane to
5695 the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
5696 started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
5697 that kpresenter refused to load its own data file. I cursed a bit and
5698 started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
5699 present when I arrived. I tested that the saved files could be
5700 loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued. I continued to polish the
5701 slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
5702 be loaded into kpresenter. In the end I had to rewrite the slides
5703 three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
5704 shorter. After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem &amp;ndash;
5705 kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
5706 Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
5707 program to make slides. The point I&#39;m trying to make is that we
5708 expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
5709 embarrassing to its developers if it can&#39;t.&lt;/p&gt;
5710
5711 &lt;p&gt;Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
5712 files from the desktop file browser? It is not a uncommon problem. A
5713 while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
5714 gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
5715 browser would refuse to open. No video player claimed to understand
5716 such file. I tracked down the cause being &lt;tt&gt;file --mime-type&lt;/tt&gt;
5717 returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
5718 installed listed as a MIME type they would understand. I asked for
5719 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=382&quot;&gt;file to change its
5720 behavour&lt;/a&gt; and use the MIME type video/ogg instead. I also asked
5721 several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
5722 the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files. After a
5723 while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
5724 output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.&lt;/p&gt;
5725
5726 &lt;p&gt;But history repeats itself. A few days ago I tested the music
5727 system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
5728 browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
5729 (*.rg). I&#39;ve reported &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/825993&quot;&gt;the
5730 rosegarden problem to BTS&lt;/a&gt; and a fix is commited to git and will be
5731 included in the next upload. To increase the chance of me remembering
5732 how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
5733 from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;
5734
5735 &lt;p&gt;The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
5736 There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file. The output from
5737 &lt;tt&gt;file --mime-type&lt;/tt&gt; mentioned above, and the content of the
5738 shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/). The file MIME
5739 type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
5740 information is collected from
5741 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/&quot;&gt;the
5742 desktop files&lt;/a&gt; available in /usr/share/applications/. If there is
5743 one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
5744 activated when asking to open a given file. If there are more, one
5745 can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
5746 selecting the wanted one using &#39;Open with&#39; or similar. In general
5747 this work well. But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
5748 type (preferably
5749 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml&quot;&gt;a
5750 MIME type registered with IANA&lt;/a&gt;), file and/or the shared MIME
5751 registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
5752 type in its list of supported MIME types.&lt;/p&gt;
5753
5754 &lt;p&gt;The &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml&lt;/tt&gt; entry for
5755 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec&quot;&gt;the
5756 Shared MIME database&lt;/a&gt; look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
5757
5758 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5759 &amp;lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot; encoding=&quot;UTF-8&quot;?&amp;gt;
5760 &amp;lt;mime-info xmlns=&quot;http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info&quot;&amp;gt;
5761 &amp;lt;mime-type type=&quot;audio/x-rosegarden&quot;&amp;gt;
5762 &amp;lt;sub-class-of type=&quot;application/x-gzip&quot;/&amp;gt;
5763 &amp;lt;comment&amp;gt;Rosegarden project file&amp;lt;/comment&amp;gt;
5764 &amp;lt;glob pattern=&quot;*.rg&quot;/&amp;gt;
5765 &amp;lt;/mime-type&amp;gt;
5766 &amp;lt;/mime-info&amp;gt;
5767 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5768
5769 &lt;p&gt;This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
5770 (it is a gzipped XML file). Note, it is much better to use an
5771 official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
5772 unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.&lt;/p&gt;
5773
5774 &lt;p&gt;The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
5775 audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
5776 file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:&lt;/p&gt;
5777
5778 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5779 % grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
5780 MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
5781 X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
5782 %
5783 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5784
5785 &lt;p&gt;The fix was to add &quot;audio/x-rosegarden;&quot; at the end of the
5786 MimeType= line.&lt;/p&gt;
5787
5788 &lt;p&gt;If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
5789 selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
5790 &lt;tt&gt;file --mime-type&lt;/tt&gt; for the file, ensure the file ending and
5791 MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
5792 that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
5793 support for this MIME type. If not, please report a bug to have it
5794 fixed. :)&lt;/p&gt;
5795 </description>
5796 </item>
5797
5798 <item>
5799 <title>Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version 0.23 available in Debian unstable</title>
5800 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html</link>
5801 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html</guid>
5802 <pubDate>Wed, 25 May 2016 10:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
5803 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram&quot;&gt;The isenkram
5804 system&lt;/a&gt; is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
5805 related packages. The idea is to have a database of mappings between
5806 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
5807 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle. Some use cases
5808 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
5809 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
5810 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
5811 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
5812 install the driver for it. The system work well, and even have a few
5813 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
5814 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).&lt;/p&gt;
5815
5816 &lt;p&gt;The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
5817 good documentation and example code on how to use it. But aptdaemon
5818 is going away and is generally being replaced by
5819 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/&quot;&gt;PackageKit&lt;/a&gt;,
5820 so Isenkram needed a rewrite. And today, thanks to the great patch
5821 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
5822 rewrite finally took place. I&#39;ve just uploaded a new version of
5823 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
5824 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit. To check it out,
5825 install the &lt;tt&gt;isenkram&lt;/tt&gt; package and insert some hardware dongle
5826 and see if it is recognised.&lt;/p&gt;
5827
5828 &lt;p&gt;If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
5829 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
5830 program. This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:&lt;/p&gt;
5831
5832 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5833 % isenkram-lookup
5834 bluez
5835 cheese
5836 fprintd
5837 fprintd-demo
5838 gkrellm-thinkbat
5839 hdapsd
5840 libpam-fprintd
5841 pidgin-blinklight
5842 thinkfan
5843 tleds
5844 tp-smapi-dkms
5845 tp-smapi-source
5846 tpb
5847 %p
5848 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5849
5850 &lt;p&gt;The hardware mappings come from several places. The preferred way
5851 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
5852 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/&quot;&gt;the
5853 cross distribution appstream system&lt;/a&gt;.
5854 See
5855 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram/&quot;&gt;previous
5856 blog posts about isenkram&lt;/a&gt; to learn how to do that.&lt;/p&gt;
5857 </description>
5858 </item>
5859
5860 <item>
5861 <title>Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian</title>
5862 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html</link>
5863 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html</guid>
5864 <pubDate>Mon, 23 May 2016 09:35:00 +0200</pubDate>
5865 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday I updated the
5866 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats&quot;&gt;battery-stats
5867 package in Debian&lt;/a&gt; with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
5868 enterprising users. There were some nice user and visible changes.
5869 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work. A design flaw in
5870 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
5871 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
5872 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
5873 called from the desktop menu. I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
5874 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
5875 graph window pop up as expected.&lt;/p&gt;
5876
5877 &lt;p&gt;The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
5878 graphs (the one showing the last few hours). New is also the user of
5879 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red. The percentages
5880 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
5881 capacity.&lt;/p&gt;
5882
5883 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-rate.png&quot;/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5884
5885 &lt;p&gt;The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
5886 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
5887 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time. The red
5888 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers 100 percent:
5889
5890 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-history.png&quot;/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5891
5892 &lt;p&gt;In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to 80
5893 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
5894 shrinking. :(&lt;/p&gt;
5895
5896 &lt;p&gt;The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
5897 more hardware models. On some hardware, Linux power supply
5898 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
5899 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/. Now
5900 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
5901 machine.&lt;/p&gt;
5902
5903 &lt;p&gt;If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
5904 check out the
5905 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats&quot;&gt;battery-stats&lt;/a&gt;
5906 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
5907 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from &lt;a
5908 href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.
5909 Patches are very welcome.&lt;/p&gt;
5910
5911 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5912 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5913 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5914 </description>
5915 </item>
5916
5917 <item>
5918 <title>Debian now with ZFS on Linux included</title>
5919 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html</link>
5920 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html</guid>
5921 <pubDate>Thu, 12 May 2016 07:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
5922 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
5923 &lt;a href=&quot;http://zfsonlinux.org/&quot;&gt;ZFS for Linux&lt;/a&gt; finally entered
5924 Debian. The package status can be seen on
5925 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux&quot;&gt;the package tracker
5926 for zfs-linux&lt;/a&gt;. and
5927 &lt;a href=&quot;https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
5928 team status page&lt;/a&gt;. If you want to help out, please join us.
5929 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git&quot;&gt;The
5930 source code&lt;/a&gt; is available via git on Alioth. It would also be
5931 great if you could help out with
5932 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms&quot;&gt;the dkms package&lt;/a&gt;, as
5933 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.&lt;/p&gt;
5934 </description>
5935 </item>
5936
5937 <item>
5938 <title>What is the best multimedia player in Debian?</title>
5939 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html</link>
5940 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html</guid>
5941 <pubDate>Sun, 8 May 2016 09:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
5942 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
5943 Debian claim support for most file formats.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5944
5945 &lt;p&gt;A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
5946 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
5947 Edu. I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
5948 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
5949 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
5950 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;The
5951 result&lt;/a&gt; can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
5952 not been updated for a while. But browser plugins are less relevant
5953 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
5954 players.&lt;/p&gt;
5955
5956 &lt;p&gt;A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
5957 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
5958 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why. The cause is a
5959 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/822245&quot;&gt;missing MIME type in the VLC
5960 desktop file&lt;/a&gt;. In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
5961 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
5962 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
5963 two for VLC. This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
5964 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
5965 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
5966 support most file formats.&lt;/p&gt;
5967
5968 &lt;p&gt;The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
5969 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport&quot;&gt;a
5970 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
5971 in the table&lt;/a&gt;, with the package supporting most MIME types being
5972 listed first in the table.&lt;/p&gt;
5973
5974 &lt;/p&gt;The best multimedia player in Debian? It is totem, followed by
5975 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
5976 kmplayer. Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
5977 support?&lt;/p&gt;
5978 </description>
5979 </item>
5980
5981 <item>
5982 <title>The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled</title>
5983 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html</link>
5984 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html</guid>
5985 <pubDate>Wed, 4 May 2016 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
5986 <description>A friend of mine made me aware of
5987 &lt;a href=&quot;https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/&quot;&gt;The Pyra&lt;/a&gt;, a
5988 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled. I
5989 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)&lt;/p&gt;
5990
5991 &lt;p&gt;The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
5992 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a 5&quot;
5993 LCD touch screen. The 6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
5994 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
5995 confirming this. The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
5996 last I heard last night was that 22 more orders were needed before
5997 production started.&lt;/p&gt;
5998
5999 &lt;p&gt;As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
6000 Debian. Please let me know if you know of any others. Is it the
6001 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?&lt;/p&gt;
6002 </description>
6003 </item>
6004
6005 <item>
6006 <title>Lets make a Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator&#39;s Handbook</title>
6007 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html</link>
6008 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html</guid>
6009 <pubDate>Sun, 10 Apr 2016 23:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
6010 <description>&lt;p&gt;During this weekends
6011 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml&quot;&gt;bug
6012 squashing party and developer gathering&lt;/a&gt;, we decided to do our part
6013 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
6014 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
6015 &lt;a href=&quot;http://debian-handbook.info/&quot;&gt;Debian Administrator&#39;s Handbook
6016 project&lt;/a&gt; to get started. If you want to help out, please start
6017 contributing using
6018 &lt;a href=&quot;https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/&quot;&gt;the
6019 hosted weblate project page&lt;/a&gt;, and get in touch using
6020 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators&quot;&gt;the
6021 translators mailing list&lt;/a&gt;. Please also check out
6022 &lt;a href=&quot;https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/&quot;&gt;the instructions for
6023 contributors&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
6024
6025 &lt;p&gt;The book is already available on paper in English, French and
6026 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
6027 Bokmål too. In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
6028 Mobi versions available. And there are incomplete translations
6029 available for many more languages.&lt;/p&gt;
6030 </description>
6031 </item>
6032
6033 <item>
6034 <title>One in two hundred Debian users using ZFS on Linux?</title>
6035 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/One_in_two_hundred_Debian_users_using_ZFS_on_Linux_.html</link>
6036 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/One_in_two_hundred_Debian_users_using_ZFS_on_Linux_.html</guid>
6037 <pubDate>Thu, 7 Apr 2016 22:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
6038 <description>&lt;p&gt;Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
6039 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found. I use
6040 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
6041 But I might be wrong.&lt;/p&gt;
6042
6043 &lt;p&gt;According to
6044 &lt;a href=&quot;https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux&quot;&gt;the popcon
6045 results for spl-linux&lt;/a&gt;, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
6046 0.53% of the population, with the package installed. As far as I know
6047 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
6048 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
6049 installation on Linux in Debian. In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
6050 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
6051 &lt;a href=&quot;https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils&quot;&gt;the popcon
6052 results for zfsutils&lt;/a&gt; show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
6053 the population. So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
6054
6055 &lt;p&gt;But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
6056 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html&quot;&gt;announced
6057 in April 2015&lt;/a&gt; that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
6058 cleared, the package is still not in Debian. The package is again in
6059 the NEW queue. Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
6060 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
6061 to give up. The current status can be seen on
6062 &lt;a href=&quot;https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
6063 team status page&lt;/a&gt;, and
6064 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git&quot;&gt;the
6065 source code&lt;/a&gt; is available on Alioth.&lt;/p&gt;
6066
6067 &lt;p&gt;As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
6068 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
6069 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
6070 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
6071 to help out the team. This was the background for my blog post about
6072 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html&quot;&gt;creating,
6073 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically&lt;/a&gt;, and I
6074 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
6075 copyright file. It is not very easy to check every one of the around
6076 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
6077 right. If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
6078 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.&lt;/p&gt;
6079 </description>
6080 </item>
6081
6082 <item>
6083 <title>Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian</title>
6084 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html</link>
6085 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html</guid>
6086 <pubDate>Wed, 23 Mar 2016 22:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
6087 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
6088 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
6089 later processing and graphing. The original collector store the
6090 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
6091 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
6092 full level, last full level and current battery level. This make it
6093 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
6094 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.&lt;/p&gt;
6095
6096 &lt;p&gt;The new tools are available in &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/battery-stats/&lt;/tt&gt;
6097 in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable. Get the new battery level graph
6098 and lifetime prediction by running:
6099
6100 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6101 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
6102 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6103
6104 &lt;p&gt;Or select the &#39;Battery Level Graph&#39; from your application menu.&lt;/p&gt;
6105
6106 &lt;p&gt;The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
6107 entry yet):&lt;/p&gt;
6108
6109 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6110 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
6111 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6112
6113 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
6114 when there are few data points. The graphs look a bit better with a
6115 few years of data.&lt;/p&gt;
6116
6117 &lt;p&gt;A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
6118 collector broke in Debian. The scripts in
6119 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/&lt;/tt&gt; were no longer executed. I
6120 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
6121 know. The issue is reported as
6122 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/818649&quot;&gt;bug #818649&lt;/a&gt; against
6123 pm-utils. I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
6124 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
6125 disconnected. With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
6126 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
6127
6128 &lt;p&gt;If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
6129 check out the
6130 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats&quot;&gt;battery-stats&lt;/a&gt;
6131 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
6132 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
6133 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.
6134 As always, patches are very welcome.&lt;/p&gt;
6135 </description>
6136 </item>
6137
6138 <item>
6139 <title>Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</title>
6140 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html</link>
6141 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html</guid>
6142 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Mar 2016 15:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
6143 <description>&lt;p&gt;Back in September, I blogged about
6144 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html&quot;&gt;the
6145 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery&lt;/a&gt;, and
6146 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced). I
6147 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
6148 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
6149 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats&quot;&gt;a battery-stats
6150 package in Debian&lt;/a&gt; that should do the same thing, and I did not see
6151 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
6152 fixed instead. I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
6153 hoped someone would step in and fix it. But no-one did.&lt;/p&gt;
6154
6155 &lt;p&gt;I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
6156 hands. The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
6157 battery stats (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats&quot;&gt;available from github&lt;/a&gt;) and part of the team maintaining
6158 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
6159 able to collect battery status using the &lt;tt&gt;/sys/class/power_supply/&lt;/tt&gt;
6160 information provided by the Linux kernel. If you install the
6161 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
6162 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
6163 status of the battery. The source package build and work just fine in
6164 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
6165 tested). The default graph you get for that system look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
6166
6167 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png&quot; width=&quot;70%&quot; align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6168
6169 &lt;p&gt;My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
6170 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
6171 about the battery. The scripts are merged into the upstream
6172 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
6173 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way. Will have to test a
6174 bit more before I make a new release.&lt;/p&gt;
6175
6176 &lt;p&gt;I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
6177 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
6178 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
6179 and graphing.&lt;/p&gt;
6180
6181 &lt;p&gt;If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
6182 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
6183 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; and
6184 on
6185 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.
6186 I would love some help to improve the system further.&lt;/p&gt;
6187 </description>
6188 </item>
6189
6190 <item>
6191 <title>Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</title>
6192 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html</link>
6193 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html</guid>
6194 <pubDate>Fri, 19 Feb 2016 15:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
6195 <description>&lt;p&gt;Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
6196 details. And one of the details is the content of the
6197 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
6198 the code in the package in question, preferably in
6199 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/&quot;&gt;machine
6200 readable DEP5 format&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
6201
6202 &lt;p&gt;For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
6203 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
6204 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters. So getting it right
6205 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
6206 both you and the ftpmasters some work.. Today, while trying to figure
6207 out what was wrong with
6208 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447&quot;&gt;the
6209 zfsonlinux copyright file&lt;/a&gt;, I decided to spend some time on
6210 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
6211 semi-automatically.&lt;/p&gt;
6212
6213 &lt;p&gt;Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
6214 file based on the code in the source package,
6215 &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake&quot;&gt;debmake&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;
6216 and &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme&quot;&gt;cme&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;. I&#39;m
6217 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
6218 create a sensible draft file. As far as I can tell, none of them can
6219 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
6220 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload. I found the debmake
6221 option in
6222 &lt;a href=&quot;http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html&quot;&gt;a
6223 blog posts from 2014&lt;/a&gt;.
6224
6225 &lt;p&gt;To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
6226
6227 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6228 debmake -cc &gt; debian/copyright
6229 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6230
6231 &lt;p&gt;Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
6232 this might not be the best option.&lt;/p&gt;
6233
6234 &lt;p&gt;The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
6235 this approach in
6236 &lt;a href=&quot;https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/&quot;&gt;a
6237 blog post from 2015&lt;/a&gt;. To generate using cme, use the &#39;update
6238 dpkg-copyright&#39; option:
6239
6240 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6241 cme update dpkg-copyright
6242 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6243
6244 &lt;p&gt;This will create or update debian/copyright. The cme tool seem to
6245 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.&lt;/p&gt;
6246
6247 &lt;p&gt;When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
6248 check if the file is correct. For this I found two good options,
6249 &lt;tt&gt;debmake -k&lt;/tt&gt; and &lt;tt&gt;license-reconcile&lt;/tt&gt;. The former seem
6250 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
6251 ineffective blocks in the copyright file. The latter reports missing
6252 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
6253 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0). I suspect it is good to use both and
6254 fix all issues reported by them before uploading. But I do not know
6255 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
6256 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.&lt;/p&gt;
6257
6258 &lt;p&gt;The devscripts tool &lt;tt&gt;licensecheck&lt;/tt&gt; deserve mentioning. It
6259 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
6260 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
6261 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.&lt;/p&gt;
6262
6263 &lt;p&gt;Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
6264 debian/copyright file. Please let me know, or blog about it on
6265 planet.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
6266
6267 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6268 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6269 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
6270
6271 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2016-02-20&lt;/strong&gt;: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
6272 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
6273
6274 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6275 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
6276 /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 &gt; debian/copyright.auto
6277 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6278
6279 &lt;p&gt;He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
6280 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
6281 copyright changes in the upstream source. I will try to do the same
6282 with my packages in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
6283
6284 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2016-02-21&lt;/strong&gt;: The cme author recommended
6285 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
6286 command line.&lt;/p&gt;
6287 </description>
6288 </item>
6289
6290 <item>
6291 <title>Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</title>
6292 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html</link>
6293 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html</guid>
6294 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Feb 2016 16:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
6295 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11&quot;&gt;appstream system&lt;/a&gt;
6296 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
6297 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
6298 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it. This can
6299 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
6300 about. :)&lt;/p&gt;
6301
6302 &lt;p&gt;Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
6303 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
6304 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
6305 unstable. In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
6306 by the kernel during kernel module loading. To find the package
6307 providing the example file, do like this:&lt;/p&gt;
6308
6309 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6310 % apt install appstream
6311 [...]
6312 % apt update
6313 [...]
6314 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
6315 awk &#39;/Package:/ {print $2}&#39;
6316 firmware-qlogic
6317 %
6318 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6319
6320 &lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines&quot;&gt;the
6321 appstream wiki&lt;/a&gt; page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
6322 a way appstream can use.&lt;/p&gt;
6323
6324 &lt;p&gt;This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
6325 given MIME type. This is very useful when you get a file you do not
6326 know how to handle. First find the mime type using &lt;tt&gt;file
6327 --mime-type&lt;/tt&gt;, and next look up the package providing support for
6328 it. Lets say you got an SVG file. Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
6329 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:&lt;/p&gt;
6330
6331 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6332 % apt install appstream
6333 [...]
6334 % apt update
6335 [...]
6336 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
6337 awk &#39;/Package:/ {print $2}&#39;
6338 bkchem
6339 phototonic
6340 inkscape
6341 shutter
6342 tetzle
6343 geeqie
6344 xia
6345 pinta
6346 gthumb
6347 karbon
6348 comix
6349 mirage
6350 viewnior
6351 postr
6352 ristretto
6353 kolourpaint4
6354 eog
6355 eom
6356 gimagereader
6357 midori
6358 %
6359 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6360
6361 &lt;p&gt;I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
6362 packages providing appstream metadata.&lt;/p&gt;
6363 </description>
6364 </item>
6365
6366 <item>
6367 <title>Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software</title>
6368 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html</link>
6369 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html</guid>
6370 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Jan 2016 10:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
6371 <description>&lt;p&gt;Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
6372 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
6373 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
6374 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent). And if their
6375 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
6376 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
6377 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
6378 during installation). And when these programs send out information to
6379 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
6380 extra care is taken to not send the location. The provided
6381 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
6382 good and bad, depend on your point of view). What is certain, is that
6383 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
6384 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
6385 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
6386 entities.&lt;/p&gt;
6387
6388 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img width=&quot;70%&quot; src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6389
6390 &lt;p&gt;The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
6391 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing. It is
6392 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
6393 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
6394 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information. But the
6395 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
6396 tool to do so is called
6397 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geocreepy.com/&quot;&gt;Creepy or Cree.py&lt;/a&gt;. I
6398 discovered it when I read
6399 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html&quot;&gt;an
6400 article about Creepy&lt;/a&gt; in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
6401 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
6402 The python program was in Debian, but
6403 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy&quot;&gt;the version in
6404 Debian&lt;/a&gt; was completely broken and practically unmaintained. I
6405 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
6406 have time to fix it then. This Christmas I decided to finally try to
6407 get Creepy operational in Debian. Now a fixed version is available in
6408 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
6409 are now included
6410 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy&quot;&gt;upstream&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
6411
6412 &lt;p&gt;The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
6413 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
6414 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
6415 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
6416 these services. Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
6417 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
6418 days it is impossible. This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
6419 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
6420 information to them about your search interests. This should be taken
6421 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
6422 about yourself with the services.&lt;/p&gt;
6423
6424 &lt;p&gt;The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
6425 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
6426 of Norway. One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
6427 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
6428 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
6429 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
6430 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
6431 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
6432 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
6433 things. A similar technique have been
6434 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl&quot;&gt;used
6435 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine&lt;/a&gt;, and it is both a powerful
6436 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
6437 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
6438 public.&lt;/p&gt;
6439
6440 &lt;p&gt;The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
6441 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
6442 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
6443 python-requests-toolbelt).&lt;/p&gt;
6444
6445 &lt;p&gt;(I have uploaded
6446 &lt;a href=&quot;https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy&quot;&gt;the image to
6447 screenshots.debian.net&lt;/a&gt; and licensed it under the same terms as the
6448 Creepy program in Debian.)&lt;/p&gt;
6449 </description>
6450 </item>
6451
6452 <item>
6453 <title>Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</title>
6454 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html</link>
6455 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html</guid>
6456 <pubDate>Fri, 15 Jan 2016 00:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
6457 <description>&lt;p&gt;During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
6458 &lt;a href=&quot;https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/&quot;&gt;observed
6459 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
6460 believe a computer have a given security hole&lt;/a&gt; if it download a
6461 security fix from a Debian mirror. This is a good reason to always
6462 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
6463 listening do not know which IP address to attack. In August, Richard
6464 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
6465 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
6466 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
6467 &lt;a href=&quot;http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/&quot;&gt;proposed
6468 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror&lt;/a&gt;. He
6469 was not the first to propose this, as the
6470 &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor&quot;&gt;apt-transport-tor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;
6471 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
6472 to use &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.torproject.org/&quot;&gt;Tor&lt;/a&gt;, but I was not
6473 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.&lt;/p&gt;
6474
6475 &lt;p&gt;Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
6476 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
6477 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
6478 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
6479 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.&lt;/p&gt;
6480
6481 &lt;p&gt;Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
6482 installing &lt;tt&gt;apt-transport-tor&lt;/tt&gt; and replacing http and https
6483 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
6484 of the official Debian mirror site. I recommend installing
6485 &lt;tt&gt;etckeeper&lt;/tt&gt; before you start to have a history of the changes
6486 done in /etc/.&lt;/p&gt;
6487
6488 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6489 apt install apt-transport-tor
6490 sed -i &#39;s% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%&#39; /etc/apt/sources.list
6491 sed -i &#39;s% http% tor+http%&#39; /etc/apt/sources.list
6492 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6493
6494 &lt;p&gt;If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
6495 the sed commands for these too. The sed command is assuming your are
6496 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror. Adjust the command (or just
6497 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.&lt;/p&gt;
6498
6499 &lt;p&gt;This work in Debian Jessie and later. Note that tools like
6500 &lt;tt&gt;apt-file&lt;/tt&gt; only recently started using the apt transport
6501 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs. For
6502 &lt;tt&gt;apt-file&lt;/tt&gt; you need the version currently in experimental,
6503 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable. So if you
6504 need a working &lt;tt&gt;apt-file&lt;/tt&gt;, this is not for you.&lt;/p&gt;
6505
6506 &lt;p&gt;Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
6507 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
6508 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
6509 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine. Using Tor will
6510 become normal for the machine in question.&lt;/p&gt;
6511
6512 &lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox&quot;&gt;Freedombox&lt;/a&gt;, APT
6513 is set up by default to use &lt;tt&gt;apt-transport-tor&lt;/tt&gt; when Tor is
6514 enabled. It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
6515 system.&lt;/p&gt;
6516 </description>
6517 </item>
6518
6519 <item>
6520 <title>OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</title>
6521 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html</link>
6522 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html</guid>
6523 <pubDate>Wed, 23 Dec 2015 01:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
6524 <description>&lt;p&gt;When I was a kid, we used to collect &quot;car numbers&quot;, as we used to
6525 call the car license plate numbers in those days. I would write the
6526 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
6527 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
6528 exotic or special region codes and numbers. It was a fun game to pass
6529 time, as we kids have plenty of it.&lt;/p&gt;
6530
6531 &lt;p&gt;A few days I came across
6532 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr&quot;&gt;the OpenALPR
6533 project&lt;/a&gt;, a free software project to automatically discover and
6534 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
6535 &quot;car numbers&quot; in a machine readable format. I&#39;ve been looking for
6536 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
6537 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition&quot;&gt;automatic
6538 number plate recognition&lt;/a&gt; tool only is available in the hands of
6539 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
6540 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance. I
6541 discovered the developer
6542 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/747509&quot;&gt;wanted to get the tool into
6543 Debian&lt;/a&gt;, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
6544 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
6545 archive.&lt;/p&gt;
6546
6547 &lt;p&gt;Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
6548 it into Debian, where it currently
6549 &lt;a href=&quot;https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html&quot;&gt;waits
6550 in the NEW queue&lt;/a&gt; for review by the Debian ftpmasters.&lt;/p&gt;
6551
6552 &lt;p&gt;I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
6553 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
6554 surveillance system? Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
6555 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
6556 when number plates on my watch list are discovered. Another use case
6557 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
6558 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
6559 car. When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
6560 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
6561 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway. I
6562 guess for such use case it make sense. I am sure there are other use
6563 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.&lt;/p&gt;
6564
6565 &lt;p&gt;If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
6566 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
6567 before running &quot;debuild&quot; to build the source. Or wait a bit until the
6568 package show up in unstable.&lt;/p&gt;
6569 </description>
6570 </item>
6571
6572 <item>
6573 <title>Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</title>
6574 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html</link>
6575 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html</guid>
6576 <pubDate>Sun, 20 Dec 2015 12:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
6577 <description>&lt;p&gt;Around three years ago, I created
6578 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;the isenkram
6579 system&lt;/a&gt; to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
6580 hardware related packages. A GUI system in the isenkram package will
6581 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
6582 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine. The same
6583 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
6584 tools in the isenkram-cli package. In addition to mapping hardware,
6585 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
6586 install needed firmware packages automatically. The key for this
6587 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
6588 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
6589 with.&lt;/p&gt;
6590
6591 &lt;p&gt;I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
6592 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
6593 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
6594 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
6595 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
6596 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
6597 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/&quot;&gt;the
6598 appstream system&lt;/a&gt; was announced. I got in touch and suggested to
6599 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
6600 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
6601 Debian version of appstream.&lt;/p&gt;
6602
6603 &lt;p&gt;A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
6604 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
6605 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages. The only
6606 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
6607 pymissile package. I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
6608 how do add the required
6609 &lt;a href=&quot;https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html&quot;&gt;metadata
6610 in pymissile&lt;/a&gt;. I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
6611 this content:&lt;/p&gt;
6612
6613 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6614 &amp;lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot; encoding=&quot;UTF-8&quot;?&amp;gt;
6615 &amp;lt;component&amp;gt;
6616 &amp;lt;id&amp;gt;pymissile&amp;lt;/id&amp;gt;
6617 &amp;lt;metadata_license&amp;gt;MIT&amp;lt;/metadata_license&amp;gt;
6618 &amp;lt;name&amp;gt;pymissile&amp;lt;/name&amp;gt;
6619 &amp;lt;summary&amp;gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&amp;lt;/summary&amp;gt;
6620 &amp;lt;description&amp;gt;
6621 &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;
6622 Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
6623 Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
6624 motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
6625 launcher.
6626 &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;
6627 &amp;lt;/description&amp;gt;
6628 &amp;lt;provides&amp;gt;
6629 &amp;lt;modalias&amp;gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&amp;lt;/modalias&amp;gt;
6630 &amp;lt;/provides&amp;gt;
6631 &amp;lt;/component&amp;gt;
6632 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6633
6634 &lt;p&gt;The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
6635 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
6636 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel. In this case, it
6637 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
6638 0202.&lt;/p&gt;
6639
6640 &lt;p&gt;Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
6641 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
6642 appstream files. Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
6643 these files. A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
6644 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
6645 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use). But
6646 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
6647 upstream for this project is dormant.&lt;/p&gt;
6648
6649 &lt;p&gt;To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
6650 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
6651 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
6652 package under /usr/share/appdata/. I did this by adding the following
6653 line to debian/pymissile.install:&lt;/p&gt;
6654
6655 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6656 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
6657 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6658
6659 &lt;p&gt;With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
6660 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
6661 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
6662 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
6663 question.&lt;/p&gt;
6664
6665 &lt;p&gt;Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
6666 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11&quot;&gt;DEP-11&lt;/a&gt; proposal.&lt;/p&gt;
6667
6668 &lt;p&gt;To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
6669 try running this command on the command line:&lt;/p&gt;
6670
6671 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6672 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
6673 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6674
6675 &lt;p&gt;To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
6676 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram/&quot;&gt;my
6677 blog posts tagged isenkram&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
6678 </description>
6679 </item>
6680
6681 <item>
6682 <title>The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust</title>
6683 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html</link>
6684 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html</guid>
6685 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov 2015 09:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
6686 <description>&lt;p&gt;A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
6687 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/&quot;&gt;The
6688 GPL is not magic pixie dust&lt;/a&gt;&quot; explain the importance of making sure
6689 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html&quot;&gt;GPL&lt;/a&gt; is enforced.
6690 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:&lt;p&gt;
6691
6692 &lt;blockquote&gt;
6693
6694 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png&quot; width=&quot;194&quot; height=&quot;90&quot; alt=&quot;Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!&quot; align=&quot;right&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6695
6696 &lt;blockquote&gt;
6697 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.&lt;br/&gt;
6698
6699 The first step is to choose a
6700 &lt;a href=&quot;https://copyleft.org/&quot;&gt;copyleft&lt;/a&gt; license for your
6701 code.&lt;br/&gt;
6702
6703 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
6704 &lt;b&gt;it must be enforced&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br/&gt;
6705
6706 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
6707 work&lt;br/&gt;
6708
6709 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
6710 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
6711
6712 &lt;p&gt;&lt;small&gt;-- &lt;a href=&quot;http://ebb.org/bkuhn/&quot;&gt;Bradley Kuhn&lt;/a&gt;, in
6713 &lt;a href=&quot;http://faif.us/&quot; title=&quot;Free as in Freedom&quot;&gt;FaiF&lt;/a&gt;
6714 &lt;a href=&quot;http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/&quot;&gt;episode
6715 0x57&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/small&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6716
6717 &lt;p&gt;As the Debian Website
6718 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/794116&quot;&gt;used&lt;/a&gt;
6719 &lt;a href=&quot;https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;amp;r2=1.25&quot;&gt;to&lt;/a&gt;
6720 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
6721 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
6722 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
6723 software products. Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
6724 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
6725 such licenses are not enough. With the ongoing adoption of Free
6726 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community&#39;s
6727 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
6728 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always. As Karen
6729 and Bradley explained in &lt;a href=&quot;http://faif.us/&quot; title=&quot;Free as in
6730 Freedom&quot;&gt;FaiF&lt;/a&gt;
6731 &lt;a href=&quot;http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/&quot;&gt;episode 0x57&lt;/a&gt;,
6732 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
6733 to protect it. The reality of today&#39;s world is that legal
6734 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming. With
6735 &lt;a href=&quot;http://gpl-violations.org/&quot;&gt;gpl-violations.org&lt;/a&gt; in hiatus
6736 &lt;a href=&quot;http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/&quot;&gt;until&lt;/a&gt;
6737 some time in 2016, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/&quot;&gt;Software
6738 Freedom Conservancy&lt;/a&gt; (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
6739 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
6740 In March the SFC supported a
6741 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/&quot;&gt;lawsuit
6742 by Christoph Hellwig&lt;/a&gt; against VMware for refusing to
6743 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html&quot;&gt;comply
6744 with the GPL&lt;/a&gt; in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
6745 kernel. Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
6746 conferences
6747 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/&quot;&gt;blocked
6748 or cancelled their talks&lt;/a&gt;. As a result they have decided to rely
6749 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
6750 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft. So the SFC has
6751 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/&quot;&gt;launched&lt;/a&gt;
6752 a &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/&quot;&gt;campaign&lt;/a&gt; to create
6753 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
6754 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
6755 Software.&lt;/p&gt;
6756
6757 &lt;p&gt;If you support Free Software,
6758 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/&quot;&gt;like&lt;/a&gt;
6759 what the SFC do, agree with their
6760 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html&quot;&gt;compliance
6761 principles&lt;/a&gt;, are happy about their
6762 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/&quot;&gt;successes&lt;/a&gt; in 2015,
6763 work on a project that is an SFC
6764 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/&quot;&gt;member&lt;/a&gt; and or
6765 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
6766 &lt;a href=&quot;https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA&quot;&gt;Christopher
6767 Allan Webber&lt;/a&gt;,
6768 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/&quot;&gt;Carol
6769 Smith&lt;/a&gt;,
6770 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/&quot;&gt;Jono
6771 Bacon&lt;/a&gt;, myself and
6772 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters&quot;&gt;others&lt;/a&gt; in
6773 becoming a
6774 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/&quot;&gt;supporter&lt;/a&gt;. For the
6775 next week your donation will be
6776 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/&quot;&gt;matched&lt;/a&gt;
6777 by an anonymous donor. Please also consider asking your employer to
6778 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC. Don&#39;t forget to
6779 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
6780 social media accounts.&lt;/p&gt;
6781
6782 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
6783
6784 &lt;p&gt;I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
6785 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself. Perhaps you should be a
6786 supporter too?&lt;/p&gt;
6787 </description>
6788 </item>
6789
6790 <item>
6791 <title>PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</title>
6792 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html</link>
6793 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html</guid>
6794 <pubDate>Tue, 17 Nov 2015 10:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
6795 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
6796 set it up properly. I wanted to generate it offline and have it
6797 available on &lt;a href=&quot;http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp&quot;&gt;a OpenPGP
6798 smart card&lt;/a&gt; for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
6799 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever. But
6800 finally I&#39;ve been able to complete the process, and have now moved
6801 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key. See
6802 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt&quot;&gt;the
6803 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key&lt;/a&gt; for
6804 the details. This is my new key:&lt;/p&gt;
6805
6806 &lt;pre&gt;
6807 pub 3936R/&lt;a href=&quot;http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html&quot;&gt;111D6B29EE4E02F9&lt;/a&gt; 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
6808 Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1 D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
6809 uid Petter Reinholdtsen &amp;lt;pere@hungry.com&amp;gt;
6810 uid Petter Reinholdtsen &amp;lt;pere@debian.org&amp;gt;
6811 sub 4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
6812 sub 4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
6813 sub 4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
6814 &lt;/pre&gt;
6815
6816 &lt;p&gt;The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
6817 my old key.&lt;/p&gt;
6818
6819 &lt;p&gt;If you signed my old key
6820 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html&quot;&gt;DB4CCC4B2A30D729&lt;/a&gt;),
6821 I&#39;d very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
6822 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
6823 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.&lt;/p&gt;
6824 </description>
6825 </item>
6826
6827 <item>
6828 <title>The life and death of a laptop battery</title>
6829 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html</link>
6830 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html</guid>
6831 <pubDate>Thu, 24 Sep 2015 16:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
6832 <description>&lt;p&gt;When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
6833 But this do not last. The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
6834 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
6835 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
6836 all the time. Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
6837 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
6838 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.&lt;/p&gt;
6839
6840 &lt;img src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png&quot;/&gt;
6841
6842 &lt;p&gt;First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
6843 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
6844 by someone else. I found
6845 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats&quot;&gt;battery-stats&lt;/a&gt;,
6846 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
6847 broken. I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
6848 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
6849 from him. Via
6850 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html&quot;&gt;a
6851 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air&lt;/a&gt; I also
6852 discovered
6853 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git&quot;&gt;batlog&lt;/a&gt;, not
6854 available in Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
6855
6856 &lt;p&gt;I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
6857 battery stats ever since. Now my
6858 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
6859 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
6860 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity. My
6861 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
6862
6863 &lt;pre&gt;
6864 #!/bin/sh
6865 # Inspired by
6866 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
6867 # See also
6868 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
6869 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
6870
6871 files=&quot;manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
6872 energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status&quot;
6873
6874 if [ ! -e &quot;$logfile&quot; ] ; then
6875 (
6876 printf &quot;timestamp,&quot;
6877 for f in $files; do
6878 printf &quot;%s,&quot; $f
6879 done
6880 echo
6881 ) &gt; &quot;$logfile&quot;
6882 fi
6883
6884 log_battery() {
6885 # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
6886 # when several log processes run in parallel.
6887 msg=$(printf &quot;%s,&quot; $(date +%s); \
6888 for f in $files; do \
6889 printf &quot;%s,&quot; $(cat $f); \
6890 done)
6891 echo &quot;$msg&quot;
6892 }
6893
6894 cd /sys/class/power_supply
6895
6896 for bat in BAT*; do
6897 (cd $bat &amp;&amp; log_battery &gt;&gt; &quot;$logfile&quot;)
6898 done
6899 &lt;/pre&gt;
6900
6901 &lt;p&gt;The script is called when the power management system detect a
6902 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
6903 and out of hibernation and suspend. In addition, it collect a value
6904 every 10 minutes. This make it possible for me know when the battery
6905 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
6906 The code for the Debian package
6907 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status&quot;&gt;is now
6908 available on github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
6909
6910 &lt;p&gt;The collected log file look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
6911
6912 &lt;pre&gt;
6913 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
6914 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
6915 [...]
6916 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
6917 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
6918 &lt;/pre&gt;
6919
6920 &lt;p&gt;I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
6921 over time. This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
6922 battery.&lt;/p&gt;
6923
6924 &lt;p&gt;But why is this happening? Why are my laptop batteries always
6925 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
6926 satellites keep working year after year. If we are to believe
6927 &lt;a href=&quot;http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries&quot;&gt;Battery
6928 University&lt;/a&gt;, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
6929 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
6930 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
6931 I&#39;ve been told that the Tesla electric cars
6932 &lt;a href=&quot;http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit&quot;&gt;limit
6933 the charge of their batteries to 80%&lt;/a&gt;, with the option to charge to
6934 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
6935 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
6936 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
6937 Linux too.&lt;/p&gt;
6938
6939 &lt;p&gt;Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
6940 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
6941 preparation for a longer trip? I found
6942 &lt;a href=&quot;http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity&quot;&gt;one
6943 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
6944 80%&lt;/a&gt;, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
6945 load).&lt;/p&gt;
6946
6947 &lt;p&gt;I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
6948 at the start. I also wonder why the &quot;full capacity&quot; increases some
6949 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
6950 back to design capacity. And I wonder if the discharge and charge
6951 speed change over time, or if this stay the same. I did not yet try
6952 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
6953 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
6954 those.&lt;/p&gt;
6955
6956 &lt;p&gt;Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
6957 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
6958 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
6959 initially, and use &#39;tlp setcharge 40 80&#39; to change when charging start
6960 and stop. I&#39;ve done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
6961 and need to be replaced. The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
6962 specific.&lt;/p&gt;
6963 </description>
6964 </item>
6965
6966 <item>
6967 <title>New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</title>
6968 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html</link>
6969 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html</guid>
6970 <pubDate>Sun, 5 Jul 2015 21:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
6971 <description>&lt;p&gt;Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
6972 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback. I wish to
6973 thank every one of these. Several pointed me to the possibility of
6974 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
6975 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
6976 machine. But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
6977 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
6978 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement. If I did
6979 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
6980 using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.francecrans.com/&quot;&gt;FrancEcrans&lt;/a&gt;, but it
6981 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.&lt;/p&gt;
6982
6983 &lt;p&gt;One tip I got was to use the
6984 &lt;a href=&quot;https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb&quot;&gt;Skinflint&lt;/a&gt; web service to
6985 compare laptop models. It seem to have more models available than
6986 prisjakt.no. Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
6987 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
6988 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
6989 keyboards I tested. Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
6990
6991 &lt;p&gt;When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
6992 newest Thinkpad X model. The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
6993 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
6994 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
6995 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.corsac.net/X250/&quot;&gt;Corsac.net&lt;/a&gt;. The reports I
6996 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent. Some say the keyboard
6997 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
6998 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
6999 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
7000 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
7001 replace it. I&#39;m also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
7002 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230. I&#39;m
7003 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
7004 noisy. In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
7005 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.&lt;/p&gt;
7006
7007 &lt;p&gt;I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
7008 &lt;a href=&quot;http://pro-star.com&quot;&gt;Pro-Star&lt;/a&gt;, another was
7009 &lt;a href=&quot;http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/&quot;&gt;Libreboot&lt;/a&gt;.
7010 The latter look very attractive to me.&lt;/p&gt;
7011
7012 &lt;p&gt;Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback. It help a lot
7013 as I keep looking for a replacement.&lt;/p&gt;
7014
7015 &lt;p&gt;Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
7016 &lt;a href=&quot;&quot;&gt;lapstore.de&lt;/a&gt; web shop for used laptops. They got several
7017 different
7018 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/&quot;&gt;old
7019 thinkpad X models&lt;/a&gt;, and provide one year warranty.&lt;/p&gt;
7020 </description>
7021 </item>
7022
7023 <item>
7024 <title>Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</title>
7025 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html</link>
7026 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html</guid>
7027 <pubDate>Fri, 3 Jul 2015 07:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
7028 <description>&lt;p&gt;My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
7029 replacement soon. The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
7030 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
7031 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
7032 flickering.&lt;/p&gt;
7033
7034 &lt;p&gt;My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
7035 still as
7036 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html&quot;&gt;I
7037 described them in 2013&lt;/a&gt;. The last time I bought a laptop, I had
7038 good help from
7039 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353&quot;&gt;prisjakt.no&lt;/a&gt;
7040 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
7041 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually. Three button mouse
7042 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
7043 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
7044 G2) lack three mouse buttons). It is also unclear to me how good the
7045 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are. I hope Lenovo have not messed up
7046 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
7047 deteriorated since X41.&lt;/p&gt;
7048
7049 &lt;p&gt;I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
7050 seem sensible to me? Are there better services around to search the
7051 set of available laptops for features? Please send me an email if you
7052 have suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;
7053
7054 &lt;p&gt;Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
7055 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom&quot;&gt;list
7056 of endorsed hardware&lt;/a&gt;, which is useful background information.&lt;/p&gt;
7057 </description>
7058 </item>
7059
7060 <item>
7061 <title>How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</title>
7062 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html</link>
7063 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html</guid>
7064 <pubDate>Sat, 22 Nov 2014 01:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
7065 <description>&lt;p&gt;By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
7066 sysvinit as its boot system by default. But how can one keep using
7067 sysvinit in Jessie? It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
7068 courtesy of
7069 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html&quot;&gt;Erich
7070 Schubert&lt;/a&gt; and
7071 &lt;a href=&quot;http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/&quot;&gt;Simon
7072 McVittie&lt;/a&gt;.
7073
7074 &lt;p&gt;If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
7075 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
7076 &lt;tt&gt;/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit&lt;/tt&gt; with this content before
7077 you upgrade:&lt;/p&gt;
7078
7079 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7080 Package: systemd-sysv
7081 Pin: release o=Debian
7082 Pin-Priority: -1
7083 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
7084
7085 &lt;p&gt;This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
7086 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
7087 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
7088 systemd as a default boot system. The end result should be that the
7089 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.&lt;/p&gt;
7090
7091 &lt;p&gt;If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
7092 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
7093 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
7094 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot. Either by
7095 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
7096 preseed file used. First, the kernel command line argument:
7097
7098 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7099 preseed/late_command=&quot;in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core&quot;
7100 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
7101
7102 &lt;p&gt;Next, the line to use in a preseed file:&lt;/p&gt;
7103
7104 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7105 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
7106 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
7107
7108 &lt;p&gt;One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
7109 the sysvinit-core package.&lt;/p&gt;
7110
7111 &lt;p&gt;I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
7112 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
7113 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
7114 devices show up during boot. But on the other hand, the new default
7115 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
7116 Jessie is released.&lt;/p&gt;
7117
7118 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
7119 &lt;ahref=&quot;https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg&quot;&gt;a
7120 blog post by Torsten Glaser&lt;/a&gt;, added --purge to the preseed
7121 line.&lt;/p&gt;
7122 </description>
7123 </item>
7124
7125 <item>
7126 <title>A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</title>
7127 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html</link>
7128 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html</guid>
7129 <pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2014 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
7130 <description>&lt;p&gt;The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
7131 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
7132 democracy. But this right is under serious attack these days.&lt;/p&gt;
7133
7134 &lt;p&gt;A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
7135 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
7136 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
7137 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor. Such SMTP option would be
7138 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
7139 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
7140 to the people peeking on the wire. I
7141 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html&quot;&gt;proposed
7142 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October&lt;/a&gt; and got a
7143 lot of useful feedback and suggestions. It also became obvious to me
7144 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
7145 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
7146 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP&quot;&gt;the
7147 Mailpile&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://dee.su/cables&quot;&gt;the Cables&lt;/a&gt; systems
7148 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.&lt;/p&gt;
7149
7150 &lt;p&gt;To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
7151 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
7152 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion. With such addresses
7153 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
7154 go to the correct SMTP server. To do this, one need to configure the
7155 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
7156 emails for this .onion domain. To learn more about Exim configuration
7157 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
7158 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
7159 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian. Getting it to work
7160 were fairly easy, and
7161 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp&quot;&gt;the
7162 source code for the Debian package&lt;/a&gt; is available from github. I
7163 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
7164 useful approach.&lt;/p&gt;
7165
7166 &lt;p&gt;If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
7167 mail system installed (or run &lt;tt&gt;apt-get purge exim4-config&lt;/tt&gt; to
7168 get rid of exim4). Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
7169 above, build the deb and install it on the machine. Next, run
7170 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service&lt;/tt&gt; and follow
7171 the instructions to get the service up and running. Restart tor and
7172 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
7173 this:&lt;/p&gt;
7174
7175 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7176 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
7177 --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
7178 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7179
7180 &lt;p&gt;This will test the SMTP delivery using tor. Replace the email
7181 address with your own address to test your server. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7182
7183 &lt;p&gt;The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
7184 easier and more automatic. Especially the tor setup need more work.
7185 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
7186 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
7187 architecture independent. It would probably also make the code easier
7188 to review. The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
7189 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd. It would be better if
7190 no daemon and no socket is needed. I suspect it is possible to get
7191 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
7192 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
7193 system.&lt;/p&gt;
7194
7195 &lt;p&gt;Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
7196 &lt;tt&gt;fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion&lt;/tt&gt; mail address, deliverable over
7197 SMTorP. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7198 </description>
7199 </item>
7200
7201 <item>
7202 <title>listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</title>
7203 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html</link>
7204 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html</guid>
7205 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Oct 2014 20:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
7206 <description>&lt;p&gt;If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
7207 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
7208 operate. First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
7209 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
7210 and various options for each email address. This take a while for
7211 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
7212 job as a list moderator. But there is a quick alternative,
7213 &lt;a href=&quot;http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin&quot;&gt;the
7214 listadmin program&lt;/a&gt;. It allow you to check lists for new messages
7215 to moderate in a fraction of a second. Here is a test run on two
7216 lists I recently took over:&lt;/p&gt;
7217
7218 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7219 % time listadmin xiph
7220 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
7221 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
7222
7223 real 0m1.709s
7224 user 0m0.232s
7225 sys 0m0.012s
7226 %
7227 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7228
7229 &lt;p&gt;In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
7230 there are no message in the moderation queue. Every morning I
7231 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
7232 minutes. When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
7233 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue. It took me
7234 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
7235 program.&lt;/p&gt;
7236
7237 &lt;p&gt;If you install
7238 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin&quot;&gt;the listadmin
7239 package&lt;/a&gt; from Debian and create a file &lt;tt&gt;~/.listadmin.ini&lt;/tt&gt;
7240 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:&lt;/p&gt;
7241
7242 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7243 username username@example.org
7244 spamlevel 23
7245 default discard
7246 discard_if_reason &quot;Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list.&quot;
7247
7248 password secret
7249 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
7250 mailman-list@lists.example.com
7251
7252 password hidden
7253 other-list@otherserver.example.org
7254 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7255
7256 &lt;p&gt;There are other options to set as well. Check the manual page to
7257 learn the details.&lt;/p&gt;
7258
7259 &lt;p&gt;If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
7260 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
7261 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
7262 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:&lt;/p&gt;
7263
7264 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7265 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
7266 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7267
7268 &lt;p&gt;If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
7269 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
7270 initial screen dump (the xiph argument). Using an argument, only
7271 lists matching the argument string will be processed. This make it
7272 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
7273 email.&lt;/p&gt;
7274
7275 &lt;p&gt;Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
7276 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
7277 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
7278 time I could spend elsewhere over the years. It truly is nice free
7279 software.&lt;/p&gt;
7280
7281 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7282 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
7283 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7284
7285 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-10-27: Added missing &#39;username&#39; statement in
7286 configuration example. Also, I&#39;ve been told that the
7287 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone. Not
7288 sure why.&lt;/p&gt;
7289 </description>
7290 </item>
7291
7292 <item>
7293 <title>Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</title>
7294 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html</link>
7295 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html</guid>
7296 <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
7297 <description>&lt;p&gt;When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
7298 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
7299 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
7300 Normally something more is needed. But thanks to
7301 &lt;a href=&quot;https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html&quot;&gt;my isenkram
7302 package&lt;/a&gt; and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
7303 to do this using simple preseeding.&lt;/p&gt;
7304
7305 &lt;p&gt;The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
7306 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
7307 the kernel modules for the hardware). (It can also install user space
7308 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
7309 of this story.)&lt;/p&gt;
7310
7311 &lt;p&gt;To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
7312 values are needed. First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
7313 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
7314 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system. This is done by
7315 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
7316 isenkram-cli package. The package name is next passed to debootstrap
7317 for installation. With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
7318 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
7319 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
7320 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.&lt;/p&gt;
7321
7322 &lt;p&gt;Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
7323 most firmware unfortunately is non-free. This is done by preseeding
7324 the apt-mirror-setup step. This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
7325 hardware it is the only option in Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
7326
7327 &lt;p&gt;The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
7328 firmware installed automatically by the installer:&lt;/p&gt;
7329
7330 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7331 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
7332 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
7333 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7334
7335 &lt;p&gt;The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
7336 both firmware and user space packages when using this method. It also
7337 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later. Installing both
7338 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
7339 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
7340 and one for user space programs. The firmware task is enabled by
7341 default, while the one for user space programs is not. This split is
7342 implemented in the package currently in unstable.&lt;/p&gt;
7343
7344 &lt;p&gt;If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
7345 this recipe work for you. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7346
7347 &lt;p&gt;So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work. First and
7348 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
7349 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/. So the
7350 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find. First there
7351 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):&lt;/p&gt;
7352
7353 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7354 Task: isenkram-packages
7355 Section: hardware
7356 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
7357 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
7358 proposed.
7359 Test-new-install: show show
7360 Relevance: 8
7361 Packages: for-current-hardware
7362
7363 Task: isenkram-firmware
7364 Section: hardware
7365 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
7366 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
7367 packages are proposed.
7368 Test-new-install: mark show
7369 Relevance: 8
7370 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
7371 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7372
7373 &lt;p&gt;The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
7374 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
7375 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/. The scripts use other scripts to get a
7376 list of packages to install. The for-current-hardware-firmware script
7377 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
7378
7379 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7380 #!/bin/sh
7381 #
7382 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
7383 export PATH
7384 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
7385 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7386
7387 &lt;p&gt;With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
7388 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7389
7390 &lt;p&gt;If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
7391 installed, run &lt;tt&gt;DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
7392 --new-install&lt;/tt&gt; to get the list of packages that tasksel would
7393 install.&lt;/p&gt;
7394
7395 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; will be
7396 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
7397 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.&lt;/p&gt;
7398 </description>
7399 </item>
7400
7401 <item>
7402 <title>Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</title>
7403 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html</link>
7404 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html</guid>
7405 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Oct 2014 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
7406 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen. Above the
7407 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
7408 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
7409 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:&lt;/p&gt;
7410
7411 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img width=&quot;70%&quot; src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7412
7413 &lt;p&gt;If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
7414 about this hidden Linux installation. It is interesting what
7415 &lt;a href=&quot;http://revealingerrors.com/&quot;&gt;errors can reveal&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7416 </description>
7417 </item>
7418
7419 <item>
7420 <title>New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</title>
7421 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html</link>
7422 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html</guid>
7423 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Oct 2014 08:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
7424 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/&quot;&gt;lsdvd project&lt;/a&gt;
7425 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
7426 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
7427 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
7428 Dibb.&lt;/p&gt;
7429
7430 &lt;p&gt;I just wrapped up
7431 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/&quot;&gt;a
7432 new lsdvd release&lt;/a&gt;, available in git or from
7433 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/&quot;&gt;the
7434 download page&lt;/a&gt;. This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
7435 0.17.&lt;/p&gt;
7436
7437 &lt;ul&gt;
7438
7439 &lt;li&gt;Ignore &#39;phantom&#39; audio, subtitle tracks&lt;/li&gt;
7440 &lt;li&gt;Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
7441 non-existant, to work around additional copy protection&lt;/li&gt;
7442 &lt;li&gt;Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles&lt;/li&gt;
7443 &lt;li&gt;Fix pallete display of first entry&lt;/li&gt;
7444 &lt;li&gt;Fix include orders&lt;/li&gt;
7445 &lt;li&gt;Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway&lt;/li&gt;
7446 &lt;li&gt;Fix the chapter count&lt;/li&gt;
7447 &lt;li&gt;Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
7448 the palette size is the same.&lt;/li&gt;
7449 &lt;li&gt;Fix array printing.&lt;/li&gt;
7450 &lt;li&gt;Correct subsecond calculations.&lt;/li&gt;
7451 &lt;li&gt;Add sector information to the output format.&lt;/li&gt;
7452 &lt;li&gt;Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
7453 with more GCC compiler warnings.&lt;/li&gt;
7454
7455 &lt;/ul&gt;
7456
7457 &lt;p&gt;This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
7458 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
7459 project the last nine years. Please check it out. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7460 </description>
7461 </item>
7462
7463 <item>
7464 <title>How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</title>
7465 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html</link>
7466 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html</guid>
7467 <pubDate>Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
7468 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7469 project&lt;/a&gt; provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
7470 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
7471 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
7472 boot of both clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
7473 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
7474 to mention here). We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
7475 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
7476 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
7477 future. The
7478 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie&quot;&gt;current
7479 status&lt;/a&gt; can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
7480 work left. Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
7481 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway. Here is a
7482 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.&lt;/p&gt;
7483
7484 &lt;p&gt;First, download the test ISO via
7485 &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso&quot;&gt;ftp&lt;/a&gt;,
7486 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso&quot;&gt;http&lt;/a&gt;
7487 or rsync (use
7488 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
7489 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
7490 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
7491 install with some tweaking.&lt;/p&gt;
7492
7493 &lt;p&gt;When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
7494 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run&lt;/p&gt;
7495
7496 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7497 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
7498 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7499
7500 &lt;p&gt;and add &#39;exit 0&#39; as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
7501 optimization. Return to the installation, select the profile you want
7502 and continue. Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
7503 due to a known bug in eatmydata.&lt;/p&gt;
7504
7505 &lt;p&gt;When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
7506 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be. All my
7507 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
7508 your need.&lt;/p&gt;
7509
7510 &lt;p&gt;If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
7511 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
7512 education-desktop-XXX metapackage. XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
7513 or mate. If you want several desktop options, install more than one
7514 metapackage. Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
7515 graphical login screen. This workaround should no longer be needed
7516 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
7517 days.&lt;/p&gt;
7518
7519 &lt;p&gt;I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
7520 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
7521 update the debian-cd git repository. The eatmydata, grub and desktop
7522 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
7523 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again. Well the
7524 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled. The proper fix
7525 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
7526 provided in bug &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/702711&quot;&gt;#702711&lt;/a&gt;.
7527 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.&lt;/p&gt;
7528
7529 &lt;p&gt;I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
7530 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
7531 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.&lt;/p&gt;
7532 </description>
7533 </item>
7534
7535 <item>
7536 <title>Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</title>
7537 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html</link>
7538 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html</guid>
7539 <pubDate>Thu, 25 Sep 2014 11:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
7540 <description>&lt;p&gt;I use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/&quot;&gt;lsdvd tool&lt;/a&gt;
7541 to handle my fairly large DVD collection. It is a nice command line
7542 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
7543 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format. But lsdvd have not seen
7544 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
7545 its use with some DVDs. Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
7546 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
7547 project, without any reply. But I use it regularly and would like to
7548 get &lt;a href=&quot;https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd&quot;&gt;an updated version
7549 into Debian&lt;/a&gt;. So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
7550 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
7551 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
7552 over. And yesterday, I became project admin.&lt;/p&gt;
7553
7554 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
7555 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
7556 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
7557 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
7558 I&#39;ve added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
7559 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too. If you got
7560 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
7561 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/&quot;&gt;the git source&lt;/a&gt; and join
7562 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/&quot;&gt;the project mailing
7563 list&lt;/a&gt;. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7564 </description>
7565 </item>
7566
7567 <item>
7568 <title>Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</title>
7569 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html</link>
7570 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html</guid>
7571 <pubDate>Tue, 16 Sep 2014 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
7572 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; installer could be
7573 a lot quicker. When we install more than 2000 packages in
7574 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux / Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; using
7575 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
7576 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
7577 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/613428&quot;&gt;bug #613428&lt;/a&gt; about too
7578 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
7579 responsible for unpacking the binary packages. Other parts (like code
7580 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
7581 installation. All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
7582 me. If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
7583 to salvage the half installed system. So the failure sync-ing is
7584 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
7585 relevant while the installer is running.&lt;/p&gt;
7586
7587 &lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
7588 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
7589 change the code in several packages. The idea is not new, but I have
7590 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before. It
7591 depend on the small and clever package
7592 &lt;a href=&quot;https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata&quot;&gt;eatmydata&lt;/a&gt;, which
7593 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
7594 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
7595 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly. Instead of
7596 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
7597 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
7598 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
7599 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
7600 &quot;eatmydata&amp;nbsp;$program&amp;nbsp;$@&quot;, to get the same effect.
7601 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
7602 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.&lt;/p&gt;
7603
7604 &lt;p&gt;The effect was stunning. In my first test it reduced the running
7605 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
7606 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
7607 Latitude D505 machine. I am not quite sure what the optimised time
7608 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
7609 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
7610 installation. As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
7611 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
7612 installation. I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
7613 and got these results. The time measured is the time stamp in
7614 /var/log/syslog between the &quot;pkgsel: starting tasksel&quot; and the
7615 &quot;pkgsel: finishing up&quot; lines, if you want to do the same measurement
7616 yourself. In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
7617 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
7618 dialog.&lt;/p&gt;
7619
7620 &lt;p&gt;&lt;table&gt;
7621
7622 &lt;tr&gt;
7623 &lt;th&gt;Machine/setup&lt;/th&gt;
7624 &lt;th&gt;Original tasksel&lt;/th&gt;
7625 &lt;th&gt;Optimised tasksel&lt;/th&gt;
7626 &lt;th&gt;Reduction&lt;/th&gt;
7627 &lt;/tr&gt;
7628
7629 &lt;tr&gt;
7630 &lt;td&gt;Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE&lt;/td&gt;
7631 &lt;td&gt;64 min (07:46-08:50)&lt;/td&gt;
7632 &lt;td&gt;&lt;44 min (11:27-12:11)&lt;/td&gt;
7633 &lt;td&gt;&gt;20 min 18%&lt;/td&gt;
7634 &lt;/tr&gt;
7635
7636 &lt;tr&gt;
7637 &lt;td&gt;Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE&lt;/td&gt;
7638 &lt;td&gt;57 min (08:48-09:45)&lt;/td&gt;
7639 &lt;td&gt;34 min (07:43-08:17)&lt;/td&gt;
7640 &lt;td&gt;23 min 40%&lt;/td&gt;
7641 &lt;/tr&gt;
7642
7643 &lt;tr&gt;
7644 &lt;td&gt;Latitude D505 Minimal&lt;/td&gt;
7645 &lt;td&gt;22 min (10:37-10:59)&lt;/td&gt;
7646 &lt;td&gt;11 min (11:16-11:27)&lt;/td&gt;
7647 &lt;td&gt;11 min 50%&lt;/td&gt;
7648 &lt;/tr&gt;
7649
7650 &lt;tr&gt;
7651 &lt;td&gt;Thinkpad X200 Minimal&lt;/td&gt;
7652 &lt;td&gt;6 min (08:19-08:25)&lt;/td&gt;
7653 &lt;td&gt;4 min (08:04-08:08)&lt;/td&gt;
7654 &lt;td&gt;2 min 33%&lt;/td&gt;
7655 &lt;/tr&gt;
7656
7657 &lt;tr&gt;
7658 &lt;td&gt;Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE&lt;/td&gt;
7659 &lt;td&gt;19 min (09:21-09:40)&lt;/td&gt;
7660 &lt;td&gt;15 min (10:25-10:40)&lt;/td&gt;
7661 &lt;td&gt;4 min 21%&lt;/td&gt;
7662 &lt;/tr&gt;
7663
7664 &lt;/table&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7665
7666 &lt;p&gt;The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
7667 time is spent downloading packages. The connection to the Internet
7668 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
7669 significant factor in the measurement. Download typically took a few
7670 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
7671 installed.&lt;/p&gt;
7672
7673 &lt;p&gt;The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
7674 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/&quot;&gt;Debian
7675 Installer&lt;/a&gt;, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
7676 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
7677 installation. I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
7678 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
7679 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
7680 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO. The
7681 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
7682 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i. If the code is
7683 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
7684 for the entire installation.&lt;/p&gt;
7685
7686 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve implemented this in the
7687 &lt;a href=&quot;https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install&quot;&gt;debian-edu-install&lt;/a&gt;
7688 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
7689 Debian Edu installation. If you want to test this yourself, you can
7690 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb). One shell script
7691 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:&lt;/p&gt;
7692
7693 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7694 #!/bin/sh
7695 set -e
7696 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
7697 info() {
7698 logger -t my-pkgsel &quot;info: $*&quot;
7699 }
7700 error() {
7701 logger -t my-pkgsel &quot;error: $*&quot;
7702 }
7703 override_install() {
7704 apt-install eatmydata || true
7705 if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
7706 for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
7707 file=/usr/bin/$bin
7708 # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
7709 if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
7710 info &quot;diverting $file using eatmydata&quot;
7711 printf &quot;#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \&quot;\$@\&quot;\n&quot; \
7712 &gt; /target$file.edu
7713 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
7714 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
7715 --rename --quiet --add $file
7716 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
7717 else
7718 error &quot;unable to divert $file, as it is missing.&quot;
7719 fi
7720 done
7721 else
7722 error &quot;unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage&quot;
7723 fi
7724 }
7725
7726 override_install
7727 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7728
7729 &lt;p&gt;To clean up, another shell script should go into
7730 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
7731
7732 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7733 #! /bin/sh -e
7734 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
7735 error() {
7736 logger -t my-finish-install &quot;error: $@&quot;
7737 }
7738 remove_install_override() {
7739 for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
7740 file=/usr/bin/$bin
7741 if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
7742 rm /target$file
7743 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
7744 --rename --quiet --remove $file
7745 rm /target$file.edu
7746 else
7747 error &quot;Missing divert for $file.&quot;
7748 fi
7749 done
7750 sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
7751 }
7752
7753 remove_install_override
7754 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7755
7756 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
7757 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
7758 finish-install.d scripts.&lt;/p&gt;
7759
7760 &lt;p&gt;By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
7761 Debian installer too? I suspect it should, but am not sure the
7762 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough. It also
7763 depend on the side effects of the change. I&#39;m not aware of any, but I
7764 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
7765 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
7766 fsync() having effect? Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
7767 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
7768 everyone.&lt;/p&gt;
7769
7770 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
7771 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
7772 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/702711&quot;&gt;bug #702711&lt;/a&gt;. An updated
7773 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.&lt;/p&gt;
7774
7775 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
7776 the optimization work again. And I have discovered that the
7777 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
7778 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package. See
7779 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.&lt;/p&gt;
7780
7781 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
7782 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/765738&quot;&gt;bug #765738&lt;/a&gt; in eatmydata only
7783 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
7784 optimization again. If &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/768893&quot;&gt;unblock
7785 request 768893&lt;/a&gt; is accepted, it should be working again.&lt;/p&gt;
7786 </description>
7787 </item>
7788
7789 <item>
7790 <title>Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</title>
7791 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html</link>
7792 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html</guid>
7793 <pubDate>Wed, 10 Sep 2014 13:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
7794 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
7795 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;Norwegian Unix User Group&lt;/a&gt; about
7796 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/&quot;&gt;the
7797 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net&lt;/a&gt;, and was very happy to
7798 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
7799 use when looking for peoples public key. So far I have used
7800 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
7801 were misbehaving, but those days are ended. The servers I have used
7802 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable. I hope
7803 those problems are gone now.&lt;/p&gt;
7804
7805 &lt;p&gt;Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
7806 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sks-keyservers.net/&quot;&gt;sks-keyservers.net&lt;/a&gt; service
7807 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
7808 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date. It must be
7809 better than what I have used so far. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7810
7811 &lt;p&gt;Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
7812 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
7813 not seem to be used in Debian. Perhaps it should?&lt;/p&gt;
7814
7815 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, I&#39;ve updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
7816 line:&lt;/p&gt;
7817
7818 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7819 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
7820 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7821
7822 &lt;p&gt;With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
7823 entries in DNS. Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
7824 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
7825 keyserver automatically should their need it:&lt;/p&gt;
7826
7827 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7828 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
7829 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
7830 %
7831 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7832
7833 &lt;p&gt;Now if only
7834 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/&quot;&gt;the
7835 HKP lookup protocol&lt;/a&gt; supported finding signature paths, I would be
7836 very happy. It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
7837 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
7838 another key. Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
7839 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
7840 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
7841 This is as far as I can tell not possible today. Perhaps something
7842 for a future version of the protocol?&lt;/p&gt;
7843 </description>
7844 </item>
7845
7846 <item>
7847 <title>From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</title>
7848 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html</link>
7849 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html</guid>
7850 <pubDate>Tue, 17 Jun 2014 11:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
7851 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7852 project&lt;/a&gt; provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
7853 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
7854 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation. This text is about how the
7855 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.&lt;/p&gt;
7856
7857 &lt;p&gt;One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
7858 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
7859 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
7860 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
7861 in sync. And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
7862 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
7863 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
7864 edit the documentation using a web browser. We also want it to be
7865 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
7866 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
7867 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
7868 goals.&lt;/p&gt;
7869
7870 &lt;p&gt;We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
7871 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/&quot;&gt;Debian
7872 wiki&lt;/a&gt;, as several wiki pages written in English. It consist of one
7873 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
7874 for each chapter, and finally one &quot;collection page&quot; gluing all the
7875 chapters together into one large web page (aka
7876 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne&quot;&gt;the
7877 AllInOne page&lt;/a&gt;). The AllInOne page is the one used for further
7878 processing and translations. Thanks to the fact that the
7879 &lt;a href=&quot;http://moinmo.in/&quot;&gt;MoinMoin&lt;/a&gt; installation on
7880 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
7881 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;the Docbook format&lt;/a&gt;, we can fetch
7882 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
7883 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
7884 manual. This process also download images and transform image
7885 references to use the locally downloaded images. The generated
7886 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
7887 using the &lt;tt&gt;documentation/scripts/get_manual&lt;/tt&gt; program, and the
7888 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
7889 a handfull of images. The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
7890 and epub versions of the English manual. This is the basic step of
7891 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
7892 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
7893 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.&lt;/p&gt;
7894
7895 &lt;p&gt;But English documentation is not enough for us. We want translated
7896 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
7897 track the English original. For this we use the
7898 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html&quot;&gt;poxml&lt;/a&gt; package,
7899 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
7900 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
7901 translation tools used by those translating free software. The pot
7902 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
7903 files), which the translations update with the native language
7904 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
7905 original. The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
7906 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
7907 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
7908 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml). This translated (or partly
7909 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
7910 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
7911 of the documentation.&lt;/p&gt;
7912
7913 &lt;p&gt;The translators use different tools to edit the .po files. We
7914 recommend using
7915 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/&quot;&gt;lokalize&lt;/a&gt;,
7916 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
7917 &lt;a href=&quot;http://pootle.translatehouse.org/&quot;&gt;Poodle&lt;/a&gt; or
7918 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.transifex.com/&quot;&gt;Transifex&lt;/a&gt;. All we care about
7919 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository. Updated
7920 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
7921 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc&quot;&gt;bug reports
7922 against the debian-edu-doc package&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7923
7924 &lt;p&gt;One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
7925 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
7926 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
7927 this regard). For this we transform the original PNG images to the
7928 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
7929 translated images by storing translated versions in
7930 images/$LANGUAGECODE/. I am a bit unsure about the details here. The
7931 package maintainers know more.&lt;/p&gt;
7932
7933 &lt;p&gt;If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
7934 &lt;a href=&quot;http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/&quot;&gt;the content
7935 of the documentation packages on the web&lt;/a&gt;. See for example the
7936 &lt;a href=&quot;http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf&quot;&gt;Italian
7937 PDF version&lt;/a&gt; or the
7938 &lt;a href=&quot;http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html&quot;&gt;German
7939 HTML version&lt;/a&gt;. We do not yet build the epub version by default,
7940 but perhaps it will be done in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
7941
7942 &lt;p&gt;To learn more, check out
7943 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html&quot;&gt;the
7944 debian-edu-doc package&lt;/a&gt;,
7945 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/&quot;&gt;the
7946 manual on the wiki&lt;/a&gt; and
7947 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations&quot;&gt;the
7948 translation instructions&lt;/a&gt; in the manual.&lt;/p&gt;
7949 </description>
7950 </item>
7951
7952 <item>
7953 <title>Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</title>
7954 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html</link>
7955 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html</guid>
7956 <pubDate>Wed, 23 Apr 2014 14:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
7957 <description>&lt;p&gt;It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
7958 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
7959 So I implemented one, using
7960 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;my Isenkram
7961 package&lt;/a&gt;. To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
7962 run tasksel as user root. You should be presented with a new option,
7963 &quot;Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)&quot;. When you
7964 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
7965 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.&lt;p&gt;
7966
7967 &lt;p&gt;The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
7968 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
7969 packages to install. The first part is in
7970 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc&lt;/tt&gt; and look like
7971 this:&lt;/p&gt;
7972
7973 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7974 Task: isenkram
7975 Section: hardware
7976 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
7977 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
7978 proposed.
7979 Test-new-install: mark show
7980 Relevance: 8
7981 Packages: for-current-hardware
7982 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7983
7984 &lt;p&gt;The second part is in
7985 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware&lt;/tt&gt; and look like
7986 this:&lt;/p&gt;
7987
7988 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7989 #!/bin/sh
7990 #
7991 (
7992 isenkram-lookup
7993 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
7994 ) | sort -u
7995 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7996
7997 &lt;p&gt;All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
7998 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
7999 have installed on our machines. I&#39;ve not been able to find a way to
8000 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
8001 before doing the installation. So if you are curious or careful,
8002 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.&lt;/p&gt;
8003
8004 &lt;p&gt;The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
8005 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
8006 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
8007 database (using the Modaliases header). The APT package database
8008 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
8009 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/719837&quot;&gt;#719837&lt;/a&gt; and
8010 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/730704&quot;&gt;#730704&lt;/a&gt;). The cause is in
8011 the python-apt code (bug
8012 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/745487&quot;&gt;#745487&lt;/a&gt;), but using a
8013 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
8014 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
8015 around 2 MiB per hardware detection. It should make the desktop
8016 daemon a lot more useful. The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
8017 unstable today.&lt;/p&gt;
8018
8019 &lt;p&gt;I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
8020 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
8021 use the AppStream data source for this. A proposal for getting proper
8022 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
8023 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11&quot;&gt;DEP-11&lt;/a&gt;, and
8024 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive&quot;&gt;GSoC
8025 project&lt;/a&gt; will take place this summer to improve the situation. I
8026 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
8027 start using the information when it is ready.&lt;/p&gt;
8028
8029 &lt;p&gt;If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
8030 add a &quot;Xb-Modaliases&quot; header to your control file like I did in
8031 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile&quot;&gt;the pymissile
8032 package&lt;/a&gt; or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
8033 package. See also
8034 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram/&quot;&gt;all my
8035 blog posts tagged isenkram&lt;/a&gt; for details on the notation. I expect
8036 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
8037 moment I got no better place to store it.&lt;/p&gt;
8038 </description>
8039 </item>
8040
8041 <item>
8042 <title>FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</title>
8043 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html</link>
8044 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html</guid>
8045 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Apr 2014 22:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
8046 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox&quot;&gt;Freedombox
8047 project&lt;/a&gt; is working on providing the software and hardware to make
8048 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
8049 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
8050 encrypted and away from prying eyes. It is still going strong, and
8051 today a major mile stone was reached.&lt;/p&gt;
8052
8053 &lt;p&gt;Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
8054 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable. It was
8055 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
8056 during build and on the first boot. Now all one need to get going is
8057 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
8058 Debian. And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
8059 build everything directly from Debian. :)&lt;/p&gt;
8060
8061 &lt;p&gt;Some key packages used by Freedombox are
8062 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup&quot;&gt;freedombox-setup&lt;/a&gt;,
8063 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth&quot;&gt;plinth&lt;/a&gt;,
8064 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite&quot;&gt;pagekite&lt;/a&gt;,
8065 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor&quot;&gt;tor&lt;/a&gt;,
8066 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy&quot;&gt;privoxy&lt;/a&gt;,
8067 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud&quot;&gt;owncloud&lt;/a&gt; and
8068 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq&quot;&gt;dnsmasq&lt;/a&gt;. There
8069 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup. User
8070 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki. Please
8071 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie&quot;&gt;check out
8072 the manual&lt;/a&gt; and help us improve it.&lt;/p&gt;
8073
8074 &lt;p&gt;To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
8075 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
8076 become root:&lt;/p&gt;
8077
8078 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8079 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
8080 mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
8081 u-boot-tools
8082 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
8083 freedom-maker
8084 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
8085 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8086
8087 &lt;p&gt;Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
8088 devices. See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
8089 details on the build. If you do not want all three images, trim the
8090 make line. Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
8091 virtualbox specific. It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
8092 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment. You might need
8093 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
8094 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.&lt;/p&gt;
8095
8096 &lt;p&gt;If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
8097 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
8098 the preseed values:&lt;/p&gt;
8099
8100 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8101 url=&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat&lt;/a&gt;
8102 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8103
8104 &lt;p&gt;I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
8105 it still work.&lt;/p&gt;
8106
8107 &lt;p&gt;If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
8108 systemd as the boot system. It will become the default for Linux in
8109 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox. I did
8110 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
8111 during boot when using systemd. I suspect there are other problems
8112 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
8113 be run from the plinth web interface.&lt;/p&gt;
8114
8115 &lt;p&gt;Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
8116 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
8117 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;IRC (#freedombox on
8118 irc.debian.org)&lt;/a&gt; and
8119 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;the
8120 mailing list&lt;/a&gt; if you want to help make this vision come true.&lt;/p&gt;
8121 </description>
8122 </item>
8123
8124 <item>
8125 <title>S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</title>
8126 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html</link>
8127 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html</guid>
8128 <pubDate>Wed, 9 Apr 2014 11:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
8129 <description>&lt;p&gt;For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
8130 solution for use at home. My requirements are simple, it must be
8131 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
8132 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
8133 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
8134 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
8135 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
8136 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space. On top
8137 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
8138 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage. But
8139 I never found time to implement such system. But the last few weeks I
8140 have looked at a system called
8141 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/&quot;&gt;S3QL&lt;/a&gt;, a locally
8142 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.&lt;/p&gt;
8143
8144 &lt;p&gt;S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
8145 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
8146 Google Drive or OpenStack API. There are heaps of such storage
8147 providers. S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
8148 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server. S3QL
8149 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
8150 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
8151 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
8152 while the content is stored in the cloud as well. This allow me to
8153 have a backup that should survive fire. The file system can not be
8154 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
8155 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
8156 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.&lt;/p&gt;
8157
8158 &lt;p&gt;It is simple to use. I&#39;m using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
8159 package is included already. So to get started, run &lt;tt&gt;apt-get
8160 install s3ql&lt;/tt&gt;. Next, pick a storage provider. I ended up picking
8161 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
8162 &lt;a href=&quot;https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy&quot;&gt;how
8163 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service&lt;/a&gt;, because I trust the laws
8164 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
8165 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
8166 in Iceland. Another nice recipe is available from the article
8167 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage&quot;&gt;S3QL
8168 Filesystem for HPC Storage&lt;/a&gt; by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
8169 Admin magazine. When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
8170 the API key needed to connect to the storage API. With Greencloud,
8171 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
8172 account.&lt;/p&gt;
8173
8174 &lt;p&gt;Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
8175 system. First, create a new bucket in the cloud. This bucket is the
8176 file system storage area. I picked a bucket name reflecting the
8177 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
8178 I&#39;ll refer to it as &lt;tt&gt;bucket-name&lt;/tt&gt; below. In addition, one need
8179 the API login and password, and a locally created password. Store it
8180 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
8181
8182 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8183 [s3c]
8184 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
8185 backend-login: API-login
8186 backend-password: API-password
8187 fs-passphrase: local-password
8188 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8189
8190 &lt;p&gt;I create my local passphrase using &lt;tt&gt;pwget 50&lt;/tt&gt; or similar,
8191 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
8192 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
8193 details and password to create it:&lt;/p&gt;
8194
8195 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8196 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
8197 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
8198 --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
8199 Enter backend login:
8200 Enter backend password:
8201 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user&#39;s guide, especially
8202 the &#39;Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data&#39; section.
8203 Enter encryption password:
8204 Confirm encryption password:
8205 Generating random encryption key...
8206 Creating metadata tables...
8207 Dumping metadata...
8208 ..objects..
8209 ..blocks..
8210 ..inodes..
8211 ..inode_blocks..
8212 ..symlink_targets..
8213 ..names..
8214 ..contents..
8215 ..ext_attributes..
8216 Compressing and uploading metadata...
8217 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
8218 # &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8219
8220 &lt;p&gt;The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
8221
8222 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8223 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
8224 --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
8225 Using 4 upload threads.
8226 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
8227 Reading metadata...
8228 ..objects..
8229 ..blocks..
8230 ..inodes..
8231 ..inode_blocks..
8232 ..symlink_targets..
8233 ..names..
8234 ..contents..
8235 ..ext_attributes..
8236 Mounting filesystem...
8237 # df -h /s3ql
8238 Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
8239 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name 1.0T 0 1.0T 0% /s3ql
8240 #
8241 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8242
8243 &lt;p&gt;The file system is now ready for use. I use rsync to store my
8244 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
8245 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
8246 running rsync. To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
8247 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
8248 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
8249
8250 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8251 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
8252 #
8253 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8254
8255 &lt;p&gt;There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
8256 correct any problems detected. This can be used if the local server
8257 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the &quot;already
8258 mounted&quot; flag. This is what it look like when processing a working
8259 file system:&lt;/p&gt;
8260
8261 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8262 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
8263 Using cached metadata.
8264 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
8265 Checking DB integrity...
8266 Creating temporary extra indices...
8267 Checking lost+found...
8268 Checking cached objects...
8269 Checking names (refcounts)...
8270 Checking contents (names)...
8271 Checking contents (inodes)...
8272 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
8273 Checking objects (reference counts)...
8274 Checking objects (backend)...
8275 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
8276 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
8277 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
8278 Checking objects (sizes)...
8279 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
8280 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
8281 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
8282 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
8283 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
8284 Checking inodes (sizes)...
8285 Checking extended attributes (names)...
8286 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
8287 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
8288 Checking directory reachability...
8289 Checking unix conventions...
8290 Checking referential integrity...
8291 Dropping temporary indices...
8292 Backing up old metadata...
8293 Dumping metadata...
8294 ..objects..
8295 ..blocks..
8296 ..inodes..
8297 ..inode_blocks..
8298 ..symlink_targets..
8299 ..names..
8300 ..contents..
8301 ..ext_attributes..
8302 Compressing and uploading metadata...
8303 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
8304 #
8305 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8306
8307 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
8308 quick, about the same speed as local file access. Uploading large
8309 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
8310 house. Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
8311 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
8312 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
8313 Both were measured using &lt;tt&gt;dd&lt;/tt&gt;. So for me, the bottleneck is my
8314 network, not the file system code. I do not know what a good cache
8315 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
8316 working set.&lt;/p&gt;
8317
8318 &lt;p&gt;I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
8319 time. If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
8320 busy:&lt;/p&gt;
8321
8322 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8323 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
8324 --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
8325 Using 8 upload threads.
8326 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
8327 #
8328 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8329
8330 &lt;p&gt;The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
8331 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default. To ensure the
8332 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
8333 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
8334 s3qlctrl:
8335
8336 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8337 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
8338 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
8339 #
8340 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8341
8342 &lt;p&gt;If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
8343 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
8344 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
8345 a report:&lt;/p&gt;
8346
8347 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8348 # s3qlstat /s3ql
8349 Directory entries: 9141
8350 Inodes: 9143
8351 Data blocks: 8851
8352 Total data size: 22049.38 MB
8353 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
8354 After compression: 21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
8355 Database size: 2.39 MB (uncompressed)
8356 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
8357 #
8358 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8359
8360 &lt;p&gt;I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
8361 storage. I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
8362 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.greenqloud.com/&quot;&gt;Greenqloud&lt;/a&gt;,
8363 &lt;a href=&quot;http://drive.google.com/&quot;&gt;Google Drive&lt;/a&gt;,
8364 &lt;a href=&quot;http://aws.amazon.com/s3/&quot;&gt;Amazon S3 web serivces&lt;/a&gt;,
8365 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rackspace.com/&quot;&gt;Rackspace&lt;/a&gt; and
8366 &lt;a href=&quot;http://crowncloud.net/&quot;&gt;Crowncloud&lt;/A&gt;. The latter even
8367 accept payment in Bitcoin. Pick one that suit your need. Some of
8368 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
8369 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
8370 best.&lt;/p&gt;
8371
8372 &lt;p&gt;While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
8373 and posters discussing the S3QL file system. There are several, which
8374 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
8375 science community and increased my confidence in using it. One nice
8376 poster is titled
8377 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf&quot;&gt;An
8378 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
8379 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Hsing-Bung
8380 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
8381 and Pamela Smith. Please have a look.&lt;/p&gt;
8382
8383 &lt;p&gt;Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
8384 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
8385 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
8386 it come to locking and umask handling etc). Running
8387 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html&quot;&gt;my
8388 test code to check file system semantics&lt;/a&gt;, I was happy to discover that
8389 no error was found. So the file system can be used for home
8390 directories, if one chooses to do so.&lt;/p&gt;
8391
8392 &lt;p&gt;If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
8393 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
8394 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tarsnap.com/&quot;&gt;Tarsnap service&lt;/a&gt;, which also
8395 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client. It have
8396 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
8397 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
8398 only read from it.&lt;/p&gt;
8399
8400 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
8401 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
8402 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
8403 </description>
8404 </item>
8405
8406 <item>
8407 <title>Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</title>
8408 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html</link>
8409 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html</guid>
8410 <pubDate>Fri, 14 Mar 2014 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
8411 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox&quot;&gt;Freedombox
8412 project&lt;/a&gt; is working on providing the software and hardware for
8413 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
8414 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
8415 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes. It has been
8416 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
8417 release (0.2).&lt;/p&gt;
8418
8419 &lt;p&gt;And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
8420 new version will provide &quot;hard drive&quot; / SD card / USB stick images for
8421 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
8422 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
8423 file. The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
8424 where most of the needed packages used are already present. Only one,
8425 the freedombox-setup package, is missing. To try to build your own
8426 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
8427 and build using
8428 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap&quot;&gt;vmdebootstrap&lt;/a&gt;
8429 with a user with sudo access to become root:
8430
8431 &lt;pre&gt;
8432 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
8433 freedom-maker
8434 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
8435 mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
8436 u-boot-tools
8437 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
8438 &lt;/pre&gt;
8439
8440 &lt;p&gt;Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
8441 devices. See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
8442 want all three images, trim the make line. But note that thanks to &lt;a
8443 href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/741407&quot;&gt;a race condition in
8444 vmdebootstrap&lt;/a&gt;, the build might fail without the patch to the
8445 kpartx call.&lt;/p&gt;
8446
8447 &lt;p&gt;If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
8448 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
8449 the preseed values:&lt;/p&gt;
8450
8451 &lt;pre&gt;
8452 url=&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat&lt;/a&gt;
8453 &lt;/pre&gt;
8454
8455 &lt;p&gt;But note that due to &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/740673&quot;&gt;a
8456 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie&lt;/a&gt;, the installer will
8457 currently hang while setting up APT sources. Killing the
8458 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;apt-cdrom ident&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; process when it hang a few times during the
8459 installation will get the installation going. This affect all
8460 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.&lt;/p&gt;
8461
8462 &lt;p&gt;Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
8463 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
8464 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;IRC (#freedombox on
8465 irc.debian.org)&lt;/a&gt; and
8466 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;the
8467 mailing list&lt;/a&gt; if you want to help make this vision come true.&lt;/p&gt;
8468 </description>
8469 </item>
8470
8471 <item>
8472 <title>New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</title>
8473 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html</link>
8474 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html</guid>
8475 <pubDate>Sat, 22 Feb 2014 21:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
8476 <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
8477 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
8478 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;. I called the project
8479 ng-utils, and it has served me well. I placed the project under the
8480 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/&quot;&gt;Hungry Programmer&lt;/a&gt; umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
8481 repository. But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
8482 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
8483 proper home since then.&lt;/p&gt;
8484
8485 &lt;p&gt;Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
8486 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
8487 a proper source control system. I applied for a project on
8488 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Alioth&lt;/a&gt;, but did not have time
8489 to follow up on it. Until today. :)&lt;/p&gt;
8490
8491 &lt;p&gt;After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
8492 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
8493 history of the project. I published all release tarballs and imported
8494 them into the git repository. As the project is really stable and not
8495 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
8496 release and call it 1.0. Visit the new project home on
8497 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/&quot;&gt;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/&lt;/a&gt;
8498 if you want to check it out. The new version is also uploaded into
8499 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html&quot;&gt;Debian Unstable&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
8500 </description>
8501 </item>
8502
8503 <item>
8504 <title>Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</title>
8505 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html</link>
8506 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html</guid>
8507 <pubDate>Mon, 3 Feb 2014 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
8508 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
8509 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
8510 boot system instead of their old one. This follow up on the
8511 &lt;a href=&quot;https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html&quot;&gt;great
8512 Google Summer of Code work&lt;/a&gt; done last summer by Justus Winter to
8513 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux. To get started,
8514 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
8515 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz&quot;&gt;http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz&lt;/a&gt;,
8516 and started it using virt-manager.&lt;/p&gt;
8517
8518 &lt;p&gt;The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
8519 password) was to get the network operational. I followed
8520 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install&quot;&gt;the
8521 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page&lt;/a&gt; and ran these
8522 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
8523 kvm internal DHCP server:&lt;/p&gt;
8524
8525 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8526 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
8527 kill $(ps -ef|awk &#39;/[p]finet/ { print $2}&#39;)
8528 kill $(ps -ef|awk &#39;/[d]evnode/ { print $2}&#39;)
8529 dhclient /dev/eth0
8530 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8531
8532 &lt;p&gt;After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
8533 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
8534 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.&lt;/p&gt;
8535
8536 &lt;p&gt;But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
8537 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
8538 set. Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
8539 compression from working. Remember to turn that off on the client
8540 side.&lt;/p&gt;
8541
8542 &lt;p&gt;Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
8543 stuff:&lt;/p&gt;
8544
8545 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8546 cat &gt; /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
8547 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
8548 EOF
8549 apt-get update
8550 apt-get dist-upgrade
8551 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
8552 sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
8553 update-alternatives --config runsystem
8554 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8555
8556 &lt;p&gt;To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
8557 &lt;tt&gt;reboot-hurd&lt;/tt&gt; instead of just &lt;tt&gt;reboot&lt;/tt&gt;, as there is not
8558 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
8559 &#39;reboot&#39; command. After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
8560 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
8561 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
8562 start is no longer needed. But for some strange reason, there are no
8563 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
8564 ssh instead.
8565
8566 &lt;p&gt;Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
8567 fail some times. No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
8568 figure it out. At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
8569 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem. A way to reduce
8570 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
8571 adding this repository to the machine:&lt;/p&gt;
8572
8573 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8574 cat &gt; /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
8575 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
8576 EOF
8577 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8578
8579 &lt;p&gt;At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
8580 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
8581 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
8582 BTS. This is the completely list of &quot;unofficial&quot; packages installed:&lt;/p&gt;
8583
8584 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8585 # aptitude search &#39;?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))&#39;
8586 i emacs - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
8587 i gdb - GNU Debugger
8588 i hurd-recommended - Miscellaneous translators
8589 i isc-dhcp-client - ISC DHCP client
8590 i isc-dhcp-common - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
8591 i libc-bin - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
8592 i libc-dev-bin - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
8593 i libc0.3 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
8594 i A libc0.3-dbg - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
8595 i libc0.3-dev - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
8596 i multiarch-support - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
8597 i A x11-common - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
8598 i xorg - X.Org X Window System
8599 i A xserver-xorg - X.Org X server
8600 i A xserver-xorg-input-all - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
8601 #
8602 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8603
8604 &lt;p&gt;All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
8605 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
8606 the porters instructions to fix it. This time I was interested in the
8607 command line stuff.&lt;p&gt;
8608 </description>
8609 </item>
8610
8611 <item>
8612 <title>New chrpath release 0.16</title>
8613 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html</link>
8614 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html</guid>
8615 <pubDate>Tue, 14 Jan 2014 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
8616 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;Coverity&lt;/a&gt; is a nice tool to
8617 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
8618 analysis. It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
8619 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
8620 the source. The company behind it provide
8621 &lt;a href=&quot;https://scan.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;check of free software projects as
8622 a community service&lt;/a&gt;, and many hundred free software projects are
8623 already checked. A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
8624 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
8625 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/&quot;&gt;gnash&lt;/a&gt; and
8626 &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/&quot;&gt;ipmitool&lt;/a&gt;
8627 projects I am involved with was already registered. But these are
8628 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
8629 check, and decided to &lt;a href=&quot;http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179&quot;&gt;request
8630 checking of the chrpath project&lt;/a&gt;. It was
8631 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects. Six of
8632 these were real, mostly resource &quot;leak&quot; when the program detected an
8633 error. Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
8634 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
8635 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
8636 the future end up in a library. Having fixed all defects and added
8637 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel&quot;&gt;a
8638 mailing list for the chrpath developers&lt;/a&gt;, I decided it was time to
8639 publish a new release. These are the release notes:&lt;/p&gt;
8640
8641 &lt;p&gt;New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:&lt;/p&gt;
8642
8643 &lt;ul&gt;
8644
8645 &lt;li&gt;Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.&lt;/li&gt;
8646 &lt;li&gt;Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.&lt;/li&gt;
8647 &lt;li&gt;Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.&lt;/li&gt;
8648
8649 &lt;/ul&gt;
8650
8651 &lt;p&gt;You can
8652 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052&quot;&gt;download the
8653 new version 0.16 from alioth&lt;/a&gt;. Please let us know via the Alioth
8654 project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
8655 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
8656 include a test suite check.&lt;/p&gt;
8657 </description>
8658 </item>
8659
8660 <item>
8661 <title>New chrpath release 0.15</title>
8662 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html</link>
8663 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html</guid>
8664 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Nov 2013 09:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
8665 <description>&lt;p&gt;After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
8666 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
8667 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
8668 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
8669 compiled ELF programs. The update was triggered by the persistence of
8670 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
8671 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
8672 is working on. I checked the
8673 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt;,
8674 &lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath&quot;&gt;Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt; and
8675 &lt;a href=&quot;https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath&quot;&gt;Fedora&lt;/a&gt;
8676 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
8677 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
8678 These are the release notes:&lt;/p&gt;
8679
8680 &lt;p&gt;New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:&lt;/p&gt;
8681
8682 &lt;ul&gt;
8683
8684 &lt;li&gt;Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
8685 with newer architectures. Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
8686 up.&lt;/li&gt;
8687
8688 &lt;li&gt;Updated README with current URLs.&lt;/li&gt;
8689
8690 &lt;li&gt;Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
8691 Matthias Klose.&lt;/li&gt;
8692
8693 &lt;li&gt;Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
8694 Petr Machata found in Fedora.&lt;/li&gt;
8695
8696 &lt;li&gt;Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
8697 .dynamic is a NULL terminated string. Based on patch found in
8698 Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.&lt;/li&gt;
8699
8700 &lt;/ul&gt;
8701
8702 &lt;p&gt;You can
8703 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052&quot;&gt;download the
8704 new version 0.15 from alioth&lt;/a&gt;. Please let us know via the Alioth
8705 project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
8706 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
8707 include a testsuite check.&lt;/p&gt;
8708 </description>
8709 </item>
8710
8711 <item>
8712 <title>Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</title>
8713 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html</link>
8714 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html</guid>
8715 <pubDate>Sat, 2 Nov 2013 22:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
8716 <description>&lt;p&gt;If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
8717 &lt;a href=&quot;http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147&quot;&gt;to get rid of huge
8718 init.d scripts&lt;/a&gt;, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
8719 init.d scripts at all. Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
8720 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:&lt;/p&gt;
8721
8722 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8723 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
8724 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
8725 # Provides: rsyslog
8726 # Required-Start: $remote_fs $time
8727 # Required-Stop: umountnfs $time
8728 # X-Stop-After: sendsigs
8729 # Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
8730 # Default-Stop: 0 1 6
8731 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
8732 # Description: Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
8733 # It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
8734 # used as a drop-in replacement.
8735 ### END INIT INFO
8736 DESC=&quot;enhanced syslogd&quot;
8737 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
8738 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8739
8740 &lt;p&gt;Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
8741 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
8742 info/comments.&lt;/p&gt;
8743
8744 &lt;p&gt;How to do this, you ask? Well, one create a new script
8745 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
8746
8747 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8748 #!/bin/sh
8749
8750 # Define LSB log_* functions.
8751 # Depend on lsb-base (&gt;= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
8752 # and status_of_proc is working.
8753 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
8754
8755 #
8756 # Function that starts the daemon/service
8757
8758 #
8759 do_start()
8760 {
8761 # Return
8762 # 0 if daemon has been started
8763 # 1 if daemon was already running
8764 # 2 if daemon could not be started
8765 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test &gt; /dev/null \
8766 || return 1
8767 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
8768 $DAEMON_ARGS \
8769 || return 2
8770 # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
8771 # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
8772 # on this one. As a last resort, sleep for some time.
8773 }
8774
8775 #
8776 # Function that stops the daemon/service
8777 #
8778 do_stop()
8779 {
8780 # Return
8781 # 0 if daemon has been stopped
8782 # 1 if daemon was already stopped
8783 # 2 if daemon could not be stopped
8784 # other if a failure occurred
8785 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
8786 RETVAL=&quot;$?&quot;
8787 [ &quot;$RETVAL&quot; = 2 ] &amp;&amp; return 2
8788 # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
8789 # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
8790 # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
8791 # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
8792 # needed by services started subsequently. A last resort is to
8793 # sleep for some time.
8794 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
8795 [ &quot;$?&quot; = 2 ] &amp;&amp; return 2
8796 # Many daemons don&#39;t delete their pidfiles when they exit.
8797 rm -f $PIDFILE
8798 return &quot;$RETVAL&quot;
8799 }
8800
8801 #
8802 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
8803 #
8804 do_reload() {
8805 #
8806 # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
8807 # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
8808 # then implement that here.
8809 #
8810 start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
8811 return 0
8812 }
8813
8814 SCRIPTNAME=$1
8815 scriptbasename=&quot;$(basename $1)&quot;
8816 echo &quot;SN: $scriptbasename&quot;
8817 if [ &quot;$scriptbasename&quot; != &quot;init-d-library&quot; ] ; then
8818 script=&quot;$1&quot;
8819 shift
8820 . $script
8821 else
8822 exit 0
8823 fi
8824
8825 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
8826 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
8827
8828 # Exit if the package is not installed
8829 #[ -x &quot;$DAEMON&quot; ] || exit 0
8830
8831 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
8832 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] &amp;&amp; . /etc/default/$NAME
8833
8834 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
8835 . /lib/init/vars.sh
8836
8837 case &quot;$1&quot; in
8838 start)
8839 [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_daemon_msg &quot;Starting $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
8840 do_start
8841 case &quot;$?&quot; in
8842 0|1) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 0 ;;
8843 2) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 1 ;;
8844 esac
8845 ;;
8846 stop)
8847 [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_daemon_msg &quot;Stopping $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
8848 do_stop
8849 case &quot;$?&quot; in
8850 0|1) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 0 ;;
8851 2) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 1 ;;
8852 esac
8853 ;;
8854 status)
8855 status_of_proc &quot;$DAEMON&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot; &amp;&amp; exit 0 || exit $?
8856 ;;
8857 #reload|force-reload)
8858 #
8859 # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
8860 # and leave &#39;force-reload&#39; as an alias for &#39;restart&#39;.
8861 #
8862 #log_daemon_msg &quot;Reloading $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
8863 #do_reload
8864 #log_end_msg $?
8865 #;;
8866 restart|force-reload)
8867 #
8868 # If the &quot;reload&quot; option is implemented then remove the
8869 # &#39;force-reload&#39; alias
8870 #
8871 log_daemon_msg &quot;Restarting $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
8872 do_stop
8873 case &quot;$?&quot; in
8874 0|1)
8875 do_start
8876 case &quot;$?&quot; in
8877 0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
8878 1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
8879 *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
8880 esac
8881 ;;
8882 *)
8883 # Failed to stop
8884 log_end_msg 1
8885 ;;
8886 esac
8887 ;;
8888 *)
8889 echo &quot;Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}&quot; &gt;&amp;2
8890 exit 3
8891 ;;
8892 esac
8893
8894 :
8895 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8896
8897 &lt;p&gt;It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
8898 lot. I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
8899 work out of the box, but you get the idea. I did not try very hard to
8900 optimize it nor make it more robust either.&lt;/p&gt;
8901
8902 &lt;p&gt;A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
8903 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
8904 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
8905 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially. The boot
8906 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.&lt;/p&gt;
8907 </description>
8908 </item>
8909
8910 <item>
8911 <title>Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</title>
8912 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html</link>
8913 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html</guid>
8914 <pubDate>Fri, 1 Nov 2013 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
8915 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spice-space.org/&quot;&gt;The SPICE protocol&lt;/a&gt; for
8916 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
8917 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
8918 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
8919 missing in Debian. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/668284&quot;&gt;request
8920 for a package&lt;/a&gt; was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
8921 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
8922 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
8923 repository to get a package I could use. I would very much like
8924 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
8925 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
8926 NEW. I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.&lt;/p&gt;
8927
8928 &lt;p&gt;The source is now available from
8929 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary&quot;&gt;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
8930 </description>
8931 </item>
8932
8933 <item>
8934 <title>Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</title>
8935 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html</link>
8936 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html</guid>
8937 <pubDate>Sun, 27 Oct 2013 17:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
8938 <description>&lt;p&gt;The
8939 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html&quot;&gt;vmdebootstrap&lt;/a&gt;
8940 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images. It
8941 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
8942 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
8943 stick. Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
8944 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi&quot;&gt;Raspberry Pi&lt;/a&gt;, as part
8945 of a plan to simplify the build system for
8946 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox&quot;&gt;the FreedomBox
8947 project&lt;/a&gt;. The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
8948 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
8949 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
8950 Raspberry Pi.&lt;/p&gt;
8951
8952 &lt;p&gt;Armed with the knowledge on how to build &quot;foreign&quot; (aka non-native
8953 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
8954 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
8955 Debian laptop. I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
8956 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
8957 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html&quot;&gt;Debian
8958 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi&lt;/a&gt;. First, the
8959 &lt;tt&gt;--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler&lt;/tt&gt; option tell vmdebootstrap to
8960 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
8961 generated chroot before running the second stage. This allow
8962 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host. Next I added
8963 two new options &lt;tt&gt;--bootsize size&lt;/tt&gt; and &lt;tt&gt;--boottype
8964 fstype&lt;/tt&gt; to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
8965 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
8966 partition for the /boot/ stuff. I also added a &lt;tt&gt;--variant
8967 variant&lt;/tt&gt; option to allow me to create smaller images without the
8968 Debian base system packages installed. Finally, I added an option
8969 &lt;tt&gt;--no-extlinux&lt;/tt&gt; to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
8970 as a boot loader. It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
8971 most other non-x86 architectures. The changes were accepted by the
8972 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
8973 available from
8974 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/&quot;&gt;the
8975 upstream project page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
8976
8977 &lt;p&gt;To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
8978 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
8979 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
8980 list:&lt;/p&gt;
8981
8982 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8983 #!/bin/sh
8984 set -e # Exit on first error
8985 rootdir=&quot;$1&quot;
8986 cd &quot;$rootdir&quot;
8987 cat &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF &gt; etc/apt/sources.list
8988 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
8989 EOF
8990 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi. This
8991 # install a kernel somewhere too.
8992 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
8993 -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
8994 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
8995 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
8996 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
8997 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
8998 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8999
9000 &lt;p&gt;Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
9001 to build the image:&lt;/p&gt;
9002
9003 &lt;pre&gt;
9004 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
9005 --variant minbase \
9006 --arch armel \
9007 --distribution jessie \
9008 --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
9009 --image test.img \
9010 --size 600M \
9011 --bootsize 64M \
9012 --boottype vfat \
9013 --log-level debug \
9014 --verbose \
9015 --no-kernel \
9016 --no-extlinux \
9017 --root-password raspberry \
9018 --hostname raspberrypi \
9019 --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
9020 --customize `pwd`/customize \
9021 --package netbase \
9022 --package git-core \
9023 --package binutils \
9024 --package ca-certificates \
9025 --package wget \
9026 --package kmod
9027 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9028
9029 &lt;p&gt;The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
9030 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
9031 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
9032 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant. I really wish there was a way to
9033 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
9034 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
9035 using a non-free binary blob.&lt;/p&gt;
9036
9037 &lt;p&gt;The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
9038 probably a few others installed. I have not checked the complete
9039 build dependency list.&lt;/p&gt;
9040
9041 &lt;p&gt;The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
9042 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
9043 optimized for that use. So the images created will be a bit slower
9044 than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspbian.org/&quot;&gt;Raspbian&lt;/a&gt; based images.&lt;/p&gt;
9045 </description>
9046 </item>
9047
9048 <item>
9049 <title>Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</title>
9050 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html</link>
9051 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html</guid>
9052 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Oct 2013 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
9053 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
9054 wider attention. I recommend signing and donating to each one of
9055 these. :)&lt;/p&gt;
9056
9057 &lt;p&gt;Via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/&quot;&gt;Debian
9058 Project News for 2013-10-14&lt;/a&gt; I came across the Outreach Program for
9059 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
9060 more women involved in free software. One debian sponsor has offered
9061 to match &lt;a href=&quot;http://debian.ch/opw2013&quot;&gt;any donation done to Debian
9062 earmarked&lt;/a&gt; for this initiative. I donated a few minutes ago, and
9063 hope you will to. :)&lt;/p&gt;
9064
9065 &lt;p&gt;And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
9066 create &lt;a href=&quot;https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos&quot;&gt;video
9067 documentaries about the excessive spying&lt;/a&gt; on every Internet user that
9068 take place these days, and their need to fund the work. I&#39;ve already
9069 donated. Are you next?&lt;/p&gt;
9070
9071 &lt;p&gt;For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
9072 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
9073 statement under the heading
9074 &lt;a href=&quot;http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/&quot;&gt;Bloggers United for Open
9075 Access&lt;/a&gt; for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
9076 Norwegian government. So far 499 signatures. I hope you will sign it
9077 too.&lt;/p&gt;
9078 </description>
9079 </item>
9080
9081 <item>
9082 <title>Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</title>
9083 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html</link>
9084 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html</guid>
9085 <pubDate>Fri, 27 Sep 2013 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
9086 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/&quot;&gt;Freedombox
9087 project&lt;/a&gt; have been going on for a while, and have presented the
9088 vision, ideas and solution several places. Here is a little
9089 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.&lt;/p&gt;
9090
9091 &lt;ul&gt;
9092
9093 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA&quot;&gt;FreedomBox -
9094 2,5 minute marketing film&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
9095
9096 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE&quot;&gt;Eben Moglen
9097 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
9098
9099 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g&quot;&gt;Eben Moglen -
9100 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
9101 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010&lt;/a&gt;
9102 (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
9103
9104 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE&quot;&gt;Fosdem 2011
9105 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
9106
9107 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s&quot;&gt;Presentation of
9108 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
9109
9110 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s&quot;&gt; Freedombox -
9111 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
9112 York City in 2012&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
9113
9114 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck&quot;&gt;Introduction
9115 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012&lt;/a&gt;
9116 (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
9117
9118 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ&quot;&gt;Freedom, Out
9119 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube) &lt;/li&gt;
9120
9121 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/&quot;&gt;Freedombox
9122 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013&lt;/a&gt; (FOSDEM) &lt;/li&gt;
9123
9124 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg&quot;&gt;What is the
9125 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
9126 2013&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
9127
9128 &lt;/ul&gt;
9129
9130 &lt;p&gt;A larger list is available from
9131 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations&quot;&gt;the
9132 Freedombox Wiki&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
9133
9134 &lt;p&gt;On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
9135 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
9136 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
9137 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
9138 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
9139 pending in NEW. The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
9140 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload. Join
9141 us on &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;IRC
9142 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)&lt;/a&gt; and
9143 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;the
9144 mailing list&lt;/a&gt; if you want to help make this vision come true.&lt;/p&gt;
9145 </description>
9146 </item>
9147
9148 <item>
9149 <title>Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</title>
9150 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html</link>
9151 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html</guid>
9152 <pubDate>Tue, 10 Sep 2013 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
9153 <description>&lt;p&gt;I was introduced to the
9154 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/&quot;&gt;Freedombox project&lt;/a&gt;
9155 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
9156 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
9157 within the legal protection of their own homes. The idea is to give
9158 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
9159 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture. Instead of
9160 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
9161 control over their own basic infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;
9162
9163 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
9164 taken priority. But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
9165 and privilege exercised by the &quot;western&quot; intelligence gathering
9166 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
9167 actually started working on the project a while back.&lt;/p&gt;
9168
9169 &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/&quot;&gt;initial
9170 Debian initiative&lt;/a&gt; based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
9171 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
9172 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
9173 communication. The initial deployment platform have been the
9174 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx&quot;&gt;Dreamplug&lt;/a&gt;,
9175 which is a piece of hardware I do not own. So to be able to test what
9176 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
9177 it on some hardware I do have access to. I have rewritten the
9178 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker&quot;&gt;freedom-maker&lt;/a&gt;
9179 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
9180 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
9181 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
9182 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
9183 missing in Debian).&lt;/p&gt;
9184
9185 &lt;p&gt;The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
9186 scripts
9187 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup&quot;&gt;freedombox-setup&lt;/a&gt;),
9188 and a administrative web interface
9189 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth&quot;&gt;plinth&lt;/a&gt; + exmachina +
9190 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
9191 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy&quot;&gt;privoxy&lt;/a&gt;
9192 (freedombox-privoxy). There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
9193 client (&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat&quot;&gt;jwchat&lt;/a&gt;)
9194 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
9195 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd&quot;&gt;ejabberd&lt;/a&gt;). The
9196 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
9197 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc. Not much of
9198 this is really working yet, see
9199 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO&quot;&gt;the
9200 project TODO&lt;/a&gt; for links to GIT repositories. Most of the code is
9201 on github at the moment. The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
9202 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
9203 users. I&#39;ve not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
9204 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
9205 with lots of half baked features.&lt;/p&gt;
9206
9207 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
9208 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
9209 at.&lt;/p&gt;
9210
9211 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Wheezy amd64&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9212
9213 &lt;ol&gt;
9214
9215 &lt;li&gt;Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.&lt;/li&gt;
9216 &lt;li&gt;Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.&lt;/li&gt;
9217 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
9218 to the Debian installer:&lt;p&gt;
9219 &lt;pre&gt;url=&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9220
9221 &lt;li&gt;Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
9222 install on.&lt;/li&gt;
9223
9224 &lt;li&gt;When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
9225 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.&lt;/li&gt;
9226
9227 &lt;/ol&gt;
9228
9229 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Raspberry Pi Raspbian&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9230
9231 &lt;ol&gt;
9232
9233 &lt;li&gt;Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.&lt;/li&gt;
9234 &lt;li&gt;Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.&lt;/li&gt;
9235 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:&lt;/p&gt;
9236 &lt;pre&gt;
9237 deb &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox&lt;/a&gt; wheezy main
9238 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9239 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Run this as root:&lt;/p&gt;
9240 &lt;pre&gt;
9241 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
9242 apt-key add -
9243 apt-get update
9244 apt-get install freedombox-setup
9245 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
9246 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9247 &lt;li&gt;Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.&lt;/li&gt;
9248
9249 &lt;/ol&gt;
9250
9251 &lt;p&gt;You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
9252 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
9253 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
9254 in my APT repository. But do not let this stop you. It is only a
9255 short &quot;&lt;tt&gt;apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; away. :)&lt;/p&gt;
9256
9257 &lt;p&gt;Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
9258 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
9259 off the DHCP server by running &quot;&lt;tt&gt;update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
9260 disable&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; as root.&lt;/p&gt;
9261
9262 &lt;p&gt;Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
9263 problems. We gather on the IRC channel
9264 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;#freedombox&lt;/a&gt; on
9265 irc.debian.org and the
9266 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;project
9267 mailing list&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
9268
9269 &lt;p&gt;Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
9270 &lt;tt&gt;http://your-host-name:8001/&lt;/tt&gt; to see the state of the plint
9271 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
9272 get past it), and next visit &lt;tt&gt;http://your-host-name:8001/help/&lt;/tt&gt;
9273 to look at the rest of plinth. The default user is &#39;admin&#39; and the
9274 default password is &#39;secret&#39;.&lt;/p&gt;
9275 </description>
9276 </item>
9277
9278 <item>
9279 <title>Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</title>
9280 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html</link>
9281 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html</guid>
9282 <pubDate>Sun, 18 Aug 2013 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
9283 <description>&lt;p&gt;Earlier, I reported about
9284 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html&quot;&gt;my
9285 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk&lt;/a&gt;. Friday I was
9286 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away. And as
9287 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
9288 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
9289 currently on the disk.&lt;/p&gt;
9290
9291 &lt;p&gt;I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
9292 &lt;a href=&quot;https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&amp;ProdId=3472&amp;DwnldID=18363&amp;ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&amp;ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&amp;ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&amp;lang=eng&quot;&gt;issdfut_2.0.4.iso&lt;/a&gt;
9293 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
9294 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
9295 disks. I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
9296 booted the ISO from a USB stick. The disk was recognized, but the
9297 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
9298 to insert any Intel firmware. So no change, and the disk is still
9299 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
9300 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware. No idea how likely
9301 that is. Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness. I
9302 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
9303 the broken disks.&lt;/p&gt;
9304 </description>
9305 </item>
9306
9307 <item>
9308 <title>How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</title>
9309 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html</link>
9310 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html</guid>
9311 <pubDate>Wed, 17 Jul 2013 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
9312 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today I switched to
9313 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html&quot;&gt;my
9314 new laptop&lt;/a&gt;. I&#39;ve previously written about the problems I had with
9315 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
9316 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html&quot;&gt;180
9317 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware&lt;/a&gt; that did not handle
9318 sustained writes. My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
9319 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
9320 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
9321 disk instead to fix it once and for all. The Samsung disk survived
9322 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
9323 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
9324 decided to trust it with my data. I have installed it as a Debian Edu
9325 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
9326 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
9327 station from now on.&lt;/p&gt;
9328
9329 &lt;p&gt;As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
9330 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
9331 performance and increase life time of the disk. The Linux kernel and
9332 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
9333 environment. To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
9334 package &lt;tt&gt;ssd-setup&lt;/tt&gt; to handle this tuning. The
9335 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git&quot;&gt;source
9336 for the ssd-setup package&lt;/a&gt; is available from collab-maint, and it
9337 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
9338 package. If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
9339 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
9340 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.&lt;/p&gt;
9341
9342 &lt;p&gt;I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
9343 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD. It is adjusted to my use case,
9344 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
9345 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
9346 top of this again. See the README file in the package source for the
9347 references I used to pick the settings. At the moment these
9348 parameters are tuned:&lt;/p&gt;
9349
9350 &lt;ul&gt;
9351
9352 &lt;li&gt;Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
9353 (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)&lt;/li&gt;
9354
9355 &lt;li&gt;Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
9356 this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
9357 0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.&lt;/li&gt;
9358
9359 &lt;li&gt;Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
9360 systems.&lt;/li&gt;
9361
9362 &lt;li&gt;Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding &#39;discard&#39; to
9363 /etc/fstab.&lt;/li&gt;
9364
9365 &lt;li&gt;Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.&lt;/li&gt;
9366
9367 &lt;li&gt;Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
9368 cron.daily).&lt;/li&gt;
9369
9370 &lt;li&gt;Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
9371 to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.&lt;/li&gt;
9372
9373 &lt;/ul&gt;
9374
9375 &lt;p&gt;During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
9376 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
9377 little gain. My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
9378 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
9379 computer. I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
9380 from getting the data on the disk (see
9381 &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/538/&quot;&gt;XKCD #538&lt;/a&gt; for an explanation why).
9382 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
9383 right thing to do.&lt;/p&gt;
9384
9385 &lt;p&gt;I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
9386 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
9387 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.&lt;/p&gt;
9388
9389 &lt;p&gt;I also considered using the &#39;discard&#39; file system option for ext3
9390 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
9391 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
9392 instead of during my work.&lt;/p&gt;
9393
9394 &lt;p&gt;My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
9395 this is already done by Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
9396
9397 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet started on the user space tuning. I expect
9398 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
9399 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.&lt;/p&gt;
9400
9401 &lt;p&gt;The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
9402 there.&lt;/p&gt;
9403
9404 &lt;p&gt;As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
9405 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
9406 disk. It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
9407 the Lenovo firmware. But I have not tried and did not want to do so
9408 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
9409 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
9410 back.&lt;/p&gt;
9411 </description>
9412 </item>
9413
9414 <item>
9415 <title>Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</title>
9416 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html</link>
9417 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html</guid>
9418 <pubDate>Wed, 10 Jul 2013 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
9419 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I wrote about
9420 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html&quot;&gt;the
9421 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk&lt;/a&gt;, which
9422 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
9423 sustained write. My supplier is in contact with
9424 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lenovo.com/&quot;&gt;Lenovo&lt;/a&gt;, and they wanted to send a
9425 replacement disk to try to fix the problem. They decided to send an
9426 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.&lt;/p&gt;
9427
9428 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
9429 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it. The new disk have the
9430 same firmware version as the original. This time my hope raised
9431 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
9432 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
9433 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%. But around 60%, the disk
9434 died again and I was back on square one. I still do not have a new
9435 laptop with a disk I can trust. I can not live with a disk that might
9436 lock up when I download a new
9437 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; ISO or
9438 other large files. I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
9439 the next proposal from Lenovo.&lt;/p&gt;
9440
9441 &lt;p&gt;The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
9442 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
9443 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
9444 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
9445 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5&quot; 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
9446 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.&lt;/p&gt;
9447
9448 &lt;p&gt;The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
9449 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
9450 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
9451 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
9452 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5&quot; 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
9453 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.&lt;/p&gt;
9454
9455 &lt;p&gt;The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
9456 SA, date and WNPP values. Mentioning all the details here in case
9457 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
9458 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
9459 exist).&lt;/p&gt;
9460 </description>
9461 </item>
9462
9463 <item>
9464 <title>July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</title>
9465 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html</link>
9466 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html</guid>
9467 <pubDate>Tue, 9 Jul 2013 10:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
9468 <description>&lt;p&gt;The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
9469 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
9470 party in Oslo. It is organised by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;the
9471 member assosiation NUUG&lt;/a&gt; and
9472 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
9473 project&lt;/a&gt; together with &lt;a href=&quot;http://bitraf.no/&quot;&gt;the hack space
9474 Bitraf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
9475
9476 &lt;p&gt;It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening. Everyone is
9477 welcome, and there is no fee to participate. There is on the other
9478 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people. Please put your name
9479 on &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo&quot;&gt;the event
9480 wiki page&lt;/a&gt; if you plan to join us.&lt;/p&gt;
9481 </description>
9482 </item>
9483
9484 <item>
9485 <title>The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</title>
9486 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html</link>
9487 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html</guid>
9488 <pubDate>Fri, 5 Jul 2013 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
9489 <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
9490 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html&quot;&gt;replacement
9491 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41&lt;/a&gt;. Unfortunately I did not have much
9492 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
9493 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived. I
9494 ended up picking a
9495 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230&quot;&gt;Thinkpad X230&lt;/a&gt;
9496 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
9497 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly. But my
9498 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful. More
9499 on that below.&lt;/p&gt;
9500
9501 &lt;p&gt;I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
9502 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
9503 listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
9504 feature at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prisjakt.no/&quot;&gt;Prisjakt&lt;/a&gt;, which
9505 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
9506 requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
9507 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
9508 disks from my search parameters. I also asked around among friends to
9509 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.&lt;/p&gt;
9510
9511 &lt;p&gt;So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
9512 X41. I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
9513 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
9514 hand a lot more to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly
9515 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
9516 I will get used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
9517 needed a new laptop now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
9518
9519 &lt;p&gt;Turning off the touch pad was simple. All it took was a quick
9520 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.&lt;/p&gt;
9521
9522 &lt;p&gt;But there is a fatal problem with the laptop. The 180 GB SSD disk
9523 lock up during load. And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
9524 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
9525 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
9526 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
9527 default in Ubuntu). And the bug with is already known. It was
9528 reported to Debian as &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/691427&quot;&gt;BTS
9529 report #691427 2012-10-25&lt;/a&gt; (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
9530 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD). It is also reported to the Linux
9531 kernel developers as
9532 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861&quot;&gt;Kernel bugzilla
9533 report #51861 2012-12-20&lt;/a&gt; (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
9534 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
9535 Lenovo forums, both for
9536 &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549&quot;&gt;T430
9537 2012-11-10&lt;/a&gt; and for
9538 &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147&quot;&gt;X230
9539 03-20-2013&lt;/a&gt;. The problem do not only affect installation. The
9540 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
9541 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
9542 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
9543 There is even a
9544 &lt;a href=&quot;https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git&quot;&gt;small C program
9545 available&lt;/a&gt; that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
9546 minutes by writing to a file.&lt;/p&gt;
9547
9548 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
9549 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
9550 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
9551 firmware. Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
9552 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i). I
9553 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
9554 fixed. :)&lt;/p&gt;
9555 </description>
9556 </item>
9557
9558 <item>
9559 <title>The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</title>
9560 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html</link>
9561 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html</guid>
9562 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Jul 2013 09:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
9563 <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
9564 trusty old Thinkpad X41. Unfortunately I did not have much time to
9565 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived. I ended up
9566 picking a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230&quot;&gt;Thinkpad
9567 X230&lt;/a&gt; with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu
9568 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly. As I write
9569 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
9570 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
9571 with an expencive door stop.&lt;/p&gt;
9572
9573 &lt;p&gt;I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
9574 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
9575 listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
9576 feature at &lt;ahref=&quot;http://www.prisjakt.no/&quot;&gt;Prisjakt&lt;/a&gt;, which
9577 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
9578 requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
9579 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.&lt;/p&gt;
9580
9581 &lt;p&gt;I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
9582 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
9583 to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly good and the
9584 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
9585 used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
9586 new laptop now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
9587
9588 &lt;p&gt;I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.&lt;/p&gt;
9589 </description>
9590 </item>
9591
9592 <item>
9593 <title>Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</title>
9594 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</link>
9595 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</guid>
9596 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Jun 2013 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
9597 <description>&lt;p&gt;It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
9598 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
9599 working. One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
9600 needed to get the hardware on my computer working. Most often this
9601 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
9602 controller or the ethernet card. Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
9603 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;Isenkram package&lt;/a&gt;
9604 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
9605 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
9606 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
9607 debian packages. Here is a test run on my laptop:&lt;/p&gt;
9608
9609 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
9610 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
9611 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
9612 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
9613 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
9614 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
9615 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
9616 firmware-ipw2x00
9617 firmware-ipw2x00
9618 Preconfiguring packages ...
9619 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
9620 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
9621 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
9622 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
9623 #
9624 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9625
9626 &lt;p&gt;When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
9627 printed instead:&lt;/p&gt;
9628
9629 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
9630 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
9631 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules. exiting
9632 #
9633 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9634
9635 &lt;p&gt;It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
9636 me some time when setting up new machines. :)&lt;/p&gt;
9637
9638 &lt;p&gt;So, how does it work? It look at the set of currently loaded
9639 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
9640 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information. Next, it
9641 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
9642 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
9643 requested firmware file. If the package is in the non-free section, a
9644 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
9645 &lt;tt&gt;apt-get install&lt;/tt&gt;. The end result is a slightly better working
9646 machine.&lt;/p&gt;
9647
9648 &lt;p&gt;I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
9649 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
9650 finally fix &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/655507&quot;&gt;BTS report
9651 #655507&lt;/a&gt;. There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
9652 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
9653 from the nearby Debian mirror.&lt;/p&gt;
9654 </description>
9655 </item>
9656
9657 <item>
9658 <title>Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</title>
9659 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html</link>
9660 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html</guid>
9661 <pubDate>Tue, 11 Jun 2013 11:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
9662 <description>&lt;p&gt;When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
9663 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
9664 or on first boot from the hard disk. I&#39;ve seen it once in a while the
9665 last few years, but only recently understood the cause. I&#39;ve seen it
9666 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
9667 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops. The system to
9668 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
9669 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead. I do
9670 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
9671 i915 driver used by the
9672 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Packard Bell
9673 EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt;, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.&lt;/p&gt;
9674
9675 &lt;p&gt;The problem can be worked around two ways. Either by adding
9676 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
9677 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
9678 option when it load the i915 kernel module. On Debian and Ubuntu, it
9679 can be done by running these commands as root:&lt;/p&gt;
9680
9681 &lt;pre&gt;
9682 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
9683 update-initramfs -u -k all
9684 &lt;/pre&gt;
9685
9686 &lt;p&gt;Since March 2012 there is
9687 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955&quot;&gt;a
9688 mechanism in the Linux kernel&lt;/a&gt; to tell the i915 driver which
9689 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
9690 brightness setting automatically. To use it, one need to add a row in
9691 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c&quot;&gt;the
9692 intel_quirks array&lt;/a&gt; in the driver source
9693 &lt;tt&gt;drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c&lt;/tt&gt; (look for &quot;&lt;tt&gt;static
9694 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;), specifying the PCI device
9695 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
9696 number.&lt;/p&gt;
9697
9698 &lt;p&gt;My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from &lt;tt&gt;lspci
9699 -vvnn&lt;/tt&gt; for the video card in question:&lt;/p&gt;
9700
9701 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
9702 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
9703 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
9704 (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
9705 Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
9706 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
9707 ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
9708 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast &gt;TAbort- \
9709 &lt;TAbort- &lt;MAbort-&gt;SERR- &lt;PERR- INTx-
9710 Latency: 0
9711 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
9712 Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
9713 Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
9714 Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
9715 Expansion ROM at &lt;unassigned&gt; [disabled]
9716 Capabilities: &lt;access denied&gt;
9717 Kernel driver in use: i915
9718 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9719
9720 &lt;p&gt;The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
9721
9722 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
9723 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
9724 ...
9725 /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
9726 { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
9727 ...
9728 }
9729 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9730
9731 &lt;p&gt;According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
9732 &lt;tt&gt;modinfo i915&lt;/tt&gt;), information about hardware needing the
9733 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
9734 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel&quot;&gt;dri-devel
9735 (at) lists.freedesktop.org&lt;/a&gt; mailing list to reach the kernel
9736 developers. But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
9737 yet shown up in
9738 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html&quot;&gt;the
9739 web archive for the mailing list&lt;/a&gt;, so I suspect they do not accept
9740 emails from non-subscribers. Because of this, I sent my patch also to
9741 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
9742 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/710938&quot;&gt;BTS report #710938&lt;/a&gt;, to make
9743 sure the patch is not lost.&lt;/p&gt;
9744
9745 &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
9746 with this problem working properly with Linux. If you use Gnome, your
9747 worries should be over at this point. But if you use KDE, there is
9748 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
9749 the screen during login. I&#39;ve reported it to Debian as
9750 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/711237&quot;&gt;BTS report #711237&lt;/a&gt;, and
9751 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
9752 this. Perhaps you can help? Perhaps you know what the Gnome
9753 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
9754 developers? Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
9755 during login? If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
9756 you do not know how to update BTS).&lt;/p&gt;
9757
9758 &lt;p&gt;Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
9759 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
9760 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
9761 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
9762 backlight.&lt;/p&gt;
9763 </description>
9764 </item>
9765
9766 <item>
9767 <title>How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</title>
9768 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html</link>
9769 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html</guid>
9770 <pubDate>Mon, 27 May 2013 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
9771 <description>&lt;p&gt;Two days ago, I asked
9772 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html&quot;&gt;how
9773 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
9774 preinstalled with Windows 8&lt;/a&gt;. I found a solution, but am horrified
9775 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
9776 and Windows 8.&lt;/p&gt;
9777
9778 &lt;p&gt;I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
9779 secure booting or fast boot. I suspect fast boot was the problem,
9780 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
9781 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
9782 enough to tell.&lt;/p&gt;
9783
9784 &lt;p&gt;There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
9785 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive! This is as far as I
9786 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
9787 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement. I am told (and
9788 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
9789 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8. But as I believe the terms
9790 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
9791 was never an alternative. I do not enter agreements I do not intend
9792 to follow.&lt;/p&gt;
9793
9794 &lt;p&gt;I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
9795 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
9796 work. But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
9797 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops. Is
9798 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
9799 it close to impossible for &quot;normal&quot; users to install Linux without
9800 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms? Or at least not
9801 without risking to loose the warranty?&lt;/p&gt;
9802
9803 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve updated the
9804 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Linux Laptop
9805 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt;, to ensure the next person
9806 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
9807 machine.&lt;/p&gt;
9808
9809 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
9810 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.&lt;/p&gt;
9811 </description>
9812 </item>
9813
9814 <item>
9815 <title>How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</title>
9816 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html</link>
9817 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html</guid>
9818 <pubDate>Sat, 25 May 2013 18:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
9819 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve run into quite a problem the last few days. I bought three
9820 new laptops for my parents and a few others. I bought Packard Bell
9821 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer. But I
9822 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it. The
9823 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
9824 instead of a BIOS to boot.&lt;/p&gt;
9825
9826 &lt;p&gt;The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
9827 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick. I have yet
9828 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work. when I turn on
9829 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
9830 the normal boot menu. I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
9831 USB stick booting. When booting, it first ask for the language to
9832 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
9833 Windows 8 terms of use. As these terms are completely unacceptable to
9834 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
9835 to get it to boot the Linux installer.&lt;/p&gt;
9836
9837 &lt;p&gt;I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
9838 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Packard Bell
9839 EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt; model. If you have any idea how to get Linux
9840 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
9841 page. If I can&#39;t find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
9842 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.&lt;/p&gt;
9843
9844 &lt;p&gt;I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
9845 using UEFI and &quot;secure boot&quot; by making it impossible to install Linux
9846 on new Laptops?&lt;/p&gt;
9847 </description>
9848 </item>
9849
9850 <item>
9851 <title>How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</title>
9852 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html</link>
9853 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html</guid>
9854 <pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2013 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
9855 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; is
9856 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools. It
9857 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
9858 pupils in the primary schools. It provide both the central server,
9859 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
9860 educational software. The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
9861 2001-07-02. If you want to support the project, which is in need for
9862 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
9863 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;please
9864 donate some money&lt;/a&gt;.
9865
9866 &lt;p&gt;A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
9867 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
9868 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation. It isn&#39;t very
9869 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
9870 the Debian Edu installer.&lt;/p&gt;
9871
9872 &lt;p&gt;The script,
9873 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup&quot;&gt;debian-edu-bless&lt;a/&gt;
9874 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
9875 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
9876 into a Debian Edu Workstation:&lt;/p&gt;
9877
9878 &lt;ol&gt;
9879
9880 &lt;li&gt;Add skolelinux related APT sources.&lt;/li&gt;
9881 &lt;li&gt;Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.&lt;/li&gt;
9882 &lt;li&gt;Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
9883 our configuration.&lt;/li&gt;
9884 &lt;li&gt;Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
9885 /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
9886 according to the profile specified in the config above,
9887 overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.&lt;/li&gt;
9888 &lt;li&gt;Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
9889 that could not be done using preseeding.&lt;/li&gt;
9890 &lt;li&gt;Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.&lt;/li&gt;
9891
9892 &lt;/ol&gt;
9893
9894 &lt;p&gt;There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
9895 replicated like this. Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
9896 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
9897 the needed packages.&lt;/p&gt;
9898
9899 &lt;p&gt;The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
9900 setting up &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspberrypi.org&quot;&gt;Raspberry Pi&lt;/a&gt; as a
9901 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
9902 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎&quot;&gt;Raspbian&lt;/a&gt; installation and
9903 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
9904 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).&lt;/p&gt;
9905
9906 &lt;p&gt;The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
9907 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
9908 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:&lt;/p&gt;
9909
9910 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
9911 PROFILE=&quot;Roaming-Workstation&quot;
9912 DESKTOP=&quot;lxde&quot;
9913 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9914
9915 &lt;p&gt;The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
9916 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
9917 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
9918 boot.&lt;/p&gt;
9919 </description>
9920 </item>
9921
9922 <item>
9923 <title>Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</title>
9924 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html</link>
9925 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html</guid>
9926 <pubDate>Sat, 11 May 2013 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
9927 <description>&lt;P&gt;In January,
9928 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html&quot;&gt;I
9929 announced a&lt;/a&gt; new &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego&quot;&gt;IRC
9930 channel #debian-lego&lt;/a&gt;, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
9931 community interested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lego.com/&quot;&gt;LEGO&lt;/a&gt;, the
9932 marvellous construction system from Denmark. We also created
9933 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;a wiki page&lt;/a&gt; to have
9934 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes. And several
9935 people showed up to help. I was very happy to see the effect of my
9936 call. Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
9937 &lt;a href=&quot;http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego&quot;&gt;hardware::hobby:lego&lt;/a&gt;
9938 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
9939 LEGO and &lt;a href=&quot;http://mindstorms.lego.com/&quot;&gt;Mindstorms&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
9940
9941 &lt;p&gt;&lt;table&gt;
9942 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos&quot;&gt;brickos&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
9943 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad&quot;&gt;leocad&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;virtual brick CAD software&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
9944 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt&quot;&gt;libnxt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
9945 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd&quot;&gt;lnpd&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
9946 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc&quot;&gt;nbc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
9947 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc&quot;&gt;nqc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
9948 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt&quot;&gt;python-nxt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
9949 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer&quot;&gt;python-nxt-filer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
9950 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch&quot;&gt;scratch&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
9951 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n&quot;&gt;t2n&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;simple command-line tool for Lego NXT&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
9952 &lt;/table&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9953
9954 &lt;p&gt;Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
9955 currently available in Jessie/testing. leocad is so far only
9956 available in experimental.&lt;/p&gt;
9957
9958 &lt;p&gt;If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
9959 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
9960 for LEGO designers.&lt;/p&gt;
9961 </description>
9962 </item>
9963
9964 <item>
9965 <title>Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</title>
9966 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html</link>
9967 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html</guid>
9968 <pubDate>Sun, 5 May 2013 07:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
9969 <description>&lt;p&gt;When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
9970 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504&quot;&gt;release announcement
9971 for Debian Wheezy&lt;/a&gt; was waiting in my mail box. This is a great
9972 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
9973 soon.&lt;/p&gt;
9974
9975 &lt;p&gt;The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
9976 in particular make me very happy to see included. The
9977 &lt;a href=&quot;http://scratch.mit.edu/&quot;&gt;Scratch&lt;/a&gt; program, made famous by
9978 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.code.org/&quot;&gt;Teach kids code&lt;/a&gt; movement, is
9979 included for the first time. Alongside similar programs like
9980 &lt;a href=&quot;http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/&quot;&gt;kturtle&lt;/a&gt; and
9981 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art&quot;&gt;turtleart&lt;/a&gt;,
9982 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
9983 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
9984 computer. Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
9985 Edu.&lt;/a&gt;
9986
9987 &lt;p&gt;And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
9988 Edu/Skolelinux release too. The
9989 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html&quot;&gt;first
9990 alpha release&lt;/a&gt; went out last week, and the next should soon
9991 follow.&lt;p&gt;
9992 </description>
9993 </item>
9994
9995 <item>
9996 <title>Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</title>
9997 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html</link>
9998 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html</guid>
9999 <pubDate>Wed, 3 Apr 2013 23:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
10000 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today the &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;Isenkram
10001 package&lt;/a&gt; finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
10002 for many months. I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
10003 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.&lt;/p&gt;
10004
10005 &lt;p&gt;Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
10006 install to work with a pluggable hardware device. The suggestion pop
10007 up when the device is plugged in. For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
10008 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
10009 the NXT controller. Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
10010 BTS. :)&lt;/p&gt;
10011 </description>
10012 </item>
10013
10014 <item>
10015 <title>Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</title>
10016 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html</link>
10017 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html</guid>
10018 <pubDate>Sat, 2 Feb 2013 09:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
10019 <description>&lt;p&gt;My
10020 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;last
10021 bitcoin related blog post&lt;/a&gt; mentioned that the new
10022 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;bitcoin package&lt;/a&gt; for
10023 Debian was waiting in NEW. It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
10024 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then. It was
10025 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
10026 version too.&lt;/p&gt;
10027
10028 &lt;p&gt;But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
10029 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
10030 architectures. For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
10031 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
10032 architectures (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/672524&quot;&gt;BTS #672524&lt;/a&gt;).
10033 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
10034 no-one have been able to propose a fix. If you got an idea what is
10035 failing, please let us know via the BTS.&lt;/p&gt;
10036
10037 &lt;p&gt;One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
10038 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
10039 if it run short on space (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/696715&quot;&gt;BTS
10040 #696715&lt;/a&gt;). So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
10041 it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
10042
10043 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
10044 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
10045 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
10046 </description>
10047 </item>
10048
10049 <item>
10050 <title>Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</title>
10051 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html</link>
10052 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html</guid>
10053 <pubDate>Tue, 22 Jan 2013 22:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
10054 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I
10055 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;asked
10056 for testers&lt;/a&gt; for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
10057 pluggable hardware devices, which I
10058 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;set
10059 out to create&lt;/a&gt; earlier this month. Several valuable testers showed
10060 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
10061 people. But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
10062 for this project. Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
10063 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name. In the
10064 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
10065 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git&quot;&gt;collab-maint&lt;/a&gt;
10066 repository in Debian. The new name? It is &lt;strong&gt;Isenkram&lt;/strong&gt;.
10067 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use&lt;/p&gt;
10068
10069 &lt;pre&gt;
10070 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
10071 cd isenkram &amp;&amp; git-buildpackage -us -uc
10072 &lt;/pre&gt;
10073
10074 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet. If you
10075 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
10076 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
10077 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)&lt;/p&gt;
10078
10079 &lt;p&gt;If you wonder what &#39;isenkram&#39; is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
10080 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc. Typical hardware
10081 stuff, in other words. I&#39;ve been told it is the Norwegian variant of
10082 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
10083 word.&lt;/p&gt;
10084
10085 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-26&lt;/strong&gt;: Added -us -us to build
10086 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
10087 process.&lt;/p&gt;
10088
10089 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-27&lt;/strong&gt;: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
10090 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.&lt;/p&gt;
10091 </description>
10092 </item>
10093
10094 <item>
10095 <title>First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</title>
10096 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
10097 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
10098 <pubDate>Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
10099 <description>&lt;p&gt;Early this month I set out to try to
10100 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;improve
10101 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices&lt;/a&gt;. Now my
10102 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience. To test
10103 it, fetch the
10104 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;source
10105 from the Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;, build and install the
10106 package. You might have to log out and in again activate the
10107 autostart script.&lt;/p&gt;
10108
10109 &lt;p&gt;The design is simple:&lt;/p&gt;
10110
10111 &lt;ul&gt;
10112
10113 &lt;li&gt;Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
10114 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.&lt;/li&gt;
10115
10116 &lt;li&gt;This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
10117 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
10118 initially did.&lt;/li&gt;
10119
10120 &lt;li&gt;When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
10121 the APT database, a database
10122 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup&quot;&gt;available
10123 via HTTP&lt;/a&gt; and a database available as part of the package.&lt;/li&gt;
10124
10125 &lt;li&gt;If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
10126 isn&#39;t installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
10127 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
10128 package or packages.&lt;/li&gt;
10129
10130 &lt;li&gt;If the user click on the &#39;install package now&#39; button, ask
10131 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.&lt;/li&gt;
10132
10133 &lt;li&gt;aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
10134 package while showing progress information in a window.&lt;/li&gt;
10135
10136 &lt;/ul&gt;
10137
10138 &lt;p&gt;I still need to come up with a better name for the system. Here
10139 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action. First the
10140 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
10141 approve all the dependencies. Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.&lt;/p&gt;
10142
10143 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png&quot;&gt;
10144 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png&quot;&gt;
10145 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png&quot;&gt;
10146 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png&quot;&gt;
10147 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png&quot; width=&quot;70%&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10148
10149 &lt;p&gt;The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
10150 is already useful. The database of hardware to package mappings also
10151 need more work. It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
10152 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
10153 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
10154 method. I&#39;ve dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
10155 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
10156 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.&lt;/p&gt;
10157
10158 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-21 16:50&lt;/strong&gt;: Due to popular demand,
10159 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
10160 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;svn checkout
10161 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
10162 hw-support-handler; debuild&lt;/tt&gt;&#39;. If you lack debuild, install the
10163 devscripts package.&lt;/p&gt;
10164
10165 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-23 12:00&lt;/strong&gt;: The project is now
10166 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
10167 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository. See
10168 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html&quot;&gt;build
10169 instructions&lt;/a&gt; for details.&lt;/p&gt;
10170 </description>
10171 </item>
10172
10173 <item>
10174 <title>Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</title>
10175 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html</link>
10176 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html</guid>
10177 <pubDate>Sat, 19 Jan 2013 09:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
10178 <description>&lt;p&gt;This Christmas my trusty old laptop died. It died quietly and
10179 suddenly in bed. With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
10180 black. The power button was no longer able to turn it on. It was a
10181 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had. Better than both
10182 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S. Far better than the
10183 Compaq I had before that. Now I need to find a replacement. To keep
10184 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
10185 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
10186 not a durable solution.
10187
10188 &lt;p&gt;My laptop needs are fairly modest. This is my wishlist from when I
10189 got a new one more than 10 years ago. It still holds true.:)&lt;/p&gt;
10190
10191 &lt;ul&gt;
10192
10193 &lt;li&gt;Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
10194 than A4).&lt;/li&gt;
10195 &lt;li&gt;Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.&lt;/li&gt;
10196 &lt;li&gt;Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.&lt;/li&gt;
10197 &lt;li&gt;Long battery life time. Preferable a week.&lt;/li&gt;
10198 &lt;li&gt;Internal WIFI network card.&lt;/li&gt;
10199 &lt;li&gt;Internal Twisted Pair network card.&lt;/li&gt;
10200 &lt;li&gt;Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)&lt;/li&gt;
10201 &lt;li&gt;Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.&lt;/li&gt;
10202 &lt;li&gt;Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12&quot; (A4 paper
10203 size).&lt;/li&gt;
10204 &lt;li&gt;Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
10205 X.org packages.&lt;/li&gt;
10206 &lt;li&gt;Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
10207 the time).
10208
10209 &lt;/ul&gt;
10210
10211 &lt;p&gt;You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
10212 list. The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
10213 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
10214 at other features to choose my laptop. But are there still made as
10215 robust laptops as my X41? The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
10216 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
10217 Lenovo took over. But I&#39;ve been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
10218 still be useful.&lt;/p&gt;
10219
10220 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
10221 external keyboard? I&#39;ll have to check the
10222 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linux-laptop.net/&quot;&gt;Linux Laptops site&lt;/a&gt; for
10223 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
10224 of the vendors listed on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxpreloaded.com/&quot;&gt;Linux
10225 Pre-loaded site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
10226 </description>
10227 </item>
10228
10229 <item>
10230 <title>How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</title>
10231 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html</link>
10232 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html</guid>
10233 <pubDate>Fri, 18 Jan 2013 10:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
10234 <description>&lt;p&gt;Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
10235 install to get support for a given MIME type. Thanks to
10236 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins&quot;&gt;specifications
10237 done by Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt; and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
10238 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
10239 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
10240 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:&lt;/p&gt;
10241
10242 &lt;pre&gt;
10243 #!/usr/bin/python
10244 import sys
10245 import apt
10246 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
10247 cache = apt.Cache()
10248 cache.open(None)
10249 thepkgs = []
10250 for pkg in cache:
10251 version = pkg.candidate
10252 if version is None:
10253 version = pkg.installed
10254 if version is None:
10255 continue
10256 record = version.record
10257 if not record.has_key(&#39;Npp-MimeType&#39;):
10258 continue
10259 mime_types = record[&#39;Npp-MimeType&#39;].split(&#39;,&#39;)
10260 for t in mime_types:
10261 t = t.rstrip().strip()
10262 if t == mimetype:
10263 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
10264 return thepkgs
10265 mimetype = &quot;audio/ogg&quot;
10266 if 1 &lt; len(sys.argv):
10267 mimetype = sys.argv[1]
10268 print &quot;Browser plugin packages supporting %s:&quot; % mimetype
10269 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
10270 print &quot; %s&quot; %pkg
10271 &lt;/pre&gt;
10272
10273 &lt;p&gt;It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:&lt;/p&gt;
10274
10275 &lt;pre&gt;
10276 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
10277 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
10278 gecko-mediaplayer
10279 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
10280 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
10281 browser-plugin-gnash
10282 %
10283 &lt;/pre&gt;
10284
10285 &lt;p&gt;In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
10286 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
10287 packages. It would be great if Debian supported such feature too. Is
10288 anyone working on adding it?&lt;/p&gt;
10289
10290 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-18 14:20&lt;/strong&gt;: The Debian BTS
10291 request for icweasel support for this feature is
10292 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/484010&quot;&gt;#484010&lt;/a&gt; from 2008 (and
10293 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/698426&quot;&gt;#698426&lt;/a&gt; from today). Lack
10294 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
10295 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
10296 </description>
10297 </item>
10298
10299 <item>
10300 <title>What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</title>
10301 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html</link>
10302 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html</guid>
10303 <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
10304 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal&quot;&gt;DEP-11
10305 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive&lt;/a&gt;, is a
10306 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
10307 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
10308 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing. With such
10309 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
10310 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
10311 downloaded by the browser.&lt;/p&gt;
10312
10313 &lt;p&gt;To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
10314 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
10315 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there. The result
10316 can be found on the
10317 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest&quot;&gt;Skolelinux FTP
10318 site&lt;/a&gt;. Using the collected information, it become possible to
10319 answer the question in the title. Here are the 20 most supported MIME
10320 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
10321 The complete list is available from the link above.&lt;/p&gt;
10322
10323 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Stable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10324
10325 &lt;pre&gt;
10326 count MIME type
10327 ----- -----------------------
10328 32 text/plain
10329 30 audio/mpeg
10330 29 image/png
10331 28 image/jpeg
10332 27 application/ogg
10333 26 audio/x-mp3
10334 25 image/tiff
10335 25 image/gif
10336 22 image/bmp
10337 22 audio/x-wav
10338 20 audio/x-flac
10339 19 audio/x-mpegurl
10340 18 video/x-ms-asf
10341 18 audio/x-musepack
10342 18 audio/x-mpeg
10343 18 application/x-ogg
10344 17 video/mpeg
10345 17 audio/x-scpls
10346 17 audio/ogg
10347 16 video/x-ms-wmv
10348 &lt;/pre&gt;
10349
10350 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Testing:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10351
10352 &lt;pre&gt;
10353 count MIME type
10354 ----- -----------------------
10355 33 text/plain
10356 32 image/png
10357 32 image/jpeg
10358 29 audio/mpeg
10359 27 image/gif
10360 26 image/tiff
10361 26 application/ogg
10362 25 audio/x-mp3
10363 22 image/bmp
10364 21 audio/x-wav
10365 19 audio/x-mpegurl
10366 19 audio/x-mpeg
10367 18 video/mpeg
10368 18 audio/x-scpls
10369 18 audio/x-flac
10370 18 application/x-ogg
10371 17 video/x-ms-asf
10372 17 text/html
10373 17 audio/x-musepack
10374 16 image/x-xbitmap
10375 &lt;/pre&gt;
10376
10377 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Unstable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10378
10379 &lt;pre&gt;
10380 count MIME type
10381 ----- -----------------------
10382 31 text/plain
10383 31 image/png
10384 31 image/jpeg
10385 29 audio/mpeg
10386 28 application/ogg
10387 27 image/gif
10388 26 image/tiff
10389 26 audio/x-mp3
10390 23 audio/x-wav
10391 22 image/bmp
10392 21 audio/x-flac
10393 20 audio/x-mpegurl
10394 19 audio/x-mpeg
10395 18 video/x-ms-asf
10396 18 video/mpeg
10397 18 audio/x-scpls
10398 18 application/x-ogg
10399 17 audio/x-musepack
10400 16 video/x-ms-wmv
10401 16 video/x-msvideo
10402 &lt;/pre&gt;
10403
10404 &lt;p&gt;I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
10405 information mentioned in DEP-11. I have not yet had time to look at
10406 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
10407 issues.&lt;/p&gt;
10408
10409 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-16 13:35&lt;/strong&gt;: Updated numbers after
10410 discovering a typo in my script.&lt;/p&gt;
10411 </description>
10412 </item>
10413
10414 <item>
10415 <title>Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</title>
10416 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html</link>
10417 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html</guid>
10418 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
10419 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I wrote about the
10420 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html&quot;&gt;modalias
10421 values provided by the Linux kernel&lt;/a&gt; following my hope for
10422 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;better
10423 dongle support in Debian&lt;/a&gt;. Using this knowledge, I have tested how
10424 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
10425 to hardware. This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
10426 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
10427 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
10428 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
10429
10430 &lt;p&gt;I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
10431 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
10432 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
10433 modalias.&lt;/p&gt;
10434
10435 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
10436 Package: package-name
10437 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)&lt;/p&gt;
10438 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10439
10440 &lt;p&gt;It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
10441 for a given modalias value using this file.&lt;/p&gt;
10442
10443 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
10444 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):&lt;/p&gt;
10445
10446 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
10447 Package: cheese
10448 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)&lt;/p&gt;
10449 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10450
10451 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
10452 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:&lt;/p&gt;
10453
10454 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
10455 Package: pcmciautils
10456 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
10457 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10458
10459 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
10460 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:&lt;/p&gt;
10461
10462 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
10463 Package: colorhug-client
10464 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)&lt;/p&gt;
10465 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10466
10467 &lt;p&gt;I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
10468 file in the Debian archive. Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
10469 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.&lt;/p&gt;
10470
10471 &lt;p&gt;By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
10472 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
10473 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
10474 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
10475 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information. I&#39;ve
10476 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
10477 is working as it should with my prototype. It even made it to Ubuntu
10478 Raring.&lt;/p&gt;
10479
10480 &lt;p&gt;To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
10481 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
10482 implementation of the lookup code. The idea is to create files for
10483 each modalias and let the shell do the matching. Please check out and
10484 try the
10485 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co&quot;&gt;hw-support-lookup&lt;/a&gt;
10486 shell script. It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
10487 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
10488 repository where I currently work on my prototype.&lt;/p&gt;
10489
10490 &lt;p&gt;When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
10491 install yubikey-personalization:&lt;/p&gt;
10492
10493 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
10494 % ./hw-support-lookup
10495 &lt;br&gt;yubikey-personalization
10496 &lt;br&gt;%
10497 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10498
10499 &lt;p&gt;When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
10500 propose to install the pcmciautils package:&lt;/p&gt;
10501
10502 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
10503 % ./hw-support-lookup
10504 &lt;br&gt;pcmciautils
10505 &lt;br&gt;%
10506 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10507
10508 &lt;p&gt;If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
10509 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co&quot;&gt;my
10510 database&lt;/a&gt;, please tell me about it.&lt;/p&gt;
10511
10512 &lt;p&gt;It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
10513 packages and hardware. One source would be to look at packages with
10514 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
10515 extract their modalias information. Another would be to look at
10516 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
10517 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
10518 generate a modalias matching rule. I have not tested any of these to
10519 see if it work.&lt;/p&gt;
10520
10521 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
10522 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
10523 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
10524 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel&quot;&gt;#debian-devel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
10525 </description>
10526 </item>
10527
10528 <item>
10529 <title>Modalias strings - a practical way to map &quot;stuff&quot; to hardware</title>
10530 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html</link>
10531 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html</guid>
10532 <pubDate>Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
10533 <description>&lt;p&gt;While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
10534 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
10535 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
10536 to document the details. Here are my findings so far, also available
10537 in
10538 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;the
10539 Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;:
10540
10541 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Modalias decoded&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10542
10543 &lt;p&gt;This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
10544 values stands for. It is in part based on information from
10545 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias&quot;&gt;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;,
10546 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device&quot;&gt;http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;,
10547 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c&quot;&gt;http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt; and
10548 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&amp;view=markup&quot;&gt;http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&amp;view=markup&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;.
10549
10550 &lt;p&gt;The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
10551 this shell script:&lt;/p&gt;
10552
10553 &lt;pre&gt;
10554 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
10555 &lt;/pre&gt;
10556
10557 &lt;p&gt;The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
10558 using modinfo:&lt;/p&gt;
10559
10560 &lt;pre&gt;
10561 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
10562 alias: serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
10563 alias: serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
10564 %
10565 &lt;/pre&gt;
10566
10567 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PCI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10568
10569 &lt;p&gt;A typical PCI entry can look like this. This is an Intel Host
10570 Bridge memory controller:&lt;/p&gt;
10571
10572 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
10573 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
10574 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10575
10576 &lt;p&gt;This represent these values:&lt;/p&gt;
10577
10578 &lt;pre&gt;
10579 v 00008086 (vendor)
10580 d 00002770 (device)
10581 sv 00001028 (subvendor)
10582 sd 000001AD (subdevice)
10583 bc 06 (bus class)
10584 sc 00 (bus subclass)
10585 i 00 (interface)
10586 &lt;/pre&gt;
10587
10588 &lt;p&gt;The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from &#39;lspci
10589 -n&#39; as 8086:2770. The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
10590 0600. The 0600 class is a host bridge. Other useful bus values are
10591 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).&lt;/p&gt;
10592
10593 &lt;p&gt;Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
10594 means.&lt;/p&gt;
10595
10596 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;USB subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10597
10598 &lt;p&gt;Some typical USB entries can look like this. This is an internal
10599 USB hub in a laptop:&lt;/p&gt;
10600
10601 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
10602 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
10603 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10604
10605 &lt;p&gt;Here is the values included in this alias:&lt;/p&gt;
10606
10607 &lt;pre&gt;
10608 v 1D6B (device vendor)
10609 p 0001 (device product)
10610 d 0206 (bcddevice)
10611 dc 09 (device class)
10612 dsc 00 (device subclass)
10613 dp 00 (device protocol)
10614 ic 09 (interface class)
10615 isc 00 (interface subclass)
10616 ip 00 (interface protocol)
10617 &lt;/pre&gt;
10618
10619 &lt;p&gt;The 0900 device class/subclass means hub. Some times the relevant
10620 class is in the interface class section. For a simple USB web camera,
10621 these alias entries show up:&lt;/p&gt;
10622
10623 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
10624 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
10625 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
10626 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
10627 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
10628 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10629
10630 &lt;p&gt;Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
10631 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
10632 microphone). Thus this is a camera with microphone included.&lt;/p&gt;
10633
10634 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ACPI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10635
10636 &lt;p&gt;The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff. This is an IR
10637 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:&lt;/p&gt;
10638
10639 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
10640 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
10641 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10642
10643 &lt;p&gt;The values between the colons are IDs.&lt;/p&gt;
10644
10645 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DMI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10646
10647 &lt;p&gt;The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
10648 and model. This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
10649 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:&lt;/p&gt;
10650
10651 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
10652 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
10653 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10654
10655 &lt;p&gt;The values present are&lt;/p&gt;
10656
10657 &lt;pre&gt;
10658 bvn IBM (BIOS vendor)
10659 bvr 1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
10660 bd 06/15/2005 (BIOS date)
10661 svn IBM (system vendor)
10662 pn 2371H4G (product name)
10663 pvr ThinkPadX40 (product version)
10664 rvn IBM (board vendor)
10665 rn 2371H4G (board name)
10666 rvr NotAvailable (board version)
10667 cvn IBM (chassis vendor)
10668 ct 10 (chassis type)
10669 cvr NotAvailable (chassis version)
10670 &lt;/pre&gt;
10671
10672 &lt;p&gt;The chassis type 10 is Notebook. Other interesting values can be
10673 found in the dmidecode source:&lt;/p&gt;
10674
10675 &lt;pre&gt;
10676 3 Desktop
10677 4 Low Profile Desktop
10678 5 Pizza Box
10679 6 Mini Tower
10680 7 Tower
10681 8 Portable
10682 9 Laptop
10683 10 Notebook
10684 11 Hand Held
10685 12 Docking Station
10686 13 All In One
10687 14 Sub Notebook
10688 15 Space-saving
10689 16 Lunch Box
10690 17 Main Server Chassis
10691 18 Expansion Chassis
10692 19 Sub Chassis
10693 20 Bus Expansion Chassis
10694 21 Peripheral Chassis
10695 22 RAID Chassis
10696 23 Rack Mount Chassis
10697 24 Sealed-case PC
10698 25 Multi-system
10699 26 CompactPCI
10700 27 AdvancedTCA
10701 28 Blade
10702 29 Blade Enclosing
10703 &lt;/pre&gt;
10704
10705 &lt;p&gt;The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
10706 table. For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
10707 claim it is a desktop.&lt;/p&gt;
10708
10709 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SerIO subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10710
10711 &lt;p&gt;This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs. One example is from my
10712 test machine:&lt;/p&gt;
10713
10714 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
10715 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
10716 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10717
10718 &lt;p&gt;The values present are&lt;/p&gt;
10719
10720 &lt;pre&gt;
10721 ty 01 (type)
10722 pr 00 (prototype)
10723 id 00 (id)
10724 ex 00 (extra)
10725 &lt;/pre&gt;
10726
10727 &lt;p&gt;This type is supported by the psmouse driver. I am not sure what
10728 the valid values are.&lt;/p&gt;
10729
10730 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other subtypes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10731
10732 &lt;p&gt;There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
10733 file2alias.c. There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
10734 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
10735 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
10736 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro. I did not spend time documenting all of
10737 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
10738 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.&lt;/p&gt;
10739
10740 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Looking up kernel modules using modalias values&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10741
10742 &lt;p&gt;To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
10743 one can use the following shell script:&lt;/p&gt;
10744
10745 &lt;pre&gt;
10746 for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
10747 echo &quot;$id&quot; ; \
10748 /sbin/modprobe --show-depends &quot;$id&quot;|sed &#39;s/^/ /&#39; ; \
10749 done
10750 &lt;/pre&gt;
10751
10752 &lt;p&gt;The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
10753 list is very long on my test machine):&lt;/p&gt;
10754
10755 &lt;pre&gt;
10756 acpi:ACPI0003:
10757 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
10758 acpi:device:
10759 FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
10760 acpi:IBM0068:
10761 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
10762 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
10763 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
10764 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
10765 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
10766 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
10767 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
10768 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
10769 [...]
10770 &lt;/pre&gt;
10771
10772 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
10773 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
10774 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
10775 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel&quot;&gt;#debian-devel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
10776
10777 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-15:&lt;/strong&gt; Rewrite &quot;cat $(find ...)&quot; to
10778 &quot;find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat&quot; to make sure it handle directories
10779 in /sys/ with space in them.&lt;/p&gt;
10780 </description>
10781 </item>
10782
10783 <item>
10784 <title>Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</title>
10785 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html</link>
10786 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html</guid>
10787 <pubDate>Thu, 10 Jan 2013 20:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
10788 <description>&lt;p&gt;As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
10789 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
10790 Launcher and updated the Debian package
10791 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile&quot;&gt;pymissile&lt;/a&gt; to make
10792 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in. I
10793 also added a &quot;Modaliases&quot; header to test it in the Debian archive and
10794 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
10795 plug in his rocket launcher. In the process I moved the source to a
10796 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
10797 contribute. &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/&quot;&gt;Upstream&lt;/a&gt;
10798 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
10799 years of relative silence. The new git repository is not listed in
10800 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
10801 bit more before I upload the new version. If you want to check out
10802 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
10803 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git&quot;&gt;gitweb
10804 view&lt;/a&gt; or use &quot;&lt;tt&gt;git clone
10805 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
10806 </description>
10807 </item>
10808
10809 <item>
10810 <title>Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</title>
10811 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
10812 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
10813 <pubDate>Wed, 9 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
10814 <description>&lt;p&gt;One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
10815 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
10816 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
10817 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
10818 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
10819 machine. Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
10820 Linux distribution. When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
10821 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
10822 I need to talk to it. When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
10823 yubikey-personalization package. The information required to do this
10824 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.&lt;/p&gt;
10825
10826 &lt;p&gt;Some years ago, I proposed to
10827 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html&quot;&gt;use
10828 the discover subsystem to implement this&lt;/a&gt;. The idea is fairly
10829 simple:
10830
10831 &lt;ul&gt;
10832
10833 &lt;li&gt;Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
10834 starting when a user log in.&lt;/li&gt;
10835
10836 &lt;li&gt;Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
10837 hardware is inserted into the computer.&lt;/li&gt;
10838
10839 &lt;li&gt;When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
10840 database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
10841 packages.&lt;/li&gt;
10842
10843 &lt;li&gt;Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
10844 package, and make it easy to install it.&lt;/li&gt;
10845
10846 &lt;/ul&gt;
10847
10848 &lt;p&gt;I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
10849 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
10850 discover database to find packages and
10851 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.packagekit.org/&quot;&gt;PackageKit&lt;/a&gt; to install
10852 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
10853
10854 &lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
10855 draft package is now checked into
10856 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;the
10857 Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;. In the process, I updated the
10858 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html&quot;&gt;discover-data&lt;/a&gt;
10859 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
10860 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
10861 2.2013.01.09 to unstable. I also discovered that the current
10862 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html&quot;&gt;discover&lt;/a&gt;
10863 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
10864 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present. I ported it to use
10865 libusb as a fall back option to get it working. The fixed package
10866 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn&#39;t upload it to unstable
10867 because of the freeze).&lt;/p&gt;
10868
10869 &lt;p&gt;With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
10870 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
10871 inserted):&lt;/p&gt;
10872
10873 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10874
10875 &lt;p&gt;For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
10876 install the proposed packages by pressing the &quot;Please install
10877 program(s)&quot; button should to be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;
10878
10879 &lt;p&gt;If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
10880 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
10881 from hardware to Debian packages. Check if &#39;discover-pkginstall -l&#39;
10882 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
10883 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
10884 reportbug if it isn&#39;t. Or, if you know of a better way to provide
10885 such mapping, please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;
10886
10887 &lt;p&gt;This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
10888 should be considered before it is ready for production use. Is dbus
10889 the correct way to detect new hardware? At the moment I look for HAL
10890 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
10891 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop. Are there better events to use?
10892 How should the user be notified? Is the desktop notification
10893 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
10894 popup instead? How should packages be installed? When should they
10895 not be installed?&lt;/p&gt;
10896
10897 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
10898 please send me an email. :)&lt;/p&gt;
10899 </description>
10900 </item>
10901
10902 <item>
10903 <title>New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</title>
10904 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html</link>
10905 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html</guid>
10906 <pubDate>Wed, 2 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
10907 <description>&lt;p&gt;During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
10908 &lt;a href=&quot;http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx&quot;&gt;LEGO Mindstorm
10909 NXT&lt;/a&gt;. My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
10910 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
10911 already in Debian Squeeze. If Debian support for LEGO is something
10912 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
10913 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego&quot;&gt;#debian-lego&lt;/a&gt; (server
10914 irc.debian.org). There is a lot that could be done to improve the
10915 Debian support for LEGO designers. For example both CAD software
10916 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
10917
10918 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-01-03: A
10919 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;project page&lt;/a&gt;
10920 including links to Lego related packages is now available.&lt;/p&gt;
10921 </description>
10922 </item>
10923
10924 <item>
10925 <title>How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</title>
10926 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html</link>
10927 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html</guid>
10928 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Dec 2012 20:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
10929 <description>&lt;p&gt;Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
10930 year! I hope next year will prove to be a good year.&lt;/p&gt;
10931
10932 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;Bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the digital
10933 decentralised &quot;currency&quot; that allow people to transfer bitcoins
10934 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
10935 experiment. And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
10936 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; is about to improve a bit.
10937 The &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;new debian source
10938 package&lt;/a&gt; (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
10939 in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html&quot;&gt;the NEW queue&lt;/A&gt;
10940 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
10941 name.&lt;/p&gt;
10942
10943 &lt;p&gt;And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
10944 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
10945 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:&lt;/p&gt;
10946
10947 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10948 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
10949 cd bitcoin
10950 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
10951 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
10952 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10953
10954 &lt;p&gt;You might have to install some build dependencies as well. The
10955 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
10956 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment. Note that the
10957 client will download the complete set of bitcoin &quot;blocks&quot;, which need
10958 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment. Make sure your
10959 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
10960 all the blocks. The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
10961 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
10962 not be able to get all the features out of the client.&lt;/p&gt;
10963
10964 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
10965 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
10966 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
10967 </description>
10968 </item>
10969
10970 <item>
10971 <title>A word on bitcoin support in Debian</title>
10972 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</link>
10973 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</guid>
10974 <pubDate>Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:59:00 +0100</pubDate>
10975 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a while since I wrote about
10976 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the decentralised
10977 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
10978 have been busy elsewhere. But two days ago, I started looking at the
10979 state of &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;bitcoin in
10980 Debian&lt;/a&gt; again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet. The package
10981 is now maintained by a
10982 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;team of
10983 people&lt;/a&gt;, and the grunt work had already been done by this team. We
10984 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
10985 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
10986 Wheezy. It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
10987 backports). The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
10988 it from entering testing. To try to help the team and improve the
10989 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
10990 reports. I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
10991 Corallo in a
10992 &lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin&quot;&gt;PPA for
10993 Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt;, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
10994 Debian package.&lt;/p&gt;
10995
10996 &lt;p&gt;After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
10997 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
10998 improve the package. It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
10999 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
11000 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
11001 setup. As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
11002 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html&quot;&gt;a
11003 patch to backport&lt;/a&gt; the latest version. Jonas is going to look at
11004 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
11005 new version to unstable.
11006
11007 &lt;p&gt;I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
11008 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system. I
11009 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
11010 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
11011 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
11012 transactions to Wikileaks. But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
11013 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
11014 they sell products and services. Improving the bitcoin support in
11015 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
11016 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
11017 pay with bitcoin is still not very good. The bitcoin: URI is a step
11018 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
11019 use. Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
11020 quick transaction. I believe there are other clients available, but
11021 have not tested them.&lt;/p&gt;
11022
11023 &lt;p&gt;My
11024 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html&quot;&gt;experiment
11025 with bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
11026 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
11027 years ago, as can be
11028 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;seen
11029 on the blockexplorer service&lt;/a&gt;. Thank you everyone for your
11030 donation. The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
11031 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
11032 number of users have gone up since then. If you use bitcoin and want
11033 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
11034 the same address as last time,
11035 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
11036 </description>
11037 </item>
11038
11039 <item>
11040 <title>Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</title>
11041 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</link>
11042 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</guid>
11043 <pubDate>Fri, 7 Sep 2012 13:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
11044 <description>&lt;p&gt;As I
11045 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html&quot;&gt;mentioned
11046 this summer&lt;/a&gt;, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
11047 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
11048 &lt;a href=&quot;https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook&quot;&gt;Gitorious
11049 repository for the project&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
11050
11051 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
11052 to the HTML version. To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
11053 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
11054 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.&lt;/p&gt;
11055
11056 &lt;p&gt;Want to sing? You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
11057 PostScript formats at
11058 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/&quot;&gt;Petter&#39;s Computer
11059 Science Songbook&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
11060 </description>
11061 </item>
11062
11063 <item>
11064 <title>Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</title>
11065 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html</link>
11066 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html</guid>
11067 <pubDate>Thu, 16 Aug 2012 11:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
11068 <description>&lt;p&gt;I dag fyller
11069 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813&quot;&gt;Debian-prosjektet 19
11070 år&lt;/a&gt;. Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
11071 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!&lt;/p&gt;
11072 </description>
11073 </item>
11074
11075 <item>
11076 <title>Song book for Computer Scientists</title>
11077 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</link>
11078 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</guid>
11079 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Jun 2012 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
11080 <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
11081 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uit.no/&quot;&gt;University of Tromsø&lt;/a&gt;, I started
11082 collecting computer related songs for use at parties. The original
11083 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
11084 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
11085 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format. I have
11086 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
11087 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
11088 help me extend and update the book. If anyone is volunteering to help
11089 me with this, send me an email. Also let me know if there are songs
11090 missing in my book.&lt;/p&gt;
11091
11092 &lt;p&gt;I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
11093 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
11094 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
11095 Especially now that &lt;a href=&quot;http://debconf12.debconf.org/&quot;&gt;Debconf
11096 12&lt;/a&gt; is about to start (and I am not going). Want to sing? Check
11097 out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/&quot;&gt;Petter&#39;s
11098 Computer Science Songbook&lt;/a&gt;.
11099 </description>
11100 </item>
11101
11102 <item>
11103 <title>Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</title>
11104 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</link>
11105 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</guid>
11106 <pubDate>Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
11107 <description>&lt;p&gt;At work we have heaps of servers. I believe the total count is
11108 around 1000 at the moment. To be able to get help from the vendors
11109 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
11110 up to date. If the firmware isn&#39;t the latest and greatest, the
11111 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
11112 firmware is upgraded. So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
11113 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
11114 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
11115 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
11116 the tools to do so.&lt;/p&gt;
11117
11118 &lt;p&gt;To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
11119 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got. Most of
11120 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
11121 so far. This blog post is about the Dell part.&lt;/P&gt;
11122
11123 &lt;p&gt;On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
11124 &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz&quot;&gt;an XML file&lt;/a&gt;
11125 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
11126 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
11127 site I can find it. Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
11128 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
11129 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
11130 be activated on the first reboot.&lt;/p&gt;
11131
11132 &lt;p&gt;This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
11133 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
11134 servers at a site? Please get in touch and lets share resources.&lt;/p&gt;
11135
11136 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11137 #!/usr/bin/perl
11138 use strict;
11139 use warnings;
11140 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
11141 BEGIN {
11142 # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
11143 my %rhelmodules = (
11144 &#39;XML::Simple&#39; =&gt; &#39;perl-XML-Simple&#39;,
11145 );
11146 for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
11147 eval &quot;use $module;&quot;;
11148 if ($@) {
11149 my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
11150 system(&quot;yum install -y $pkg&quot;);
11151 eval &quot;use $module;&quot;;
11152 }
11153 }
11154 }
11155 my $errorsto = &#39;pere@hungry.com&#39;;
11156
11157 upgrade_dell();
11158
11159 exit 0;
11160
11161 sub run_firmware_script {
11162 my ($opts, $script) = @_;
11163 unless ($script) {
11164 print STDERR &quot;fail: missing script name\n&quot;;
11165 exit 1
11166 }
11167 print STDERR &quot;Running $script\n\n&quot;;
11168
11169 if (0 == system(&quot;sh $script $opts&quot;)) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
11170 print STDERR &quot;success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n&quot;;
11171 } else {
11172 print STDERR &quot;fail: firmware script returned error\n&quot;;
11173 }
11174 }
11175
11176 sub run_firmware_scripts {
11177 my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
11178 # Run firmware packages
11179 for my $dir (@dirs) {
11180 print STDERR &quot;info: Running scripts in $dir\n&quot;;
11181 opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die &quot;Unable to open directory $dir: $!&quot;;
11182 while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
11183 next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
11184 run_firmware_script($opts, &quot;$dir/$s&quot;);
11185 }
11186 closedir $dh;
11187 }
11188 }
11189
11190 sub download {
11191 my $url = shift;
11192 print STDERR &quot;info: Downloading $url\n&quot;;
11193 system(&quot;wget --quiet \&quot;$url\&quot;&quot;);
11194 }
11195
11196 sub upgrade_dell {
11197 my @dirs;
11198 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
11199 chomp $product;
11200
11201 if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
11202
11203 # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
11204 system(&#39;yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail&#39;);
11205
11206 my $tmpdir = tempdir(
11207 CLEANUP =&gt; 1
11208 );
11209 chdir($tmpdir);
11210 fetch_dell_fw(&#39;catalog/Catalog.xml.gz&#39;);
11211 system(&#39;gunzip Catalog.xml.gz&#39;);
11212 my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list(&#39;Catalog.xml&#39;);
11213 # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
11214 my $fwopts = &quot;-q&quot;;
11215 if (@paths) {
11216 for my $url (@paths) {
11217 fetch_dell_fw($url);
11218 }
11219 run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
11220 } else {
11221 print STDERR &quot;error: Unsupported Dell model &#39;$product&#39;.\n&quot;;
11222 print STDERR &quot;error: Please report to $errorsto.\n&quot;;
11223 }
11224 chdir(&#39;/&#39;);
11225 } else {
11226 print STDERR &quot;error: Unsupported Dell model &#39;$product&#39;.\n&quot;;
11227 print STDERR &quot;error: Please report to $errorsto.\n&quot;;
11228 }
11229 }
11230
11231 sub fetch_dell_fw {
11232 my $path = shift;
11233 my $url = &quot;ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path&quot;;
11234 download($url);
11235 }
11236
11237 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
11238 # firmware packages to download from Dell. Only work for Linux
11239 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
11240 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
11241 my $filename = shift;
11242
11243 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
11244 chomp $product;
11245 my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
11246
11247 print STDERR &quot;Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n&quot;;
11248
11249 my $xml = XMLin($filename);
11250 my @paths;
11251 for my $bundle (@{$xml-&gt;{SoftwareBundle}}) {
11252 my $brand = $bundle-&gt;{TargetSystems}-&gt;{Brand}-&gt;{Display}-&gt;{content};
11253 my $model = $bundle-&gt;{TargetSystems}-&gt;{Brand}-&gt;{Model}-&gt;{Display}-&gt;{content};
11254 my $oscode;
11255 if (&quot;ARRAY&quot; eq ref $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}) {
11256 $oscode = $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}[0]-&gt;{osCode};
11257 } else {
11258 $oscode = $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}-&gt;{osCode};
11259 }
11260 if ($mybrand eq $brand &amp;&amp; $mymodel eq $model &amp;&amp; &quot;LIN&quot; eq $oscode)
11261 {
11262 @paths = map { $_-&gt;{path} } @{$bundle-&gt;{Contents}-&gt;{Package}};
11263 }
11264 }
11265 for my $component (@{$xml-&gt;{SoftwareComponent}}) {
11266 my $componenttype = $component-&gt;{ComponentType}-&gt;{value};
11267
11268 # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
11269 next if &#39;APAC&#39; eq $componenttype;
11270
11271 my $cpath = $component-&gt;{path};
11272 for my $path (@paths) {
11273 if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
11274 push(@paths, $cpath);
11275 }
11276 }
11277 }
11278 return @paths;
11279 }
11280 &lt;/pre&gt;
11281
11282 &lt;p&gt;The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
11283 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking. Anyone know a
11284 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers? At the
11285 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
11286 outdated.&lt;/p&gt;
11287 </description>
11288 </item>
11289
11290 <item>
11291 <title>How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</title>
11292 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html</link>
11293 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html</guid>
11294 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Aug 2011 12:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
11295 <description>&lt;p&gt;Wouter Verhelst have some
11296 &lt;a href=&quot;http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot&quot;&gt;interesting
11297 comments and opinions&lt;/a&gt; on my blog post on
11298 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html&quot;&gt;the
11299 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian&lt;/a&gt; and my blog post about
11300 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html&quot;&gt;the
11301 default KDE desktop in Debian&lt;/a&gt;. I only have time to address one
11302 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
11303 misunderstanding he bring forward:&lt;/p&gt;
11304
11305 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
11306 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
11307 single-user system (by adding &#39;single&#39; to the kernel command line;
11308 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
11309 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
11310
11311 &lt;p&gt;This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
11312 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same. I am not surprised he
11313 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
11314 thing to believe. But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
11315 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn&#39;t the same as single user
11316 mode. I&#39;ll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
11317 hard to explain.&lt;/p&gt;
11318
11319 &lt;p&gt;Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
11320 &quot;&lt;tt&gt;~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;. This means the only thing that is
11321 executed in single user mode is sulogin. Single user mode is a boot
11322 state &quot;between&quot; the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
11323 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
11324 enters the single user state. When switching to runlevel 1, the state
11325 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
11326 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
11327 runs &quot;init -t1 S&quot; to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
11328 1. It is confusing that the &#39;S&#39; (single user) init mode is not the
11329 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
11330 mode).&lt;/p&gt;
11331
11332 &lt;p&gt;This summary might make it clearer. When booting for the first
11333 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
11334 &quot;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;. When booting into
11335 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: &quot;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/init.d/rc
11336 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;. A problem show up when
11337 trying to continue after visiting single user mode. Not all services
11338 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
11339 unpredicatble state. This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
11340 after visiting single user mode.&lt;/p&gt;
11341
11342 &lt;p&gt;A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
11343 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/. When switching from say runlevel 2
11344 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
11345 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
11346 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
11347 2-5. I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
11348 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not &lt;strong&gt;required&lt;/strong&gt; to get a
11349 functioning single user mode during boot.&lt;/p&gt;
11350
11351 &lt;p&gt;I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
11352 and discovered this problem a few years ago. I suspect it originates
11353 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.&lt;/p&gt;
11354 </description>
11355 </item>
11356
11357 <item>
11358 <title>What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</title>
11359 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html</link>
11360 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html</guid>
11361 <pubDate>Sat, 30 Jul 2011 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
11362 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
11363 are started from /etc/rcS.d/. In fact, there is a bite more of them
11364 than make sense, and this causes a few problems. What kind of
11365 problems, you might ask. There are at least two problems. The first
11366 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
11367 runlevel 1. One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
11368 the expected state. The other is that single user boot will sometimes
11369 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
11370 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
11371 machine from a problem in that subsystem. A minor additional point is
11372 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
11373 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
11374 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.&lt;/p&gt;
11375
11376 &lt;p&gt;So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/. In short, only the
11377 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
11378 presented during a single user boot should go there. Everything else
11379 should go into the numeric runlevels. This means things like
11380 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
11381 the numeric runlevels. Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
11382 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
11383 out. Do your package have one of them? Please help us make single
11384 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.&lt;/p&gt;
11385
11386 &lt;p&gt;Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
11387 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
11388 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
11389 is presented.&lt;/p&gt;
11390
11391 &lt;p&gt;As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound. To keep
11392 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
11393 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
11394 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
11395 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
11396 moved first. This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
11397 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
11398 the system state correct. This will require some coordination when it
11399 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
11400 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
11401 on them. Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
11402 package, while others are still left to do. I wish I had time to work
11403 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
11404 find time to push this forward.&lt;/p&gt;
11405 </description>
11406 </item>
11407
11408 <item>
11409 <title>What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</title>
11410 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html</link>
11411 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html</guid>
11412 <pubDate>Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
11413 <description>&lt;p&gt;While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
11414 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
11415 desktop to be useful for more people. The use case for this is my
11416 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
11417 issues.&lt;/p&gt;
11418
11419 &lt;p&gt;I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
11420 implement. After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
11421 do this in Debian we would have a source.&lt;/p&gt;
11422
11423 &lt;ol&gt;
11424
11425 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.&lt;/strong&gt; When there
11426 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
11427 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
11428 tool to handle it. I have no problem guiding both of my parents
11429 through the process over the phone. If a kernel reboot is required,
11430 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool. Last
11431 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
11432 Debian.&lt;/li&gt;
11433
11434 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
11435 plugins.&lt;/strong&gt; When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
11436 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
11437 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
11438 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
11439 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
11440 Packages file in the APT archive). If one or more packages are found,
11441 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
11442 type. If the package require the user to accept some non-free
11443 license, this is explained to the user. The entire process make it
11444 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
11445 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
11446 not the browser for any missing features.&lt;/li&gt;
11447
11448 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
11449 handlers.&lt;/strong&gt; When the media players encounter a format or codec
11450 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
11451 should search for a package that would add support for it. This
11452 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264. The selection
11453 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
11454 plugin handling. This is as far as I know implemented using a
11455 gstreamer hook. The end result is that the user easily get access to
11456 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
11457 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.&lt;/li&gt;
11458
11459 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Better browser handling of some MIME types.&lt;/strong&gt; When
11460 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
11461 start emacs to show it. If I remember correctly, when doing the same
11462 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser. At least I
11463 know Opera will show text files within the browser. I much prefer the
11464 latter behaviour.&lt;/li&gt;
11465
11466 &lt;/ol&gt;
11467
11468 &lt;p&gt;There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
11469 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
11470 it do not matter much.&lt;/p&gt;
11471
11472 &lt;p&gt;I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
11473 Debian release. It would require the coordinated effort of several
11474 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.&lt;/p&gt;
11475 </description>
11476 </item>
11477
11478 <item>
11479 <title>Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</title>
11480 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html</link>
11481 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html</guid>
11482 <pubDate>Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:25:00 +0200</pubDate>
11483 <description>&lt;p&gt;The Norwegian &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/A&gt;
11484 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
11485 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
11486 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
11487 security support for a few years.&lt;/p&gt;
11488
11489 &lt;p&gt;The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
11490 that are missing in Debian at the moment. It would be great if these
11491 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
11492 their own &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; clone
11493 in their own country using only Debian packages. The list of modules
11494 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn&#39;t very long, and I hope the perl group
11495 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
11496 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
11497 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
11498 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
11499 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
11500 easier in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
11501
11502 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
11503 installed on my server was a simple call to &#39;cpan2deb Module::Name&#39;
11504 and &#39;dpkg -i&#39; to install the resulting package. But this leave me
11505 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
11506 do not have time for.&lt;/p&gt;
11507 </description>
11508 </item>
11509
11510 <item>
11511 <title>A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</title>
11512 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html</link>
11513 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html</guid>
11514 <pubDate>Sun, 3 Apr 2011 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
11515 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a small update for my English readers. Most of my blog
11516 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
11517 update in English.&lt;/p&gt;
11518
11519 &lt;p&gt;The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
11520 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
11521 of the British service
11522 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com/&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; up and running,
11523 and it has been running for a month now. The entire project has been
11524 organised by me and two others. Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
11525 to fund the development work. In January I drafted a contract with
11526 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysociety.org/&quot;&gt;mySociety&lt;/a&gt; on what to develop,
11527 and in February the development took place. Most of it involved
11528 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
11529 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
11530 running in any country by now. The Norwegian
11531 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/a&gt; is using
11532 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openstreetmap.org/&quot;&gt;OpenStreetmap&lt;/a&gt; as the map
11533 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
11534 support for this had to be added/fixed.&lt;/p&gt;
11535
11536 &lt;p&gt;The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
11537 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th. The system is
11538 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
11539 problem reports in a few weeks. Soon we hope to announce the Android
11540 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
11541 public infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;
11542
11543 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
11544 such service?&lt;/p&gt;
11545 </description>
11546 </item>
11547
11548 <item>
11549 <title>Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</title>
11550 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html</link>
11551 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html</guid>
11552 <pubDate>Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
11553 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
11554 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo. My idea is that
11555 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
11556 available on the Internet, and check our locally
11557 maintained/distributed software against this information. It should
11558 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten. The
11559 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
11560 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
11561 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
11562 out which security holes were present in our free software
11563 collection.&lt;/p&gt;
11564
11565 &lt;p&gt;After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
11566 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
11567 consistent way across data sources. I considered several ways to do
11568 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
11569 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
11570 existing naming scheme. And it seem like I am not the first one to
11571 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
11572 solution. Enter the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html&quot;&gt;Common
11573 Platform Enumeration&lt;/a&gt; dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
11574 software, hardware and other platform components. The CPE ids are
11575 mapped to CVEs in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/&quot;&gt;National
11576 Vulnerability Database&lt;/a&gt;, allowing me to look up know security
11577 issues for any CPE name. With this in place, all I need to do is to
11578 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
11579 This is fairly trivial (I google for &#39;cve cpe $package&#39; and check the
11580 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).&lt;/p&gt;
11581
11582 &lt;p&gt;To give you an example. The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
11583 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip. If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
11584 check out, one could look up
11585 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3&quot;&gt;cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
11586 in NVD&lt;/a&gt; and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
11587 The most recent one is
11588 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001&quot;&gt;CVE-2010-0001&lt;/a&gt;,
11589 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
11590 list of affected versions is provided.&lt;/p&gt;
11591
11592 &lt;p&gt;The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
11593 for offline processing of issues. Using this dump, I&#39;ve written a
11594 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
11595 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs. One give it CPEs
11596 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
11597 security issues out.&lt;/p&gt;
11598
11599 &lt;p&gt;Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
11600 information need to be high. For that to happen, I believe as many as
11601 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database. I notice
11602 RHEL is providing
11603 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt&quot;&gt;a
11604 map from CVE to CPE&lt;/a&gt;, indicating that they are using the CPE
11605 information. I&#39;m not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.&lt;/p&gt;
11606
11607 &lt;p&gt;To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
11608 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
11609 the CVE database in NVD. The result look fairly good, but there are
11610 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
11611 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
11612 Debian believe are affected by a CVE). Hope to find time to improve
11613 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
11614 someone maintaining it. So far my three emails with questions and
11615 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
11616 established soon.&lt;/p&gt;
11617
11618 &lt;p&gt;An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
11619 mapping. It would be useful to know which packages in for example
11620 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
11621 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
11622 for their packages.&lt;/p&gt;
11623 </description>
11624 </item>
11625
11626 <item>
11627 <title>Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</title>
11628 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html</link>
11629 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html</guid>
11630 <pubDate>Sun, 23 Jan 2011 00:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
11631 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the
11632 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data&quot;&gt;discover-data&lt;/a&gt;
11633 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
11634 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
11635 information. One part of this script that I find very useful when
11636 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
11637 to the PCI device it claims. It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
11638 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with. To see
11639 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
11640 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3&gt;&amp;1&lt;/tt&gt;. The relevant output on
11641 one of my machines like this:&lt;/p&gt;
11642
11643 &lt;pre&gt;
11644 loaded modules:
11645 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
11646 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
11647 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
11648 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
11649 10de:03ec pata_amd
11650 10de:03f6 sata_nv
11651 1022:1103 k8temp
11652 109e:036e bttv
11653 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
11654 11ab:4364 sky2
11655 &lt;/pre&gt;
11656
11657 &lt;p&gt;The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
11658 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:&lt;/p&gt;
11659
11660 &lt;pre&gt;
11661 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
11662 echo loaded pci modules:
11663 (
11664 cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
11665 for address in * ; do
11666 if [ -d &quot;$address/driver/module&quot; ] ; then
11667 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
11668 if grep -q &quot;^$module &quot; /proc/modules ; then
11669 address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
11670 id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk &#39;{print $3}&#39;`
11671 echo &quot;$id $module&quot;
11672 fi
11673 fi
11674 done
11675 )
11676 echo
11677 fi
11678 &lt;/pre&gt;
11679
11680 &lt;p&gt;Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
11681 mappings:&lt;/p&gt;
11682
11683 &lt;pre&gt;
11684 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
11685 echo loaded usb modules:
11686 (
11687 cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
11688 for address in * ; do
11689 if [ -d &quot;$address/driver/module&quot; ] ; then
11690 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
11691 if grep -q &quot;^$module &quot; /proc/modules ; then
11692 address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
11693 id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk &#39;{print $6}&#39;)
11694 if [ &quot;$id&quot; ] ; then
11695 echo &quot;$id $module&quot;
11696 fi
11697 fi
11698 fi
11699 done
11700 )
11701 echo
11702 fi
11703 &lt;/pre&gt;
11704
11705 &lt;p&gt;This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
11706 well.&lt;/p&gt;
11707 </description>
11708 </item>
11709
11710 <item>
11711 <title>How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</title>
11712 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</link>
11713 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</guid>
11714 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
11715 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have spent at work here at the &lt;a
11716 href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of Oslo&lt;/a&gt; testing if the new
11717 batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
11718 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
11719 computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
11720 five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
11721 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
11722 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
11723 university.&lt;/p&gt;
11724
11725 &lt;p&gt;My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
11726 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
11727 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
11728 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
11729 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
11730 on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
11731 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
11732 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.&lt;/p&gt;
11733
11734 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
11735 I perform on a new model.&lt;/p&gt;
11736
11737 &lt;ul&gt;
11738
11739 &lt;li&gt;Is PXE installation working? I&#39;m testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
11740 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
11741 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.&lt;/li&gt;
11742
11743 &lt;li&gt;Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
11744 installation, X.org is working.&lt;/li&gt;
11745
11746 &lt;li&gt;Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
11747 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
11748 reported by the program.&lt;/li&gt;
11749
11750 &lt;li&gt;Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
11751 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
11752 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
11753 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
11754 normally test this by playing
11755 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ &quot;&gt;a HTML5
11756 video&lt;/a&gt; in Firefox/Iceweasel.&lt;/li&gt;
11757
11758 &lt;li&gt;Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
11759 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.&lt;/li&gt;
11760
11761 &lt;li&gt;Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
11762 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.&lt;/li&gt;
11763
11764 &lt;li&gt;Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
11765 picture from the v4l device show up.&lt;/li&gt;
11766
11767 &lt;li&gt;Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
11768 any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
11769 few.&lt;/li&gt;
11770
11771 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
11772 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
11773 notice this.&lt;/li&gt;
11774
11775 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working? I&#39;m testing if the
11776 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
11777 resume.&lt;/li&gt;
11778
11779 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
11780 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
11781 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
11782 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
11783 not.&lt;/li&gt;
11784
11785 &lt;li&gt;Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
11786 acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
11787 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
11788 existence.&lt;/li&gt;
11789
11790 &lt;/ul&gt;
11791
11792 &lt;p&gt;By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
11793 for the HP machines I am testing. I&#39;m not done yet, so I will report
11794 the test results later. For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
11795 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
11796 and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p. As you
11797 can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
11798 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
11799 RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.&lt;/p&gt;
11800 </description>
11801 </item>
11802
11803 <item>
11804 <title>Some thoughts on BitCoins</title>
11805 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</link>
11806 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</guid>
11807 <pubDate>Sat, 11 Dec 2010 15:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
11808 <description>&lt;p&gt;As I continue to explore
11809 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;, I&#39;ve starting to wonder
11810 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
11811 and regulations here in Norway. Here are some random notes.&lt;/p&gt;
11812
11813 &lt;p&gt;One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
11814 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
11815 is known to everyone. This means that if a BitCoin address has been
11816 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
11817 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
11818 that address. There is even a web service to look at the details for
11819 all transactions. There I can see that my address
11820 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;
11821 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
11822 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&quot;&gt;1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&lt;/a&gt;
11823 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
11824 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&quot;&gt;1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&lt;/A&gt;
11825 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far. Thank you to each and
11826 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
11827 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
11828 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
11829 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction. I&#39;m told
11830 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
11831 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
11832 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.&lt;/p&gt;
11833
11834 &lt;p&gt;In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
11835 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
11836 without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting
11837 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
11838 If the Skolelinux foundation
11839 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;SLX
11840 Debian Labs&lt;/a&gt;) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
11841 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
11842 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
11843 not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate
11844 should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay
11845 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
11846 BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.&lt;/p&gt;
11847
11848 &lt;p&gt;For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
11849 accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to
11850 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
11851 easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
11852 access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really
11853 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
11854 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I
11855 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
11856 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
11857 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
11858 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular. I&#39;m sure they
11859 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
11860 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
11861 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
11862 currencies.&lt;/p&gt;
11863
11864 &lt;p&gt;The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
11865 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
11866 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
11867 to see which one get the next lump of cash). The &quot;winner&quot; get 50
11868 BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
11869 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
11870 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
11871 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
11872 BitCoins. Check out
11873 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/&quot;&gt;BitCoin Pool&lt;/a&gt;
11874 if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a
11875 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
11876 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
11877 yet.&lt;/p&gt;
11878
11879 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-12-15: Found an &lt;a
11880 href=&quot;http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi&quot;&gt;interesting
11881 criticism&lt;/a&gt; of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
11882 it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be
11883 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.&lt;/p&gt;
11884 </description>
11885 </item>
11886
11887 <item>
11888 <title>Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</title>
11889 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</link>
11890 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</guid>
11891 <pubDate>Fri, 10 Dec 2010 08:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
11892 <description>&lt;p&gt;With this weeks lawless
11893 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html&quot;&gt;governmental
11894 attacks&lt;/a&gt; on Wikileak and
11895 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech&quot;&gt;free
11896 speech&lt;/a&gt;, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
11897 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
11898 A blog post from
11899 &lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;Simon
11900 Phipps on bitcoin&lt;/a&gt; reminded me about a project that a friend of
11901 mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon&#39;s example, and get
11902 involved with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;. I got
11903 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
11904 some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
11905 for helping me remember BitCoin.&lt;/p&gt;
11906
11907 &lt;p&gt;So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital
11908 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
11909 networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
11910 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
11911 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The
11912 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
11913 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
11914 line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas
11915 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/578157&quot;&gt;will get the package into
11916 Debian&lt;/a&gt; soon.&lt;/p&gt;
11917
11918 &lt;p&gt;Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
11919 There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/trade&quot;&gt;companies accepting
11920 bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; when selling services and goods, and there are even
11921 currency &quot;stock&quot; markets where the exchange rate is decided. There
11922 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you
11923 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
11924 you can even get
11925 &lt;a href=&quot;https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/&quot;&gt;some for free&lt;/a&gt; (0.05
11926 bitcoin at the time of writing). Use
11927 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/&quot;&gt;BitcoinWatch&lt;/a&gt; to keep an eye
11928 on the current exchange rates.&lt;/p&gt;
11929
11930 &lt;p&gt;As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
11931 machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
11932 donations to the address
11933 &lt;b&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/b&gt;. Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;
11934 </description>
11935 </item>
11936
11937 <item>
11938 <title>Why isn&#39;t Debian Edu using VLC?</title>
11939 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html</link>
11940 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html</guid>
11941 <pubDate>Sat, 27 Nov 2010 11:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
11942 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
11943 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
11944 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
11945 to play a video file or stream. Only if VLC fail will I drag out
11946 gmplayer to see if it can do better. The reason is mostly the failure
11947 model and trust. When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
11948 reporting the problem. When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
11949 just hangs. The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.&lt;p&gt;
11950
11951 &lt;p&gt;But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
11952 mplayer in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian
11953 Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;. The reason is simple. We need a good browser
11954 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
11955 not very good. For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
11956 is no way for the user to pause the video. Also, when I
11957 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;last
11958 tested the browser plugins&lt;/a&gt; available in Debian, the VLC plugin
11959 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked. If
11960 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
11961 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.&lt;/P&gt;
11962
11963 &lt;p&gt;While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
11964 annoying. The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
11965 keyboard shortcuts. When the player is in full screen mode, its
11966 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
11967 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode. I
11968 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
11969 window mode. Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
11970 the current video. It is very nice when playing short videos from the
11971 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
11972 what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;
11973 </description>
11974 </item>
11975
11976 <item>
11977 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</title>
11978 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html</link>
11979 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html</guid>
11980 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
11981 <description>&lt;p&gt;Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
11982 upgrade testing of the
11983 &lt;a href=&quot;https://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;Lenny
11984 Gnome and KDE Desktop&lt;/a&gt; to do &lt;tt&gt;apt-get autoremove&lt;/tt&gt; when using apt-get.
11985 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
11986 can now present the updated result from today:&lt;/p&gt;
11987
11988 &lt;p&gt;This is for Gnome:&lt;/p&gt;
11989
11990 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
11991
11992 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
11993 apache2.2-bin
11994 aptdaemon
11995 baobab
11996 binfmt-support
11997 browser-plugin-gnash
11998 cheese-common
11999 cli-common
12000 cups-pk-helper
12001 dmz-cursor-theme
12002 empathy
12003 empathy-common
12004 freedesktop-sound-theme
12005 freeglut3
12006 gconf-defaults-service
12007 gdm-themes
12008 gedit-plugins
12009 geoclue
12010 geoclue-hostip
12011 geoclue-localnet
12012 geoclue-manual
12013 geoclue-yahoo
12014 gnash
12015 gnash-common
12016 gnome
12017 gnome-backgrounds
12018 gnome-cards-data
12019 gnome-codec-install
12020 gnome-core
12021 gnome-desktop-environment
12022 gnome-disk-utility
12023 gnome-screenshot
12024 gnome-search-tool
12025 gnome-session-canberra
12026 gnome-system-log
12027 gnome-themes-extras
12028 gnome-themes-more
12029 gnome-user-share
12030 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
12031 gstreamer0.10-tools
12032 gtk2-engines
12033 gtk2-engines-pixbuf
12034 gtk2-engines-smooth
12035 hamster-applet
12036 libapache2-mod-dnssd
12037 libapr1
12038 libaprutil1
12039 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
12040 libaprutil1-ldap
12041 libart2.0-cil
12042 libboost-date-time1.42.0
12043 libboost-python1.42.0
12044 libboost-thread1.42.0
12045 libchamplain-0.4-0
12046 libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
12047 libcheese-gtk18
12048 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
12049 libcryptui0
12050 libdiscid0
12051 libelf1
12052 libepc-1.0-2
12053 libepc-common
12054 libepc-ui-1.0-2
12055 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
12056 libfreerdp0
12057 libgconf2.0-cil
12058 libgdata-common
12059 libgdata7
12060 libgdu-gtk0
12061 libgee2
12062 libgeoclue0
12063 libgexiv2-0
12064 libgif4
12065 libglade2.0-cil
12066 libglib2.0-cil
12067 libgmime2.4-cil
12068 libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
12069 libgnome2.24-cil
12070 libgnomepanel2.24-cil
12071 libgpod-common
12072 libgpod4
12073 libgtk2.0-cil
12074 libgtkglext1
12075 libgtksourceview2.0-common
12076 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
12077 libmono-addins0.2-cil
12078 libmono-cairo2.0-cil
12079 libmono-corlib2.0-cil
12080 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
12081 libmono-posix2.0-cil
12082 libmono-security2.0-cil
12083 libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
12084 libmono-system2.0-cil
12085 libmtp8
12086 libmusicbrainz3-6
12087 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
12088 libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
12089 libopal3.6.8
12090 libpolkit-gtk-1-0
12091 libpt2.6.7
12092 libpython2.6
12093 librpm1
12094 librpmio1
12095 libsdl1.2debian
12096 libsrtp0
12097 libssh-4
12098 libtelepathy-farsight0
12099 libtelepathy-glib0
12100 libtidy-0.99-0
12101 media-player-info
12102 mesa-utils
12103 mono-2.0-gac
12104 mono-gac
12105 mono-runtime
12106 nautilus-sendto
12107 nautilus-sendto-empathy
12108 p7zip-full
12109 pkg-config
12110 python-aptdaemon
12111 python-aptdaemon-gtk
12112 python-axiom
12113 python-beautifulsoup
12114 python-bugbuddy
12115 python-clientform
12116 python-coherence
12117 python-configobj
12118 python-crypto
12119 python-cupshelpers
12120 python-elementtree
12121 python-epsilon
12122 python-evolution
12123 python-feedparser
12124 python-gdata
12125 python-gdbm
12126 python-gst0.10
12127 python-gtkglext1
12128 python-gtksourceview2
12129 python-httplib2
12130 python-louie
12131 python-mako
12132 python-markupsafe
12133 python-mechanize
12134 python-nevow
12135 python-notify
12136 python-opengl
12137 python-openssl
12138 python-pam
12139 python-pkg-resources
12140 python-pyasn1
12141 python-pysqlite2
12142 python-rdflib
12143 python-serial
12144 python-tagpy
12145 python-twisted-bin
12146 python-twisted-conch
12147 python-twisted-core
12148 python-twisted-web
12149 python-utidylib
12150 python-webkit
12151 python-xdg
12152 python-zope.interface
12153 remmina
12154 remmina-plugin-data
12155 remmina-plugin-rdp
12156 remmina-plugin-vnc
12157 rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
12158 rhythmbox-plugins
12159 rpm-common
12160 rpm2cpio
12161 seahorse-plugins
12162 shotwell
12163 software-center
12164 system-config-printer-udev
12165 telepathy-gabble
12166 telepathy-mission-control-5
12167 telepathy-salut
12168 tomboy
12169 totem
12170 totem-coherence
12171 totem-mozilla
12172 totem-plugins
12173 transmission-common
12174 xdg-user-dirs
12175 xdg-user-dirs-gtk
12176 xserver-xephyr
12177 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12178
12179 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
12180
12181 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
12182 cheese
12183 ekiga
12184 eog
12185 epiphany-extensions
12186 evolution-exchange
12187 fast-user-switch-applet
12188 file-roller
12189 gcalctool
12190 gconf-editor
12191 gdm
12192 gedit
12193 gedit-common
12194 gnome-games
12195 gnome-games-data
12196 gnome-nettool
12197 gnome-system-tools
12198 gnome-themes
12199 gnuchess
12200 gucharmap
12201 guile-1.8-libs
12202 libavahi-ui0
12203 libdmx1
12204 libgalago3
12205 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
12206 libgtksourceview2.0-0
12207 liblircclient0
12208 libsdl1.2debian-alsa
12209 libspeexdsp1
12210 libsvga1
12211 rhythmbox
12212 seahorse
12213 sound-juicer
12214 system-config-printer
12215 totem-common
12216 transmission-gtk
12217 vinagre
12218 vino
12219 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12220
12221 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
12222
12223 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
12224 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
12225 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12226
12227 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
12228
12229 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
12230 [nothing]
12231 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12232
12233 &lt;p&gt;This is for KDE:&lt;/p&gt;
12234
12235 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
12236
12237 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
12238 ksmserver
12239 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12240
12241 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
12242
12243 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
12244 kwin
12245 network-manager-kde
12246 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12247
12248 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
12249
12250 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
12251 arts
12252 dolphin
12253 freespacenotifier
12254 google-gadgets-gst
12255 google-gadgets-xul
12256 kappfinder
12257 kcalc
12258 kcharselect
12259 kde-core
12260 kde-plasma-desktop
12261 kde-standard
12262 kde-window-manager
12263 kdeartwork
12264 kdeartwork-emoticons
12265 kdeartwork-style
12266 kdeartwork-theme-icon
12267 kdebase
12268 kdebase-apps
12269 kdebase-workspace
12270 kdebase-workspace-bin
12271 kdebase-workspace-data
12272 kdeeject
12273 kdelibs
12274 kdeplasma-addons
12275 kdeutils
12276 kdewallpapers
12277 kdf
12278 kfloppy
12279 kgpg
12280 khelpcenter4
12281 kinfocenter
12282 konq-plugins-l10n
12283 konqueror-nsplugins
12284 kscreensaver
12285 kscreensaver-xsavers
12286 ktimer
12287 kwrite
12288 libgle3
12289 libkde4-ruby1.8
12290 libkonq5
12291 libkonq5-templates
12292 libnetpbm10
12293 libplasma-ruby
12294 libplasma-ruby1.8
12295 libqt4-ruby1.8
12296 marble-data
12297 marble-plugins
12298 netpbm
12299 nuvola-icon-theme
12300 plasma-dataengines-workspace
12301 plasma-desktop
12302 plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
12303 plasma-runners-addons
12304 plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
12305 plasma-scriptengine-python
12306 plasma-scriptengine-qedje
12307 plasma-scriptengine-ruby
12308 plasma-scriptengine-webkit
12309 plasma-scriptengines
12310 plasma-wallpapers-addons
12311 plasma-widget-folderview
12312 plasma-widget-networkmanagement
12313 ruby
12314 sweeper
12315 update-notifier-kde
12316 xscreensaver-data-extra
12317 xscreensaver-gl
12318 xscreensaver-gl-extra
12319 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
12320 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12321
12322 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
12323
12324 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
12325 ark
12326 google-gadgets-common
12327 google-gadgets-qt
12328 htdig
12329 kate
12330 kdebase-bin
12331 kdebase-data
12332 kdepasswd
12333 kfind
12334 klipper
12335 konq-plugins
12336 konqueror
12337 ksysguard
12338 ksysguardd
12339 libarchive1
12340 libcln6
12341 libeet1
12342 libeina-svn-06
12343 libggadget-1.0-0b
12344 libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
12345 libgps19
12346 libkdecorations4
12347 libkephal4
12348 libkonq4
12349 libkonqsidebarplugin4a
12350 libkscreensaver5
12351 libksgrd4
12352 libksignalplotter4
12353 libkunitconversion4
12354 libkwineffects1a
12355 libmarblewidget4
12356 libntrack-qt4-1
12357 libntrack0
12358 libplasma-geolocation-interface4
12359 libplasmaclock4a
12360 libplasmagenericshell4
12361 libprocesscore4a
12362 libprocessui4a
12363 libqalculate5
12364 libqedje0a
12365 libqtruby4shared2
12366 libqzion0a
12367 libruby1.8
12368 libscim8c2a
12369 libsmokekdecore4-3
12370 libsmokekdeui4-3
12371 libsmokekfile3
12372 libsmokekhtml3
12373 libsmokekio3
12374 libsmokeknewstuff2-3
12375 libsmokeknewstuff3-3
12376 libsmokekparts3
12377 libsmokektexteditor3
12378 libsmokekutils3
12379 libsmokenepomuk3
12380 libsmokephonon3
12381 libsmokeplasma3
12382 libsmokeqtcore4-3
12383 libsmokeqtdbus4-3
12384 libsmokeqtgui4-3
12385 libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
12386 libsmokeqtopengl4-3
12387 libsmokeqtscript4-3
12388 libsmokeqtsql4-3
12389 libsmokeqtsvg4-3
12390 libsmokeqttest4-3
12391 libsmokeqtuitools4-3
12392 libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
12393 libsmokeqtxml4-3
12394 libsmokesolid3
12395 libsmokesoprano3
12396 libtaskmanager4a
12397 libtidy-0.99-0
12398 libweather-ion4a
12399 libxklavier16
12400 libxxf86misc1
12401 okteta
12402 oxygencursors
12403 plasma-dataengines-addons
12404 plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
12405 plasma-widget-lancelot
12406 plasma-widgets-addons
12407 plasma-widgets-workspace
12408 polkit-kde-1
12409 ruby1.8
12410 systemsettings
12411 update-notifier-common
12412 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12413
12414 &lt;p&gt;Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
12415 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
12416 differences. I have no idea what packages should be installed after
12417 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.&lt;/p&gt;
12418 </description>
12419 </item>
12420
12421 <item>
12422 <title>Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</title>
12423 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html</link>
12424 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html</guid>
12425 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
12426 <description>&lt;p&gt;Most of the computers in use by the
12427 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux project&lt;/a&gt;
12428 are virtual machines. And they have been Xen machines running on a
12429 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
12430 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine. This was a
12431 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
12432 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
12433 know is not supported by KVM. So to migrate, we had to convert
12434 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.&lt;/p&gt;
12435
12436 &lt;p&gt;I found
12437 &lt;a href=&quot;http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM&quot;&gt;a
12438 nice recipe&lt;/a&gt; to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
12439 migration. It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
12440 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
12441 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data. I NFS mounted the
12442 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.&lt;/p&gt;
12443
12444 &lt;pre&gt;
12445 #!/bin/sh
12446
12447 # Based on
12448 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
12449
12450 set -e
12451 set -x
12452
12453 if [ -z &quot;$1&quot; ] ; then
12454 echo &quot;Usage: $0 &amp;lt;hostname&amp;gt;&quot;
12455 exit 1
12456 else
12457 host=&quot;$1&quot;
12458 fi
12459
12460 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
12461 echo &quot;error: unable to find LVM volume for $host&quot;
12462 exit 1
12463 fi
12464
12465 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs. not sure why.
12466 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk &#39;{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }&#39;)
12467 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk &#39;{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }&#39;)
12468 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
12469
12470 img=$host.img
12471 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
12472 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
12473
12474 parted $img mklabel msdos
12475 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
12476 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
12477 parted $img set 1 boot on
12478
12479 modprobe dm-mod
12480 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
12481 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
12482
12483 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
12484 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
12485 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
12486
12487 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
12488 losetup -d /dev/loop0
12489 &lt;/pre&gt;
12490
12491 &lt;p&gt;The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
12492 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.&lt;/p&gt;
12493
12494 &lt;p&gt;After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
12495 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
12496 set up grub to boot from the disk image. After this, the KVM machines
12497 seem to work just fine.&lt;/p&gt;
12498 </description>
12499 </item>
12500
12501 <item>
12502 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</title>
12503 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html</link>
12504 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html</guid>
12505 <pubDate>Sat, 20 Nov 2010 22:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
12506 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m still running upgrade testing of the
12507 &lt;a href=&quot;https://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;Lenny
12508 Gnome and KDE Desktop&lt;/a&gt;, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
12509 status. Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.&lt;/p&gt;
12510
12511 &lt;p&gt;I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
12512 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
12513 can see if anything should be changed.&lt;/p&gt;
12514
12515 &lt;p&gt;This is for Gnome:&lt;/p&gt;
12516
12517 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
12518
12519 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
12520 apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
12521 browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
12522 dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
12523 freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
12524 gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
12525 geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
12526 gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
12527 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
12528 gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
12529 gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
12530 gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
12531 gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
12532 gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
12533 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
12534 libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
12535 libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
12536 libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
12537 libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
12538 libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
12539 libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
12540 libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
12541 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
12542 libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
12543 libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
12544 libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
12545 libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
12546 libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
12547 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
12548 libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
12549 libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
12550 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
12551 libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
12552 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
12553 libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
12554 libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
12555 libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
12556 mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
12557 nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
12558 openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
12559 python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
12560 python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
12561 python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
12562 python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
12563 python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
12564 python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
12565 python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
12566 python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
12567 python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
12568 python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
12569 python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
12570 python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
12571 python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
12572 remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
12573 rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
12574 software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
12575 telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
12576 totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
12577 transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
12578 zip
12579 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12580
12581 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
12582
12583 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
12584 arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
12585 epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
12586 fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
12587 gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
12588 gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
12589 gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
12590 guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
12591 libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
12592 libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
12593 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
12594 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
12595 libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
12596 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
12597 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
12598 libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
12599 libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
12600 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
12601 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
12602 libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
12603 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
12604 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
12605 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
12606 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
12607 libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
12608 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
12609 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
12610 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
12611 sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
12612 totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
12613 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12614
12615 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
12616
12617 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
12618 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
12619 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12620
12621 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
12622
12623 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
12624 [nothing]
12625 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12626
12627 &lt;p&gt;This is for KDE:&lt;/p&gt;
12628
12629 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
12630
12631 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
12632 autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
12633 edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
12634 ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
12635 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
12636 kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
12637 kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
12638 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
12639 kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
12640 kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
12641 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
12642 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
12643 kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
12644 killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
12645 kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
12646 ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
12647 libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
12648 libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
12649 libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
12650 libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
12651 libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
12652 libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
12653 libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
12654 libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
12655 libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
12656 lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
12657 openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
12658 parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
12659 pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
12660 speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
12661 ttf-sazanami-gothic
12662 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12663
12664 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
12665
12666 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
12667 amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
12668 dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
12669 kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
12670 kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
12671 keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
12672 kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
12673 kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
12674 klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
12675 kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
12676 kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
12677 kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
12678 ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
12679 ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
12680 kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
12681 kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
12682 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
12683 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
12684 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
12685 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
12686 libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
12687 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
12688 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
12689 libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
12690 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
12691 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
12692 libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
12693 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
12694 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
12695 libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
12696 libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
12697 mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
12698 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
12699 ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
12700 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12701
12702 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
12703
12704 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
12705 dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
12706 kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
12707 kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
12708 kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
12709 netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
12710 xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
12711 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
12712 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12713
12714 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
12715
12716 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
12717 kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
12718 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12719 </description>
12720 </item>
12721
12722 <item>
12723 <title>Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</title>
12724 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html</link>
12725 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html</guid>
12726 <pubDate>Sat, 20 Nov 2010 07:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
12727 <description>&lt;p&gt;Answering
12728 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html&quot;&gt;the
12729 call from the Gnash project&lt;/a&gt; for
12730 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnashdev.org:8010&quot;&gt;buildbot&lt;/a&gt; slaves to test the
12731 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
12732 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
12733 Debian/Squeeze. I hope this can help the developers in getting new
12734 releases out more often.&lt;/p&gt;
12735
12736 &lt;p&gt;As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
12737 I have considered setting up a &lt;a
12738 href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/&quot;&gt;Debian/kfreebsd&lt;/a&gt;
12739 machine as well. I have also considered using the kfreebsd
12740 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
12741 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video. Because of this, I
12742 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
12743 kfreebsd. Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
12744 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
12745 screen at random locations). Have not gotten very far with the
12746 testing. Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
12747 fatal problem. Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
12748 useful as a file server for NUUG. Will try to find time to set up a
12749 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.&lt;/p&gt;
12750 </description>
12751 </item>
12752
12753 <item>
12754 <title>Debian in 3D</title>
12755 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html</link>
12756 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html</guid>
12757 <pubDate>Tue, 9 Nov 2010 16:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
12758 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
12759
12760 &lt;p&gt;3D printing is just great. I just came across this Debian logo in
12761 3D linked in from
12762 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/&quot;&gt;the
12763 thingiverse blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
12764 </description>
12765 </item>
12766
12767 <item>
12768 <title>Software updates 2010-10-24</title>
12769 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html</link>
12770 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html</guid>
12771 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Oct 2010 22:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
12772 <description>&lt;p&gt;Some updates.&lt;/p&gt;
12773
12774 &lt;p&gt;My &lt;a href=&quot;http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2&quot;&gt;gnash pledge&lt;/a&gt; to
12775 raise money for the project is going well. The lower limit of 10
12776 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
12777 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
12778 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
12779 :)&lt;/p&gt;
12780
12781 &lt;p&gt;On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
12782 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
12783 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
12784 It is called
12785 &lt;a href=&quot;http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html&quot;&gt;kcov&lt;/a&gt;,
12786 and can be used using &lt;tt&gt;kcov &amp;lt;directory&amp;gt; &amp;lt;binary&amp;gt;&lt;/tt&gt;.
12787 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
12788 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
12789 libglib2.0-dev. Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
12790 solvable. I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.&lt;/p&gt;
12791
12792 &lt;p&gt;Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for &lt;a
12793 href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html&quot;&gt;a
12794 new alpha release of Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt;, and just published the second
12795 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
12796 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
12797 release. Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
12798 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
12799 client servers and diskless workstations. A nice touch added
12800 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
12801 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.&lt;/p&gt;
12802 </description>
12803 </item>
12804
12805 <item>
12806 <title>Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</title>
12807 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html</link>
12808 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
12809 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Sep 2010 10:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
12810 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote&quot;&gt;Debian
12811 popularity-contest numbers&lt;/a&gt;, the adobe-flashplugin package the
12812 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian. The sixth
12813 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla. This is a clear indication that
12814 working flash is important for Debian users. Around 10 percent of the
12815 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
12816 installed.&lt;/p&gt;
12817
12818 &lt;p&gt;In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
12819&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&amp;do=view&amp;target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf&quot;&gt;Skolelinux
12820 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
12821 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs&lt;/a&gt;»), one of the most important problems
12822 schools experienced with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian
12823 Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; was the lack of working Flash. A lot of educational
12824 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
12825 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
12826 good reason to stay with Windows.&lt;/p&gt;
12827
12828 &lt;p&gt;I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
12829 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
12830 everything you told him but could work fairly well. This was a
12831 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
12832 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
12833 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
12834 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
12835 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
12836 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
12837 pages they want to visit.&lt;/p&gt;
12838
12839 &lt;p&gt;This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
12840 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
12841 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
12842 Video to working out of the box. For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
12843 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
12844 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
12845 unstable. The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
12846 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
12847 release team have not had time to reply to it yet. I hope they agree
12848 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
12849 accept the new package into Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
12850 </description>
12851 </item>
12852
12853 <item>
12854 <title>Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</title>
12855 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html</link>
12856 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html</guid>
12857 <pubDate>Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
12858 <description>&lt;p&gt;I discovered this while doing
12859 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;automated
12860 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze&lt;/a&gt;. A few packages
12861 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
12862 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
12863 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.&lt;/p&gt;
12864
12865 &lt;p&gt;An example is from todays
12866 &lt;a href=&quot;https://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt&quot;&gt;upgrade
12867 of KDE using aptitude&lt;/a&gt;. In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
12868 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade. The cause is simple. If a
12869 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
12870 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
12871 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
12872 because its dependencies are unavailable.&lt;/p&gt;
12873
12874 &lt;p&gt;In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:&lt;/p&gt;
12875
12876 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12877 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
12878 perl-modules depends on perl (&gt;= 5.10.1-1); however:
12879 Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
12880 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
12881 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
12882 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12883
12884 &lt;p&gt;The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
12885 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/527917&quot;&gt;reported as a bug&lt;/a&gt;, and will
12886 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
12887 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
12888 failures. Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
12889 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
12890 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
12891 of dependency loops.&lt;/p&gt;
12892
12893 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to
12894 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html&quot;&gt;the
12895 tireless effort by Bill Allombert&lt;/a&gt;, the number of circular
12896 dependencies
12897 &lt;a href=&quot;http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html&quot;&gt;left in Debian
12898 is dropping&lt;/a&gt;, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)&lt;/p&gt;
12899
12900 &lt;p&gt;Todays testing also exposed a bug in
12901 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/590605&quot;&gt;update-notifier&lt;/a&gt; and
12902 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/590604&quot;&gt;different behaviour&lt;/a&gt; between
12903 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
12904 dependency. Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
12905 it.&lt;/p&gt;
12906 </description>
12907 </item>
12908
12909 <item>
12910 <title>What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</title>
12911 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html</link>
12912 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html</guid>
12913 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
12914 <description>&lt;p&gt;This is a
12915 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html&quot;&gt;followup&lt;/a&gt;
12916 on my
12917 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html&quot;&gt;previous
12918 work&lt;/a&gt; on
12919 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html&quot;&gt;merging
12920 all&lt;/a&gt; the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
12921
12922 &lt;p&gt;As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
12923 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
12924 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server. The two
12925 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
12926
12927 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
12928 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
12929 on a Debian Edu main-server. Here is a summary.
12930
12931 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;powerdns&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
12932
12933 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend&quot;&gt;Clues
12934 on how to&lt;/a&gt; set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
12935 the web.
12936
12937 &lt;p&gt;PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
12938 One &quot;strict&quot; mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
12939 using the same LDAP objects, and a &quot;tree&quot; mode where the forward and
12940 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
12941 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
12942 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.&lt;/p&gt;
12943
12944 &lt;p&gt;In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
12945 base, and uses a &quot;base&quot; scoped search for the DNS name by adding
12946 &quot;dc=tjener,dc=intern,&quot; to the base with a filter for
12947 &quot;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&quot; for the forward entry and
12948 &quot;dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,&quot; with a filter for
12949 &quot;(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)&quot; for the reverse entry. For
12950 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
12951 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
12952 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
12953 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
12954 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
12955 spfrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entries it is looking for
12956 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
12957 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
12958 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. The equivalent
12959 ldapsearch commands could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
12960
12961 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12962 ldapsearch -h ldap \
12963 -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
12964 -s base -x &#39;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&#39; dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
12965 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
12966 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
12967 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
12968 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
12969
12970 ldapsearch -h ldap \
12971 -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
12972 -s base -x &#39;(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)&#39;
12973 dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
12974 hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
12975 srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
12976 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12977
12978 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
12979 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
12980 example LDAP objects used there. In addition to these objects, the
12981 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12982 also exist.&lt;/p&gt;
12983
12984 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12985 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12986 objectclass: top
12987 objectclass: dnsdomain
12988 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
12989 dc: tjener
12990 arecord: 10.0.2.2
12991 associateddomain: tjener.intern
12992
12993 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12994 objectclass: top
12995 objectclass: dnsdomain2
12996 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
12997 dc: 2
12998 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
12999 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
13000 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13001
13002 &lt;p&gt;In strict mode, the server behaves differently. When looking for
13003 forward DNS entries, it is doing a &quot;subtree&quot; scoped search with the
13004 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
13005 &quot;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&quot; and requests the attributes dnsttl,
13006 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
13007 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
13008 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entires it also do a
13009 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is &quot;(arecord=10.0.2.2)&quot;
13010 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
13011 modifytimestamp. In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
13012 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
13013 instead.&lt;/p&gt;
13014
13015 &lt;p&gt;The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
13016 like this:&lt;/p&gt;
13017
13018 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13019 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
13020 &#39;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&#39; dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
13021 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
13022 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
13023 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
13024 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
13025
13026 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
13027 &#39;(arecord=10.0.2.2)&#39; associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
13028 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13029
13030 &lt;p&gt;In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
13031 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
13032 reverse lookups.&lt;/p&gt;
13033
13034 &lt;p&gt;A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
13035 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
13036 need to generate a DNS reply. This make it able to work with any
13037 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.&lt;/p&gt;
13038
13039 &lt;p&gt;The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
13040 dnsdomain2 schemas. The latter is used for reverse entries like
13041 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.&lt;/p&gt;
13042
13043 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
13044 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
13045 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain). The use
13046 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
13047 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.&lt;/p&gt;
13048
13049 &lt;p&gt;There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
13050 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
13051 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
13052 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
13053 (zonename and relativedomainname).&lt;/p&gt;
13054
13055 &lt;p&gt;My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
13056 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
13057 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
13058 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
13059 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
13060 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):&lt;/p&gt;
13061
13062 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13063 objectclass ( some-oid NAME &#39;dnsDomainAux&#39;
13064 SUP top
13065 AUXILIARY
13066 MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
13067 DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
13068 TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
13069 NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
13070 A6Record $ DNAMERecord
13071 ))
13072 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13073
13074 &lt;p&gt;This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
13075 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
13076 all the attributes PowerDNS wants. I&#39;ve sent an email to the PowerDNS
13077 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
13078 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
13079 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.&lt;/p&gt;
13080
13081 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ISC dhcp&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
13082
13083 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
13084 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want. This
13085 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
13086 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
13087 what is needed without having to read the source code.&lt;/p&gt;
13088
13089 &lt;p&gt;In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
13090 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
13091 stored. These are the relevant entries from
13092 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:&lt;/p&gt;
13093
13094 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13095 ldap-base-dn &quot;dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot;;
13096 ldap-dhcp-server-cn &quot;dhcp&quot;;
13097 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13098
13099 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
13100 configuration it need. The cn &quot;dhcp&quot; is located using the given LDAP
13101 base and the filter &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))&quot;. The
13102 search result is this entry:&lt;/p&gt;
13103
13104 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13105 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
13106 cn: dhcp
13107 objectClass: top
13108 objectClass: dhcpServer
13109 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
13110 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13111
13112 &lt;p&gt;The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
13113 subtree with DHCP configuration. The DHCP configuration subtree base
13114 is located using a base scope search with base &quot;cn=DHCP
13115 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot; and filter
13116 &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))&quot;.
13117 The search result is this entry:&lt;/p&gt;
13118
13119 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13120 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
13121 cn: DHCP Config
13122 objectClass: top
13123 objectClass: dhcpService
13124 objectClass: dhcpOptions
13125 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
13126 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
13127 dhcpStatements: authoritative
13128 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
13129 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
13130 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
13131 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13132
13133 &lt;p&gt;Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time. When
13134 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
13135 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
13136 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
13137 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost. These provide options
13138 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc. Leaving out the
13139 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
13140 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
13141 related computer objects.&lt;/p&gt;
13142
13143 &lt;p&gt;When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
13144 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
13145 scoped search with &quot;cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot; as
13146 the base and &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
13147 00:00:00:00:00:00))&quot; as the filter. This is what a host object look
13148 like:&lt;/p&gt;
13149
13150 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13151 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
13152 cn: hostname
13153 objectClass: top
13154 objectClass: dhcpHost
13155 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
13156 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
13157 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13158
13159 &lt;p&gt;There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
13160 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
13161 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure. On the
13162 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
13163 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries. The latter should make
13164 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
13165 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
13166 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
13167 structural object class.
13168
13169 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
13170
13171 &lt;p&gt;The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
13172 to which LDAP schemas to use. While its &quot;tree&quot; mode is rigid when it
13173 come to the the LDAP structure, the &quot;strict&quot; mode is very flexible,
13174 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
13175 in the configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
13176
13177 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
13178 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
13179 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
13180 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
13181 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
13182 structure.&lt;/p&gt;
13183
13184 &lt;p&gt;Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
13185 this might work for Debian Edu:&lt;/p&gt;
13186
13187 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13188 ou=services
13189 cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
13190 cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
13191 cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
13192 cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
13193 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
13194 cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
13195 cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
13196 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
13197 ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
13198 cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
13199 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13200
13201 &lt;P&gt;This is not tested yet. If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
13202 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
13203 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
13204 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.&lt;/p&gt;
13205
13206 &lt;p&gt;The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
13207 like this:&lt;/p&gt;
13208
13209 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13210 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
13211 dc: hostname
13212 objectClass: top
13213 objectClass: dhcpHost
13214 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
13215 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
13216 associateddomain: hostname.intern
13217 arecord: 10.11.12.13
13218 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
13219 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
13220 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13221
13222 &lt;/p&gt;One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
13223 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
13224 auxiliary object class.&lt;/p&gt;
13225 </description>
13226 </item>
13227
13228 <item>
13229 <title>Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</title>
13230 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html</link>
13231 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html</guid>
13232 <pubDate>Wed, 14 Jul 2010 23:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
13233 <description>&lt;p&gt;For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
13234 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
13235 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
13236 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
13237 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
13238
13239 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
13240 information finally found a solution that seem to work.&lt;/p&gt;
13241
13242 &lt;p&gt;The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
13243 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry. If
13244 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
13245 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
13246 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
13247 to a slave DNS server.&lt;/p&gt;
13248
13249 &lt;p&gt;If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
13250 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
13251 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
13252 I&#39;ve written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
13253 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup. It
13254 seem to work.&lt;/p&gt;
13255
13256 &lt;p&gt;With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
13257 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
13258 an earlier email. The combined LDAP object will look something like
13259 this:&lt;/p&gt;
13260
13261 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13262 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
13263 cn: hostname
13264 objectClass: dhcphost
13265 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
13266 objectclass: dnsdomainaux
13267 associateddomain: hostname.intern
13268 arecord: 10.11.12.13
13269 dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
13270 dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
13271 ldapconfigsound: Y
13272 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13273
13274 &lt;p&gt;The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
13275 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
13276 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress. LTSP will use
13277 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.&lt;/p&gt;
13278
13279 &lt;p&gt;I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
13280 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
13281 outside the &quot;DHCP Config&quot; subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
13282 that. If I can&#39;t figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
13283 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
13284 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
13285 content. I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
13286 might be a good place to put it.&lt;/p&gt;
13287
13288 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
13289 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
13290 </description>
13291 </item>
13292
13293 <item>
13294 <title>Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</title>
13295 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html</link>
13296 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html</guid>
13297 <pubDate>Sun, 11 Jul 2010 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
13298 <description>&lt;p&gt;Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
13299 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
13300 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
13301 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.&lt;/p&gt;
13302
13303 &lt;p&gt;Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
13304 to get configuration from LDAP. The idea is to look up the MAC
13305 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
13306 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
13307 LTSP clients.&lt;/p&gt;
13308
13309 &lt;p&gt;The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
13310 in a &quot;computer&quot; LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
13311 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.&lt;/p&gt;
13312
13313 &lt;p&gt;This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
13314 this approach. A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
13315 need to be written. Comments, suggestions, etc?&lt;/p&gt;
13316
13317 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13318 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
13319 #
13320 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
13321 #
13322 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
13323 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
13324 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
13325 #
13326 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
13327 # existence of attribute names.
13328 #
13329 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
13330 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
13331 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
13332 #
13333 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
13334 # configuration settings. Something like this should work:
13335 #
13336 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME &#39;ltspClientAux&#39;
13337 # SUP top
13338 # AUXILIARY
13339 # MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
13340
13341 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
13342 if [ &quot;$LDAPSERVER&quot; ] ; then
13343 LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
13344 for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk &#39;{print $5}&#39;|sort -u) ; do
13345 filter=&quot;(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))&quot;
13346 ldapsearch -h &quot;$LDAPSERVER&quot; -b &quot;$LDAPBASE&quot; -v -x &quot;$filter&quot; | \
13347 grep &#39;^ltspConfig&#39; | while read attr value ; do
13348 # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
13349 attr=$(echo $attr | sed &#39;s/^ltspConfig//i&#39; | tr a-z A-Z)
13350 # bass value on to clients
13351 eval &quot;$attr=$value; export $attr&quot;
13352 done
13353 done
13354 fi
13355 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13356
13357 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
13358 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
13359 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
13360 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
13361 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
13362
13363 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
13364 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
13365
13366 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
13367 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
13368 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html&quot;&gt;PC
13369 Xperience, Inc., 2000&lt;/a&gt;. I found its
13370 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/&quot;&gt;files&lt;/a&gt; on a
13371 personal home page over at redhat.com.&lt;/p&gt;
13372 </description>
13373 </item>
13374
13375 <item>
13376 <title>jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
13377 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
13378 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
13379 <pubDate>Fri, 9 Jul 2010 12:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
13380 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since
13381 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html&quot;&gt;my
13382 last post&lt;/a&gt; about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
13383 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma. The java application
13384 &lt;a href=&quot;http://jxplorer.org/&quot;&gt;jXplorer&lt;/a&gt; is claimed to be capable of
13385 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
13386 authenticate using Kerberos. I have only tested the Kerberos
13387 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
13388 LDAP with my test user yet. It is
13389 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html&quot;&gt;available in
13390 Debian&lt;/a&gt; testing and unstable at the moment. The only problem I
13391 have with it is how it handle errors. If something go wrong, its
13392 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
13393 and remove the failing query. Nothing big, but very annoying.&lt;/p&gt;
13394 </description>
13395 </item>
13396
13397 <item>
13398 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</title>
13399 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html</link>
13400 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html</guid>
13401 <pubDate>Sat, 3 Jul 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
13402 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a short update on my &lt;a
13403 href=&quot;https://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;my
13404 Debian Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrade testing&lt;/a&gt;. Here is a summary of the
13405 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude. I&#39;m
13406 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
13407 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
13408 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584861&quot;&gt;#584861&lt;/a&gt; and
13409 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/585716&quot;&gt;#585716&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;
13410
13411 &lt;p&gt;At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
13412 complete list of the installed packages. Based on this I see these
13413 differences when I did a test run today. As usual, I do not really
13414 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
13415 publish the difference.&lt;/p&gt;
13416
13417 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
13418
13419 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
13420 at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
13421 libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
13422 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
13423 libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
13424 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
13425 libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
13426 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
13427 python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
13428 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13429
13430 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
13431
13432 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
13433 bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
13434 gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
13435 libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
13436 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
13437 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
13438 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
13439 libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
13440 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
13441 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
13442 libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
13443 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
13444 libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
13445 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
13446 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
13447 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
13448 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
13449 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
13450 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
13451 libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
13452 mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
13453 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13454
13455 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
13456
13457 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
13458 gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
13459 python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
13460 xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
13461 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
13462 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
13463 xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
13464 xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
13465 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
13466 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
13467 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
13468 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
13469 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
13470 xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
13471 xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
13472 xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
13473 xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
13474 xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
13475 xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
13476 xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
13477 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
13478 xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
13479 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13480
13481 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
13482
13483 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
13484 deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
13485 xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
13486 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
13487 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13488
13489 &lt;p&gt;I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
13490 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120&quot;&gt;changed
13491 in git&lt;/a&gt; today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
13492 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
13493 the difference somewhat.
13494 </description>
13495 </item>
13496
13497 <item>
13498 <title>LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
13499 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
13500 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
13501 <pubDate>Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
13502 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
13503 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
13504 tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
13505 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
13506 &lt;a href=&quot;http://luma.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;LUMA&lt;/a&gt;, which has proved to
13507 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
13508 populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
13509 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
13510 objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
13511 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)&lt;/p&gt;
13512
13513 &lt;p&gt;I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
13514 the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
13515 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
13516 Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
13517 released.&lt;/p&gt;
13518
13519 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
13520 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
13521 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
13522 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/&quot;&gt;ldapvi&lt;/a&gt; for that.&lt;/p&gt;
13523
13524 &lt;p&gt;If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
13525 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
13526
13527 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
13528 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html&quot;&gt;gq&lt;/a&gt; package as a
13529 useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
13530 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
13531 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
13532 </description>
13533 </item>
13534
13535 <item>
13536 <title>Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</title>
13537 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html</link>
13538 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html</guid>
13539 <pubDate>Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:35:00 +0200</pubDate>
13540 <description>&lt;p&gt;A while back, I
13541 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html&quot;&gt;complained
13542 about the fact&lt;/a&gt; that it is not possible with the provided schemas
13543 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
13544 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.&lt;/p&gt;
13545
13546 &lt;p&gt;In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
13547 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
13548 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
13549 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
13550
13551 &lt;p&gt;If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
13552 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
13553 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
13554 Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
13555
13556 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
13557 the
13558 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00&quot;&gt;DHCP
13559 schema&lt;/a&gt; to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
13560 available today from IETF.&lt;/p&gt;
13561
13562 &lt;pre&gt;
13563 --- dhcp.schema (revision 65192)
13564 +++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
13565 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
13566 objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
13567 NAME &#39;dhcpHost&#39;
13568 DESC &#39;This represents information about a particular client&#39;
13569 - SUP top
13570 + SUP top AUXILIARY
13571 MUST cn
13572 MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
13573 X-NDS_CONTAINMENT (&#39;dhcpService&#39; &#39;dhcpSubnet&#39; &#39;dhcpGroup&#39;) )
13574 &lt;/pre&gt;
13575
13576 &lt;p&gt;I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
13577 Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
13578 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.&lt;/p&gt;
13579
13580 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
13581 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
13582 </description>
13583 </item>
13584
13585 <item>
13586 <title>Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</title>
13587 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</link>
13588 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</guid>
13589 <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
13590 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
13591 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now,
13592 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
13593 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
13594 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
13595 this:
13596
13597 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13598 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
13599 tasksel --new-install
13600 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13601
13602 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
13603 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
13604 any output what so ever.
13605
13606 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
13607 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
13608 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
13609 happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
13610 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
13611 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using
13612 code like this:
13613
13614 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13615 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
13616 cmd=&quot;$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed &#39;s/debconf-apt-progress -- //&#39;)&quot;
13617 $cmd
13618 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13619
13620 &lt;p&gt;The content of $cmd is typically something like &quot;&lt;tt&gt;aptitude -q
13621 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
13622 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
13623 ~pimportant&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;, which will install the gnome desktop task, the
13624 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
13625 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
13626 installation.&lt;/p&gt;
13627
13628 &lt;p&gt;A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
13629 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
13630 like this.&lt;/p&gt;
13631 </description>
13632 </item>
13633
13634 <item>
13635 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</title>
13636 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</link>
13637 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</guid>
13638 <pubDate>Sun, 13 Jun 2010 09:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
13639 <description>&lt;p&gt;My
13640 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;testing
13641 of Debian upgrades&lt;/a&gt; from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I&#39;ve
13642 finally made the upgrade logs available from
13643 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&lt;/a&gt;.
13644 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
13645 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting. This time
13646 I will only focus on their removal plans.&lt;/p&gt;
13647
13648 &lt;p&gt;After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
13649 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze. The
13650 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
13651 xserver-xorg-video* drivers. Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
13652 sure why. When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
13653 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
13654 longer needed. Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
13655 I do not know. Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?&lt;/p&gt;
13656
13657 &lt;p&gt;For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
13658 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
13659 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
13660 too surprising.&lt;/p&gt;
13661
13662 &lt;p&gt;I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
13663 and avoided, and perhaps others as well. Here are the complete list
13664 of planned removals. The complete logs is available from the URL
13665 above. Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
13666 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
13667 conffile questions. No idea why. I worked around it by using
13668 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;echo &gt;&gt; /proc/&lt;em&gt;pidofdpkg&lt;/em&gt;/fd/0&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; to tell dpkg to
13669 continue.&lt;/p&gt;
13670
13671 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;apt-get gnome 72&lt;/b&gt;
13672 &lt;br&gt;bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
13673 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
13674 iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
13675 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
13676 nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
13677 serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
13678 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
13679 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
13680 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
13681 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
13682 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
13683 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
13684 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
13685 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
13686 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
13687 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
13688 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
13689 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
13690 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
13691 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
13692 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
13693 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
13694 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
13695 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
13696 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
13697 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
13698 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
13699 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
13700 xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support&lt;/p&gt;
13701
13702 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;aptitude gnome 129&lt;/b&gt;
13703
13704 &lt;br&gt;bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
13705 djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
13706 gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
13707 gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
13708 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
13709 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
13710 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
13711 libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
13712 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
13713 libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
13714 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
13715 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
13716 libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
13717 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
13718 libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
13719 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
13720 libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
13721 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
13722 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
13723 libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
13724 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
13725 libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
13726 libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
13727 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
13728 openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
13729 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
13730 python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
13731 python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
13732 swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
13733 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
13734 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
13735 zip&lt;/p&gt;
13736
13737 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;apt-get kde 82&lt;/b&gt;
13738
13739 &lt;br&gt;cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
13740 kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
13741 kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
13742 kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
13743 kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
13744 libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
13745 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
13746 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
13747 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
13748 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
13749 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
13750 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
13751 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
13752 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
13753 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
13754 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
13755 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
13756 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
13757 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
13758 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
13759 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
13760 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
13761 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
13762 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
13763 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
13764 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
13765 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
13766 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9&lt;/p&gt;
13767
13768 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;aptitude kde 192&lt;/b&gt;
13769 &lt;br&gt;bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
13770 djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
13771 ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
13772 kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
13773 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
13774 kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
13775 kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
13776 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
13777 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
13778 kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
13779 kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
13780 klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
13781 kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
13782 krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
13783 ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
13784 kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
13785 kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
13786 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
13787 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
13788 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
13789 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
13790 libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
13791 libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
13792 libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
13793 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
13794 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
13795 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
13796 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
13797 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
13798 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
13799 libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
13800 openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
13801 superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
13802 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
13803 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
13804 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
13805 xulrunner-1.9&lt;/p&gt;
13806
13807 </description>
13808 </item>
13809
13810 <item>
13811 <title>Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</title>
13812 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</link>
13813 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</guid>
13814 <pubDate>Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
13815 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
13816 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
13817 have been discovered and reported in the process
13818 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/585410&quot;&gt;#585410&lt;/a&gt; in nagios3-cgi,
13819 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584879&quot;&gt;#584879&lt;/a&gt; already fixed in
13820 enscript and &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584861&quot;&gt;#584861&lt;/a&gt; in
13821 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
13822 am working on a script to automate the test.&lt;/p&gt;
13823
13824 &lt;p&gt;The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
13825 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
13826 it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
13827 script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
13828 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
13829 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).&lt;/p&gt;
13830
13831 &lt;p&gt;A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
13832 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
13833 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
13834 is created. The bug report
13835 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/566000&quot;&gt;#566000&lt;/a&gt; make me suspect
13836 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
13837 to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
13838 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
13839 do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
13840 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/&quot;&gt;known
13841 issue&lt;/a&gt; and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
13842 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
13843 working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
13844 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
13845 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
13846 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
13847 Debian Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
13848
13849 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
13850 script, which I call &lt;tt&gt;upgrade-test&lt;/tt&gt; for now, is doing the
13851 trick:&lt;/p&gt;
13852
13853 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13854 #!/bin/sh
13855 set -ex
13856
13857 if [ &quot;$1&quot; ] ; then
13858 desktop=$1
13859 else
13860 desktop=gnome
13861 fi
13862
13863 from=lenny
13864 to=squeeze
13865
13866 exec &amp;lt; /dev/null
13867 unset LANG
13868 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
13869 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
13870 fuser -mv .
13871 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
13872 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
13873 cat &gt; $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
13874 #!/bin/sh
13875 exit 101
13876 EOF
13877 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
13878 exit_cleanup() {
13879 umount $tmpdir/proc
13880 }
13881 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
13882 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
13883 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
13884
13885 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
13886
13887 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
13888 # to return the correct answers.
13889 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
13890 chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
13891
13892 # Include the desktop and laptop task
13893 for test in desktop laptop ; do
13894 echo &gt; $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
13895 #!/bin/sh
13896 exit 2
13897 EOF
13898 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
13899 done
13900
13901 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
13902 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
13903 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
13904 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
13905
13906 echo deb $mirror $to main &gt; $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
13907 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
13908 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
13909 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
13910 fuser -mv
13911 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13912
13913 &lt;p&gt;I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
13914 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
13915 differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
13916 regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
13917 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
13918 kdebase-workspace-data&lt;/p&gt;
13919
13920 &lt;p&gt;I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
13921 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
13922 post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
13923 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
13924 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
13925 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
13926 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded&lt;/p&gt;
13927
13928 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
13929 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
13930 booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
13931 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
13932 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
13933 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
13934 </description>
13935 </item>
13936
13937 <item>
13938 <title>Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</title>
13939 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</link>
13940 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</guid>
13941 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
13942 <description>&lt;p&gt;If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
13943 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
13944 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd. The packages with such
13945 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
13946 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart. Because of
13947 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
13948 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.&lt;/p&gt;
13949
13950 &lt;p&gt;With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
13951 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
13952 COLUMNS):&lt;/p&gt;
13953
13954 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13955 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
13956 previous=N
13957 PREVLEVEL=
13958 RUNLEVEL=
13959 runlevel=S
13960 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
13961 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
13962 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
13963 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13964
13965 &lt;p&gt;With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
13966 script.&lt;/p&gt;
13967
13968 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13969 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
13970 previous=N
13971 PREVLEVEL=N
13972 RUNLEVEL=S
13973 runlevel=S
13974 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13975
13976 &lt;p&gt;The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
13977 sysvinit are not set by upstart. Not sure if it is intentional or not
13978 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;
13979
13980 &lt;p&gt;For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
13981 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
13982 choice.&lt;/p&gt;
13983 </description>
13984 </item>
13985
13986 <item>
13987 <title>A manual for standards wars...</title>
13988 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</link>
13989 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</guid>
13990 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 14:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
13991 <description>&lt;p&gt;Via the
13992 &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html&quot;&gt;blog
13993 of Rob Weir&lt;/a&gt; I came across the very interesting essay named
13994 &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf&quot;&gt;The Art of
13995 Standards Wars&lt;/a&gt; (PDF 25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
13996 following the standards wars of today.&lt;/p&gt;
13997 </description>
13998 </item>
13999
14000 <item>
14001 <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</title>
14002 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</link>
14003 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</guid>
14004 <pubDate>Thu, 3 Jun 2010 12:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
14005 <description>&lt;p&gt;When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
14006 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
14007 information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
14008 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
14009 the Skolelinux build servers:&lt;/p&gt;
14010
14011 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
14012 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
14013 vendor count
14014 Dell Computer Corporation 1
14015 PowerEdge 1750 1
14016 IBM 1
14017 eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]- 1
14018 Intel 2
14019 [no-dmi-info] 3
14020 maintainer:~#
14021 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
14022
14023 &lt;p&gt;The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
14024 provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
14025 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
14026 machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
14027 option to list the individual machines.&lt;/p&gt;
14028
14029 &lt;p&gt;A larger list is
14030 &lt;a href=&quot;http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/&quot;&gt;available from the the
14031 city of Narvik&lt;/a&gt;, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
14032 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
14033 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
14034 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
14035 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
14036 collector.&lt;/p&gt;
14037 </description>
14038 </item>
14039
14040 <item>
14041 <title>KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</title>
14042 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</link>
14043 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</guid>
14044 <pubDate>Tue, 1 Jun 2010 17:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
14045 <description>&lt;p&gt;It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
14046 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
14047 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
14048 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
14049 wait.&lt;/p&gt;
14050
14051 &lt;p&gt;I came across two bugs related to this issue,
14052 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;#583312&lt;/a&gt; initially filed
14053 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
14054 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
14055 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/524751&quot;&gt;#524751&lt;/a&gt; initially filed against
14056 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.&lt;/p&gt;
14057
14058 &lt;p&gt;To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
14059 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
14060 distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
14061 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
14062 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
14063 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
14064 distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
14065 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.&lt;/p&gt;
14066
14067 &lt;p&gt;I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.&lt;/p&gt;
14068 </description>
14069 </item>
14070
14071 <item>
14072 <title>Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</title>
14073 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</link>
14074 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</guid>
14075 <pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
14076 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
14077 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
14078 issues are known and should be solved:
14079
14080 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
14081
14082 &lt;li&gt;The wicd package seen to
14083 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/508289&quot;&gt;break NFS mounting&lt;/a&gt; and
14084 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/581586&quot;&gt;network setup&lt;/a&gt; when
14085 parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
14086 seem to be on the case.&lt;/li&gt;
14087
14088 &lt;li&gt;The nvidia X driver seem to
14089 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;have a race condition&lt;/a&gt;
14090 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
14091 maintainer is on the case.&lt;/li&gt;
14092
14093 &lt;li&gt;The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
14094 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
14095 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/575080&quot;&gt;try to switch back&lt;/a&gt; to
14096 sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
14097 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
14098 sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
14099 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
14100 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.&lt;/li&gt;
14101
14102 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
14103
14104 &lt;p&gt;All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
14105 solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
14106 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
14107 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.&lt;/p&gt;
14108
14109 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
14110 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
14111 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
14112 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
14113
14114 &lt;p&gt;Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.&lt;/p&gt;
14115 </description>
14116 </item>
14117
14118 <item>
14119 <title>More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</title>
14120 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</link>
14121 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</guid>
14122 <pubDate>Sat, 22 May 2010 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
14123 <description>&lt;p&gt;After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
14124 found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
14125 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
14126 definitely helped freeing some time.&lt;/p&gt;
14127
14128 &lt;p&gt;A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
14129 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
14130 get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
14131 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
14132 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
14133 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
14134 an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
14135 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
14136 debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
14137 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
14138 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
14139 /cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
14140 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
14141 going to work.&lt;/p&gt;
14142
14143 &lt;p&gt;The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
14144 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
14145 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
14146 packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
14147 &quot;external&quot; media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
14148 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
14149 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
14150 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
14151 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
14152 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
14153 Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
14154
14155 &lt;p&gt;To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
14156 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
14157 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
14158 run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
14159 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
14160 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.&lt;/p&gt;
14161
14162 &lt;p&gt;If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
14163 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
14164 </description>
14165 </item>
14166
14167 <item>
14168 <title>Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</title>
14169 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</link>
14170 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</guid>
14171 <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 22:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
14172 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
14173 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
14174 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
14175 expected, if I am to believe the
14176 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html&quot;&gt;input
14177 on debian-devel@&lt;/a&gt;, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
14178 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
14179 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen. If serious problems are
14180 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
14181 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
14182 version.&lt;/p&gt;
14183
14184 More information about
14185 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
14186 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt; is available from the Debian wiki. It is
14187 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
14188 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:&lt;/p&gt;
14189
14190 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
14191 CONCURRENCY=none
14192 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
14193
14194 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
14195 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
14196 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
14197 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
14198 </description>
14199 </item>
14200
14201 <item>
14202 <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</title>
14203 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</link>
14204 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</guid>
14205 <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 21:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
14206 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
14207 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary&quot;&gt;sitesummary
14208 system&lt;/a&gt; is used to keep track of the machines in the school
14209 network. Each machine will automatically report its status to the
14210 central server after boot and once per night. The network setup is
14211 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
14212 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines. This is useful
14213 to update the DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
14214
14215 &lt;p&gt;To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
14216 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary. Run
14217 this on the collector host:&lt;/p&gt;
14218
14219 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
14220 perl -MSiteSummary -e &#39;for_all_hosts(sub { print join(&quot; &quot;, get_macaddresses(shift)), &quot;\n&quot;; });&#39;
14221 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
14222
14223 &lt;p&gt;This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
14224 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.&lt;/p&gt;
14225
14226 &lt;p&gt;To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
14227 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
14228 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
14229 tables in LDAP using this information. Such tool is unfortunately not
14230 written yet.&lt;/p&gt;
14231 </description>
14232 </item>
14233
14234 <item>
14235 <title>systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</title>
14236 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</link>
14237 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</guid>
14238 <pubDate>Thu, 13 May 2010 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
14239 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days a new boot system called
14240 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd&quot;&gt;systemd&lt;/a&gt;
14241 has been
14242 &lt;a href=&quot;http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html&quot;&gt;introduced&lt;/a&gt;
14243
14244 to the free software world. I have not yet had time to play around
14245 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
14246 &lt;a href=&quot;http://upstart.ubuntu.com/&quot;&gt;upstart&lt;/a&gt;, and might prove to be
14247 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
14248 based boot system. Tollef is
14249 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/580814&quot;&gt;in the process&lt;/a&gt; of getting
14250 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work. I
14251 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
14252 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
14253 at the moment do not.&lt;/p&gt;
14254
14255 &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
14256 platform support. It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
14257 some new kernel features enabled to function properly. This means
14258 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
14259 system. Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
14260 way forward.&lt;/p&gt;
14261
14262 &lt;p&gt;In the mean time, based on the
14263 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html&quot;&gt;input
14264 on debian-devel@&lt;/a&gt; regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
14265 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
14266 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
14267 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies. A
14268 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
14269 already in experimental. If all go well, Squeeze will be released
14270 with parallel booting enabled by default.&lt;/p&gt;
14271 </description>
14272 </item>
14273
14274 <item>
14275 <title>Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</title>
14276 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</link>
14277 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</guid>
14278 <pubDate>Thu, 6 May 2010 23:25:00 +0200</pubDate>
14279 <description>&lt;p&gt;These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
14280 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
14281 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies. If you want
14282 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
14283 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
14284 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt; is enabled, and add this line to
14285 /etc/default/rcS:&lt;/p&gt;
14286
14287 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
14288 CONCURRENCY=makefile
14289 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
14290
14291 &lt;p&gt;That is it. It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
14292 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
14293 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
14294 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts. Startpar is configured
14295 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
14296 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
14297 make this happen.&lt;/p&gt;
14298
14299 &lt;p&gt;Give it a try, and see if you like the result. If some services
14300 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
14301 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
14302 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies). Report bugs and get
14303 the package maintainers to fix it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
14304
14305 &lt;p&gt;Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
14306 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct. I
14307 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
14308 fix the remaining issues.&lt;/p&gt;
14309
14310 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
14311 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
14312 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
14313 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
14314 </description>
14315 </item>
14316
14317 <item>
14318 <title>Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</title>
14319 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</link>
14320 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</guid>
14321 <pubDate>Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
14322 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
14323 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
14324 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing. This
14325 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
14326 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
14327 installation. Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
14328 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
14329
14330 &lt;p&gt;The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
14331 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
14332 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.&lt;/p&gt;
14333 </description>
14334 </item>
14335
14336 <item>
14337 <title>Taking over sysvinit development</title>
14338 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</link>
14339 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</guid>
14340 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
14341 <description>&lt;p&gt;After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
14342 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
14343 take over the package and become the new upstream. The number of
14344 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
14345 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
14346 the package up to date.&lt;/p&gt;
14347
14348 &lt;p&gt;On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
14349 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman. About 10 days ago, I made
14350 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
14351 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
14352 distributions. We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
14353 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge. Since the
14354 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
14355 upstream project at &lt;a href=&quot;http://savannah.nongnu.org/&quot;&gt;Savannah&lt;/a&gt;, and continue
14356 development there. The project is registered and currently waiting
14357 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
14358 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
14359 working on the future release.&lt;/p&gt;
14360
14361 &lt;p&gt;It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
14362 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.&lt;/p&gt;
14363 </description>
14364 </item>
14365
14366 <item>
14367 <title>Debian boots quicker and quicker</title>
14368 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</link>
14369 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</guid>
14370 <pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
14371 <description>&lt;p&gt;I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
14372 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
14373 could find more ways to speed up the boot system. This was an Ubuntu
14374 funded
14375 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint&quot;&gt;developer
14376 gathering&lt;/a&gt;. It was quite productive. We also discussed the future
14377 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
14378 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
14379 asynchronous and event base. The Ubuntu approach using udev and
14380 upstart might be a good way forward. Time will show.&lt;/p&gt;
14381
14382 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
14383 process in Debian. All of these should be applied to get a quick
14384 boot:&lt;/p&gt;
14385
14386 &lt;ul&gt;
14387
14388 &lt;li&gt;Use dash as /bin/sh.&lt;/li&gt;
14389
14390 &lt;li&gt;Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
14391 clock is in UTC.&lt;/li&gt;
14392
14393 &lt;li&gt;Install and activate the insserv package to enable
14394 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
14395 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt;, and enable concurrent booting.&lt;/li&gt;
14396
14397 &lt;/ul&gt;
14398
14399 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
14400 &lt;a href=&quot;http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/&quot;&gt;Carlos
14401 Villegas&lt;/a&gt;.
14402
14403 &lt;p&gt;Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
14404 unstable yesterday. When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
14405 from the boot sequence. It depend on very correct dependency
14406 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
14407 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
14408 using this.&lt;/p&gt;
14409
14410 &lt;p&gt;On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
14411 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
14412 startup speed as well. Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
14413 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
14414 possible to run a of them in the same process. A quick way to test
14415 this would be to enable insserv and run &#39;mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
14416 insserv&#39;. Will need to test if that work. :)&lt;/p&gt;
14417 </description>
14418 </item>
14419
14420 <item>
14421 <title>BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</title>
14422 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html</link>
14423 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html</guid>
14424 <pubDate>Sun, 17 May 2009 23:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
14425 <description>&lt;p&gt;Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
14426 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
14427 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
14428 ulike land rundt om i verden. Resultatene er tendensiøse. For noen
14429 dager siden kom
14430 &lt;a href=&quot;http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf&quot;&gt;siste
14431 rapport&lt;/a&gt;, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
14432 dagene. Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
14433 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror&quot;&gt;BSA
14434 höftade Sverigesiffror&lt;/a&gt;, oppsummeres slik:&lt;/p&gt;
14435
14436 &lt;blockquote&gt;
14437 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
14438 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
14439 företag. &quot;Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
14440 exakta&quot;, säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
14441 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
14442
14443 &lt;p&gt;Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge? To andre kommentarer er &lt;a
14444 href=&quot;http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality&quot;&gt;BSA
14445 piracy figures need a shot of reality&lt;/a&gt; og &lt;a
14446 href=&quot;http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/&quot;&gt;Does The WIPO
14447 Copyright Treaty Work?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
14448
14449 &lt;p&gt;Fant lenkene via &lt;a
14450 href=&quot;http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242&quot;&gt;oppslag
14451 på Slashdot&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
14452 </description>
14453 </item>
14454
14455 <item>
14456 <title>IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</title>
14457 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html</link>
14458 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html</guid>
14459 <pubDate>Thu, 7 May 2009 22:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
14460 <description>&lt;p&gt;Kom over
14461 &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html&quot;&gt;interessante
14462 tall&lt;/a&gt; fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet. Fikk meg til
14463 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
14464 jobber til daglig. En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
14465 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
14466 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere. Med den
14467 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.&lt;/p&gt;
14468 </description>
14469 </item>
14470
14471 <item>
14472 <title>Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</title>
14473 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html</link>
14474 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html</guid>
14475 <pubDate>Sat, 2 May 2009 15:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
14476 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece&quot;&gt;Dagens
14477 IT melder&lt;/a&gt; at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
14478 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
14479 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer. Det er ingen tvil om
14480 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
14481 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
14482 bærbare. Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
14483 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
14484 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
14485 foreningsarbeide. Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
14486 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
14487 av dem. Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
14488 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
14489 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
14490 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker. Jeg har LVM på toppen
14491 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
14492 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare. Kostnaden når
14493 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
14494 betydelige. En bør dog passe på passordet. Hvis det går tapt, må
14495 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.&lt;/p&gt;
14496
14497 &lt;p&gt;Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
14498 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
14499 krypteringsnøklene. Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
14500 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten. Jeg tror oddsene for at
14501 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
14502 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
14503 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
14504 betydelige.&lt;/p&gt;
14505 </description>
14506 </item>
14507
14508 <item>
14509 <title>Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</title>
14510 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</link>
14511 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</guid>
14512 <pubDate>Sat, 2 May 2009 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
14513 <description>&lt;p&gt;There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
14514 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
14515 do not yet know them.&lt;/p&gt;
14516
14517 &lt;p&gt;The first one is &lt;a href=&quot;http://valgrind.org/&quot;&gt;valgrind&lt;/a&gt;, a
14518 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
14519 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run &#39;valgrind program&#39;,
14520 and it will report any problems on stdout. It is even better if the
14521 program include debug information. With debug information, it is able
14522 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
14523 occurs. It can report things like &#39;reading past memory block in file
14524 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M&#39;, and
14525 &#39;using uninitialised value in control logic&#39;. This tool has made it
14526 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
14527 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
14528
14529 &lt;p&gt;The second one is
14530 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity&quot;&gt;Coverity&lt;/a&gt; which is
14531 a source code checker. It is able to process the source of a program
14532 and find problems in the logic without running the program. It
14533 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
14534 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel. It is now a commercial tool
14535 and the company behind it is running
14536 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scan.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;a community service&lt;/a&gt; for the
14537 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
14538 their source checked for free. Several thousand defects have been
14539 found and fixed so far. It can find errors like &#39;lock L taken in file
14540 X line N is never released if exiting in line M&#39;, or &#39;the code in file
14541 Y lines O to P can never be executed&#39;. The projects included in the
14542 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
14543 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.&lt;/p&gt;
14544
14545 &lt;p&gt;I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
14546 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
14547 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
14548 surrounded by today.&lt;/p&gt;
14549 </description>
14550 </item>
14551
14552 <item>
14553 <title>No patch is not better than a useless patch</title>
14554 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</link>
14555 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</guid>
14556 <pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
14557 <description>&lt;p&gt;Julien Blache
14558 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214&quot;&gt;claim that no
14559 patch is better than a useless patch&lt;/a&gt;. I completely disagree, as a
14560 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
14561 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
14562 time on fixing it. No patch do not provide any of these positive
14563 properties.&lt;/p&gt;
14564 </description>
14565 </item>
14566
14567 <item>
14568 <title>Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</title>
14569 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</link>
14570 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</guid>
14571 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
14572 <description>&lt;p&gt;Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
14573 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure. It is the
14574 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
14575 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
14576 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
14577 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
14578 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
14579 application.&lt;/p&gt;
14580
14581 &lt;p&gt;This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
14582 independently of the server applications. One can even allow users to
14583 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
14584 protocol and format. In the normal case, only one client application
14585 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
14586 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
14587 blocked from doing so.&lt;/p&gt;
14588
14589 &lt;p&gt;It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
14590 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
14591 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
14592 requirements change.&lt;/p&gt;
14593
14594 &lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
14595 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
14596 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.&lt;/p&gt;
14597 </description>
14598 </item>
14599
14600 <item>
14601 <title>Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</title>
14602 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</link>
14603 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</guid>
14604 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
14605 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
14606 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering. I got a bit done tuning the
14607 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
14608 implementation avahi. It look like it could be useful for us. Almost
14609 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
14610 get to know the Skolelinux system. Walter Bender, involved in the
14611 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
14612 also helped me improve my OLPC installation. He also showed me that
14613 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
14614 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian. As a
14615 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu. We also
14616 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
14617 proved to be too hard for us. The application seem to need more work
14618 before it is ready for me. I look forward to getting home and relax
14619 now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
14620 </description>
14621 </item>
14622
14623 <item>
14624 <title>Time for new LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</title>
14625 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</link>
14626 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</guid>
14627 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
14628 <description>&lt;p&gt;The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
14629 optimal. There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
14630 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
14631 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory. The RFC
14632 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
14633 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
14634
14635 &lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;,
14636 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
14637 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
14638 and LTSP configuration in LDAP. These objects have a lot in common,
14639 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
14640 object per entity. For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
14641 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
14642 DNS information and another with DHCP information. The schemas
14643 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
14644 object. In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
14645 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
14646 It just do not scale. I believe it is time for a few RFC
14647 specifications to cleam up this mess.&lt;/p&gt;
14648
14649 &lt;p&gt;I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
14650 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
14651 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
14652 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.&lt;/p&gt;
14653
14654 &lt;p&gt;I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
14655 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.&lt;/p&gt;
14656
14657 &lt;p&gt;Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
14658 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up. Time to start a
14659 new IETF work group?&lt;/p&gt;
14660 </description>
14661 </item>
14662
14663 <item>
14664 <title>Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</title>
14665 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html</link>
14666 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html</guid>
14667 <pubDate>Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
14668 <description>&lt;p&gt;Endelig er &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt;
14669 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214&quot;&gt;Lenny&lt;/a&gt; gitt ut.
14670 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
14671 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
14672 stabile utgaven av Debian. Neste steg er nå å få
14673 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; /
14674 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; ferdig
14675 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
14676 slippes løs på skolene. Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
14677 gjort dette mulig. Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
14678 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
14679 &lt;tt&gt;insserv&lt;/tt&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
14680 </description>
14681 </item>
14682
14683 <item>
14684 <title>Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</title>
14685 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</link>
14686 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</guid>
14687 <pubDate>Sun, 7 Dec 2008 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
14688 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
14689 Oslo. Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
14690 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
14691 LTSP installation. LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
14692 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
14693 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box. Was working on getting the
14694 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
14695 finish it before the weekend was up.&lt;/p&gt;
14696
14697 &lt;p&gt;Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
14698 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
14699 development gathering. Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
14700 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
14701 of these cards.&lt;/p&gt;
14702 </description>
14703 </item>
14704
14705 <item>
14706 <title>The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</title>
14707 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</link>
14708 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</guid>
14709 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
14710 <description>&lt;p&gt;Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
14711 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
14712 default in Debian Edu. We need an embedded video playing plugin with
14713 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
14714 all the multimedia content available on the web. The test results and
14715 notes are available on
14716 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;the
14717 Debian wiki&lt;/a&gt;. I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
14718 fill this need. My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
14719 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages. A lot of the MIME
14720 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
14721 video/ogg), just do not work. And simple formats like the
14722 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn&#39;t supported by the
14723 totem and vlc plugins. I hope the situation will improve soon. No
14724 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.&lt;/p&gt;
14725
14726 &lt;p&gt;For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin. It seem to
14727 be the only one fitting our needs. :/&lt;/p&gt;
14728 </description>
14729 </item>
14730
14731 </channel>
14732 </rss>