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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_Ring__finally_functioning_peer_to_peer_communication_client.html">Jami/Ring, finally functioning peer to peer communication client</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         19th June 2019
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Some years ago, in 2016, I
  32 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">wrote
  33 for the first time about</a> the Ring peer to peer messaging system.
  34 It would provide messaging without any central server coordinating the
  35 system and without requiring all users to register a phone number or
  36 own a mobile phone.  Back then, I could not get it to work, and put it
  37 aside until it had seen more development.  A few days ago I decided to
  38 give it another try, and am happy to report that this time I am able
  39 to not only send and receive messages, but also place audio and video
  40 calls.  But only if UDP is not blocked into your network.</p>
  41
  42 <p>The Ring system changed name earlier this year to
  43 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jami_(software)">Jami</a>.  I
  44 tried doing web search for 'ring' when I discovered it for the first
  45 time, and can only applaud this change as it is impossible to find
  46 something called Ring among the noise of other uses of that word.  Now
  47 you can search for 'jami' and this client and
  48 <a href="https://jami.net/">the Jami system</a> is the first hit at
  49 least on duckduckgo.</p>
  50
  51 <p>Jami will by default encrypt messages as well as audio and video
  52 calls, and try to send them directly between the communicating parties
  53 if possible.  If this proves impossible (for example if both ends are
  54 behind NAT), it will use a central SIP TURN server maintained by the
  55 Jami project.  Jami can also be a normal SIP client.  If the SIP
  56 server is unencrypted, the audio and video calls will also be
  57 unencrypted.  This is as far as I know the only case where Jami will
  58 do anything without encryption.</p>
  59
  60 <p>Jami is available for several platforms: Linux, Windows, MacOSX,
  61 Android, iOS, and Android TV.  It is included in Debian already.  Jami
  62 also work for those using F-Droid without any Google connections,
  63 while Signal do not.
  64 <a href="https://git.jami.net/savoirfairelinux/ring-project/wikis/technical/Protocol">The
  65 protocol</a> is described in the Ring project wiki.  The system uses a
  66 distributed hash table (DHT) system (similar to BitTorrent) running
  67 over UDP.  On one of the networks I use, I discovered Jami failed to
  68 work.  I tracked this down to the fact that incoming UDP packages
  69 going to ports 1-49999 were blocked, and the DHT would pick a random
  70 port and end up in the low range most of the time.  After talking to
  71 the developers, I solved this by enabling the dhtproxy in the
  72 settings, thus using TCP to talk to a central DHT proxy instead of
  73
  74 peering directly with others.  I've been told the developers are
  75 working on allowing DHT to use TCP to avoid this problem.  I also ran
  76 into a problem when trying to talk to the version of Ring included in
  77 Debian Stable (Stretch).  Apparently the protocol changed between
  78 beta2 and the current version, making these clients incompatible.
  79 Hopefully the protocol will not be made incompatible in the
  80 future.</p>
  81
  82 <p>It is worth noting that while looking at Jami and its features, I
  83 came across another communication platform I have not tested yet.  The
  84 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tox_(protocol)">Tox protocol</a>
  85 and <a href="https://tox.chat/">family of Tox clients</a>.  It might
  86 become the topic of a future blog post.</p>
  87
  88 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  89 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  90 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
  91
  92       </div>
  93       <div class="tags">
  94
  95
  96         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
  97
  98
  99       </div>
 100     </div>
 101     <div class="padding"></div>
 102
 103     <div class="entry">
 104       <div class="title">
 105         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Strategispillet_Unknown_Horizons_n__tilgjengelig_p__bokm_l.html">Strategispillet Unknown Horizons nå tilgjengelig på bokmål</a>
 106       </div>
 107       <div class="date">
 108         23rd January 2019
 109       </div>
 110       <div class="body">
 111         <p>I høst ble jeg inspirert til å bidra til oversettelsen av
 112 <a href="http://unknown-horizons.org/">strategispillet Unknown
 113 Horizons</a>, og oversatte de nesten 200 strengene i prosjektet til
 114 bokmål.  Deretter har jeg gått å ventet på at det kom en ny utgave som
 115 inneholdt disse oversettelsene.  Nå er endelig ventetiden over.  Den
 116 nye versjonen kom på nyåret, og ble
 117 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/unknown-horizons">lastet opp i
 118 Debian</a> for noen få dager siden.  I går kveld fikk jeg testet det ut, og
 119 må innrømme at oversettelsene fungerer fint.  Fant noen få tekster som
 120 måtte justeres, men ikke noe alvorlig.  Har oppdatert
 121 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/uh/">oversettelsen på
 122 Weblate</a>, slik at neste utgave vil være enda bedre. :)</p>
 123
 124 <p>Spillet er et ressursstyringsspill ala Civilization, og er morsomt
 125 å spille for oss som liker slikt. :)</p>
 126
 127 <p>Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
 128 det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner
 129 til min adresse
 130 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.
 131 Merk, betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)</p>
 132
 133       </div>
 134       <div class="tags">
 135
 136
 137         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
 138
 139
 140       </div>
 141     </div>
 142     <div class="padding"></div>
 143
 144     <div class="entry">
 145       <div class="title">
 146         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_got_everything_you_need_to_program_Micro_bit.html">Debian now got everything you need to program Micro:bit</a>
 147       </div>
 148       <div class="date">
 149         22nd January 2019
 150       </div>
 151       <div class="body">
 152         <p>I am amazed and very pleased to discover that since a few days ago,
 153 everything you need to program the <a href="https://microbit.org/">BBC
 154 micro:bit</a> is available from the Debian archive.  All this is
 155 thanks to the hard work of Nick Morrott and the Debian python
 156 packaging team.  The micro:bit project recommend the mu-editor to
 157 program the microcomputer, as this editor will take care of all the
 158 machinery required to injekt/flash micropython alongside the program
 159 into the micro:bit, as long as the pieces are available.</p>
 160
 161 <p>There are three main pieces involved.  The first to enter Debian
 162 was
 163 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/python-uflash">python-uflash</a>,
 164 which was accepted into the archive 2019-01-12.  The next one was
 165 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/mu-editor">mu-editor</a>, which
 166 showed up 2019-01-13.  The final and hardest part to to into the
 167 archive was
 168 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/firmware-microbit-micropython">firmware-microbit-micropython</a>,
 169 which needed to get its build system and dependencies into Debian
 170 before it was accepted 2019-01-20.  The last one is already in Debian
 171 Unstable and should enter Debian Testing / Buster in three days.  This
 172 all allow any user of the micro:bit to get going by simply running
 173 'apt install mu-editor' when using Testing or Unstable, and once
 174 Buster is released as stable, all the users of Debian stable will be
 175 catered for.</p>
 176
 177 <p>As a minor final touch, I added rules to
 178 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">the isenkram
 179 package</a> for recognizing micro:bit and recommend the mu-editor
 180 package.  This make sure any user of the isenkram desktop daemon will
 181 get a popup suggesting to install mu-editor then the USB cable from
 182 the micro:bit is inserted for the first time.</p>
 183
 184 <p>This should make it easier to have fun.</p>
 185
 186 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 187 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 188 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 189
 190       </div>
 191       <div class="tags">
 192
 193
 194         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
 195
 196
 197       </div>
 198     </div>
 199     <div class="padding"></div>
 200
 201     <div class="entry">
 202       <div class="title">
 203         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Learn_to_program_with_Minetest_on_Debian.html">Learn to program with Minetest on Debian</a>
 204       </div>
 205       <div class="date">
 206         15th December 2018
 207       </div>
 208       <div class="body">
 209         <p>A fun way to learn how to program
 210 <a href="https://www.python.org/">Python</a> is to follow the
 211 instructions in the book
 212 "<a href="https://nostarch.com/programwithminecraft">Learn to program
 213 with Minecraft</a>", which introduces programming in Python to people
 214 who like to play with Minecraft.  The book uses a Python library to
 215 talk to a TCP/IP socket with an API accepting build instructions and
 216 providing information about the current players in a Minecraft world.
 217 The TCP/IP API was first created for the Minecraft implementation for
 218 Raspberry Pi, and has since been ported to some server versions of
 219 Minecraft.  The book contain recipes for those using Windows, MacOSX
 220 and Raspian.  But a little known fact is that you can follow the same
 221 recipes using the free software construction game
 222 <a href="https://minetest.net/">Minetest</a>.</p>
 223
 224 <p>There is <a href="https://github.com/sprintingkiwi/pycraft_mod">a
 225 Minetest module implementing the same API</a>, making it possible to
 226 use the Python programs coded to talk to Minecraft with Minetest too.
 227 I
 228 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new/minetest-mod-pycraft_0.20%2Bgit20180331.0376a0a%2Bdfsg-1.html">uploaded
 229 this module</a> to Debian two weeks ago, and as soon as it clears the
 230 FTP masters NEW queue, learning to program Python with Minetest on
 231 Debian will be a simple 'apt install' away.  The Debian package is
 232 maintained as part of the Debian Games team, and
 233 <a href="https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/unfinished/minetest-mod-pycraft">the
 234 packaging rules</a> are currently located under 'unfinished' on
 235 Salsa.</p>
 236
 237 <p>You will most likely need to install several of the Minetest
 238 modules in Debian for the examples included with the library to work
 239 well, as there are several blocks used by the example scripts that are
 240 provided via modules in Minetest.  Without the required blocks, a
 241 simple stone block is used instead.  My initial testing with a analog
 242 clock did not get gold arms as instructed in the python library, but
 243 instead used stone arms.</p>
 244
 245 <p>I tried to find a way to add the API to the desktop version of
 246 Minecraft, but were unable to find any working recipes.  The
 247 <a href="https://www.epiphanydigest.com/tag/minecraft-python-api/">recipes</a>
 248 I <a href="https://github.com/kbsriram/mcpiapi">found</a> are only
 249 working with a standalone Minecraft server setup.  Are there any
 250 options to use with the normal desktop version?</p>
 251
 252 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 253 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 254 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 255
 256       </div>
 257       <div class="tags">
 258
 259
 260         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 261
 262
 263       </div>
 264     </div>
 265     <div class="padding"></div>
 266
 267     <div class="entry">
 268       <div class="title">
 269         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_an_official_MIME_type_for_patches_.html">Time for an official MIME type for patches?</a>
 270       </div>
 271       <div class="date">
 272          1st November 2018
 273       </div>
 274       <div class="body">
 275         <p>As part of my involvement in
 276 <a href="https://gitlab.com/OsloMet-ABI/nikita-noark5-core">the Nikita
 277 archive API project</a>, I've been importing a fairly large lump of
 278 emails into a test instance of the archive to see how well this would
 279 go.  I picked a subset of <a href="https://notmuchmail.org/">my
 280 notmuch email database</a>, all public emails sent to me via
 281 @lists.debian.org, giving me a set of around 216 000 emails to import.
 282 In the process, I had a look at the various attachments included in
 283 these emails, to figure out what to do with attachments, and noticed
 284 that one of the most common attachment formats do not have
 285 <a href="https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">an
 286 official MIME type</a> registered with IANA/IETF.  The output from
 287 diff, ie the input for patch, is on the top 10 list of formats
 288 included in these emails.  At the moment people seem to use either
 289 text/x-patch or text/x-diff, but neither is officially registered.  It
 290 would be better if one official MIME type were registered and used
 291 everywhere.</p>
 292
 293 <p>To try to get one official MIME type for these files, I've brought
 294 up the topic on
 295 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/media-types">the
 296 media-types mailing list</a>.  If you are interested in discussion
 297 which MIME type to use as the official for patch files, or involved in
 298 making software using a MIME type for patches, perhaps you would like
 299 to join the discussion?</p>
 300
 301 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 302 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 303 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 304
 305       </div>
 306       <div class="tags">
 307
 308
 309         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/noark5">noark5</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
 310
 311
 312       </div>
 313     </div>
 314     <div class="padding"></div>
 315
 316     <div class="entry">
 317       <div class="title">
 318         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Google_Drive_sync_using_grive_in_Debian.html">Automatic Google Drive sync using grive in Debian</a>
 319       </div>
 320       <div class="date">
 321          4th October 2018
 322       </div>
 323       <div class="body">
 324         <p>A few days, I rescued a Windows victim over to Debian.  To try to
 325 rescue the remains, I helped set up automatic sync with Google Drive.
 326 I did not find any sensible Debian package handling this
 327 automatically, so I rebuild the grive2 source from
 328 <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/">the Ubuntu UPD8 PPA</a> to do the
 329 task and added a autostart desktop entry and a small shell script to
 330 run in the background while the user is logged in to do the sync.
 331 Here is a sketch of the setup for future reference.</p>
 332
 333 <p>I first created <tt>~/googledrive</tt>, entered the directory and
 334 ran '<tt>grive -a</tt>' to authenticate the machine/user.  Next, I
 335 created a autostart hook in <tt>~/.config/autostart/grive.desktop</tt>
 336 to start the sync when the user log in:</p>
 337
 338 <p><blockquote><pre>
 339 [Desktop Entry]
 340 Name=Google drive autosync
 341 Type=Application
 342 Exec=/home/user/bin/grive-sync
 343 </pre></blockquote></p>
 344
 345 <p>Finally, I wrote the <tt>~/bin/grive-sync</tt> script to sync
 346 ~/googledrive/ with the files in Google Drive.</p>
 347
 348 <p><blockquote><pre>
 349 #!/bin/sh
 350 set -e
 351 cd ~/
 352 cleanup() {
 353     if [ "$syncpid" ] ; then
 354         kill $syncpid
 355     fi
 356 }
 357 trap cleanup EXIT INT QUIT
 358 /usr/lib/grive/grive-sync.sh listen googledrive 2>&1 | sed "s%^%$0:%" &
 359 syncpdi=$!
 360 while true; do
 361     if ! xhost >/dev/null 2>&1 ; then
 362         echo "no DISPLAY, exiting as the user probably logged out"
 363         exit 1
 364     fi
 365     if [ ! -e /run/user/1000/grive-sync.sh_googledrive ] ; then
 366         /usr/lib/grive/grive-sync.sh sync googledrive
 367     fi
 368     sleep 300
 369 done 2>&1 | sed "s%^%$0:%"
 370 </pre></blockquote></p>
 371
 372 <p>Feel free to use the setup if you want.  It can be assumed to be
 373 GNU GPL v2 licensed (or any later version, at your leisure), but I
 374 doubt this code is possible to claim copyright on.</p>
 375
 376 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 377 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 378 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 379
 380       </div>
 381       <div class="tags">
 382
 383
 384         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 385
 386
 387       </div>
 388     </div>
 389     <div class="padding"></div>
 390
 391     <div class="entry">
 392       <div class="title">
 393         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_the_Kodi_API_to_play_Youtube_videos.html">Using the Kodi API to play Youtube videos</a>
 394       </div>
 395       <div class="date">
 396          2nd September 2018
 397       </div>
 398       <div class="body">
 399         <p>I continue to explore my Kodi installation, and today I wanted to
 400 tell it to play a youtube URL I received in a chat, without having to
 401 insert search terms using the on-screen keyboard.  After searching the
 402 web for API access to the Youtube plugin and testing a bit, I managed
 403 to find a recipe that worked.  If you got a kodi instance with its API
 404 available from http://kodihost/jsonrpc, you can try the following to
 405 have check out a nice cover band.</p>
 406
 407 <p><blockquote><pre>curl --silent --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
 408   --data-binary '{ "id": 1, "jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "Player.Open",
 409   "params": {"item": { "file":
 410   "plugin://plugin.video.youtube/play/?video_id=LuRGVM9O0qg" } } }' \
 411   http://projector.local/jsonrpc</pre></blockquote></p>
 412
 413 <p>I've extended kodi-stream program to take a video source as its
 414 first argument.  It can now handle direct video links, youtube links
 415 and 'desktop' to stream my desktop to Kodi.  It is almost like a
 416 Chromecast. :)</p>
 417
 418 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 419 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 420 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 421
 422       </div>
 423       <div class="tags">
 424
 425
 426         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 427
 428
 429       </div>
 430     </div>
 431     <div class="padding"></div>
 432
 433     <div class="entry">
 434       <div class="title">
 435         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sharing_images_with_friends_and_family_using_RSS_and_EXIF_XMP_metadata.html">Sharing images with friends and family using RSS and EXIF/XMP metadata</a>
 436       </div>
 437       <div class="date">
 438         31st July 2018
 439       </div>
 440       <div class="body">
 441         <p>For a while now, I have looked for a sensible way to share images
 442 with my family using a self hosted solution, as it is unacceptable to
 443 place images from my personal life under the control of strangers
 444 working for data hoarders like Google or Dropbox.  The last few days I
 445 have drafted an approach that might work out, and I would like to
 446 share it with you.  I would like to publish images on a server under
 447 my control, and point some Internet connected display units using some
 448 free and open standard to the images I published.  As my primary
 449 language is not limited to ASCII, I need to store metadata using
 450 UTF-8.  Many years ago, I hoped to find a digital photo frame capable
 451 of reading a RSS feed with image references (aka using the
 452 &lt;enclosure&gt; RSS tag), but was unable to find a current supplier
 453 of such frames.  In the end I gave up that approach.</p>
 454
 455 <p>Some months ago, I discovered that
 456 <a href="https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/">XScreensaver</a> is able to
 457 read images from a RSS feed, and used it to set up a screen saver on
 458 my home info screen, showing images from the Daily images feed from
 459 NASA.  This proved to work well.  More recently I discovered that
 460 <a href="https://kodi.tv">Kodi</a> (both using
 461 <a href="https://www.openelec.tv/">OpenELEC</a> and
 462 <a href="https://libreelec.tv">LibreELEC</a>) provide the
 463 <a href="https://github.com/grinsted/script.screensaver.feedreader">Feedreader</a>
 464 screen saver capable of reading a RSS feed with images and news.  For
 465 fun, I used it this summer to test Kodi on my parents TV by hooking up
 466 a Raspberry PI unit with LibreELEC, and wanted to provide them with a
 467 screen saver showing selected pictures from my selection.</p>
 468
 469 <p>Armed with motivation and a test photo frame, I set out to generate
 470 a RSS feed for the Kodi instance.  I adjusted my <a
 471 href="https://freedombox.org/">Freedombox</a> instance, created
 472 /var/www/html/privatepictures/, wrote a small Perl script to extract
 473 title and description metadata from the photo files and generate the
 474 RSS file.  I ended up using Perl instead of python, as the
 475 libimage-exiftool-perl Debian package seemed to handle the EXIF/XMP
 476 tags I ended up using, while python3-exif did not.  The relevant EXIF
 477 tags only support ASCII, so I had to find better alternatives.  XMP
 478 seem to have the support I need.</p>
 479
 480 <p>I am a bit unsure which EXIF/XMP tags to use, as I would like to
 481 use tags that can be easily added/updated using normal free software
 482 photo managing software.  I ended up using the tags set using this
 483 exiftool command, as these tags can also be set using digiKam:</p>
 484
 485 <blockquote><pre>
 486 exiftool -headline='The RSS image title' \
 487   -description='The RSS image description.' \
 488   -subject+=for-family photo.jpeg
 489 </pre></blockquote>
 490
 491 <p>I initially tried the "-title" and "keyword" tags, but they were
 492 invisible in digiKam, so I changed to "-headline" and "-subject".  I
 493 use the keyword/subject 'for-family' to flag that the photo should be
 494 shared with my family.  Images with this keyword set are located and
 495 copied into my Freedombox for the RSS generating script to find.</p>
 496
 497 <p>Are there better ways to do this?  Get in touch if you have better
 498 suggestions.</p>
 499
 500 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 501 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 502 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 503
 504       </div>
 505       <div class="tags">
 506
 507
 508         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 509
 510
 511       </div>
 512     </div>
 513     <div class="padding"></div>
 514
 515     <div class="entry">
 516       <div class="title">
 517         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simple_streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_GStreamer_and_RTP.html">Simple streaming the Linux desktop to Kodi using GStreamer and RTP</a>
 518       </div>
 519       <div class="date">
 520         12th July 2018
 521       </div>
 522       <div class="body">
 523         <p>Last night, I wrote
 524 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html">a
 525 recipe to stream a Linux desktop using VLC to a instance of Kodi</a>.
 526 During the day I received valuable feedback, and thanks to the
 527 suggestions I have been able to rewrite the recipe into a much simpler
 528 approach requiring no setup at all.  It is a single script that take
 529 care of it all.</p>
 530
 531 <p>This new script uses GStreamer instead of VLC to capture the
 532 desktop and stream it to Kodi.  This fixed the video quality issue I
 533 saw initially.  It further removes the need to add a m3u file on the
 534 Kodi machine, as it instead connects to
 535 <a href="https://kodi.wiki/view/JSON-RPC_API/v8">the JSON-RPC API in
 536 Kodi</a> and simply ask Kodi to play from the stream created using
 537 GStreamer.  Streaming the desktop to Kodi now become trivial.  Copy
 538 the script below, run it with the DNS name or IP address of the kodi
 539 server to stream to as the only argument, and watch your screen show
 540 up on the Kodi screen.  Note, it depend on multicast on the local
 541 network, so if you need to stream outside the local network, the
 542 script must be modified.  Also note, I have no idea if audio work, as
 543 I only care about the picture part.</p>
 544
 545 <blockquote><pre>
 546 #!/bin/sh
 547 #
 548 # Stream the Linux desktop view to Kodi.  See
 549 # http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html
 550 # for backgorund information.
 551
 552 # Make sure the stream is stopped in Kodi and the gstreamer process is
 553 # killed if something go wrong (for example if curl is unable to find the
 554 # kodi server).  Do the same when interrupting this script.
 555 kodicmd() {
 556     host="$1"
 557     cmd="$2"
 558     params="$3"
 559     curl --silent --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
 560          --data-binary "{ \"id\": 1, \"jsonrpc\": \"2.0\", \"method\": \"$cmd\", \"params\": $params }" \
 561          "http://$host/jsonrpc"
 562 }
 563 cleanup() {
 564     if [ -n "$kodihost" ] ; then
 565         # Stop the playing when we end
 566         playerid=$(kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.GetActivePlayers "{}" |
 567                             jq .result[].playerid)
 568         kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.Stop "{ \"playerid\" : $playerid }" > /dev/null
 569     fi
 570     if [ "$gstpid" ] && kill -0 "$gstpid" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
 571         kill "$gstpid"
 572     fi
 573 }
 574 trap cleanup EXIT INT
 575
 576 if [ -n "$1" ]; then
 577     kodihost=$1
 578     shift
 579 else
 580     kodihost=kodi.local
 581 fi
 582
 583 mcast=239.255.0.1
 584 mcastport=1234
 585 mcastttl=1
 586
 587 pasrc=$(pactl list | grep -A2 'Source #' | grep 'Name: .*\.monitor$' | \
 588   cut -d" " -f2|head -1)
 589 gst-launch-1.0 ximagesrc use-damage=0 ! video/x-raw,framerate=30/1 ! \
 590   videoconvert ! queue2 ! \
 591   x264enc bitrate=8000 speed-preset=superfast tune=zerolatency qp-min=30 \
 592   key-int-max=15 bframes=2 ! video/x-h264,profile=high ! queue2 ! \
 593   mpegtsmux alignment=7 name=mux ! rndbuffersize max=1316 min=1316 ! \
 594   udpsink host=$mcast port=$mcastport ttl-mc=$mcastttl auto-multicast=1 sync=0 \
 595   pulsesrc device=$pasrc ! audioconvert ! queue2 ! avenc_aac ! queue2 ! mux. \
 596   > /dev/null 2>&1 &
 597 gstpid=$!
 598
 599 # Give stream a second to get going
 600 sleep 1
 601
 602 # Ask kodi to start streaming using its JSON-RPC API
 603 kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.Open \
 604         "{\"item\": { \"file\": \"udp://@$mcast:$mcastport\" } }" > /dev/null
 605
 606 # wait for gst to end
 607 wait "$gstpid"
 608 </pre></blockquote>
 609
 610 <p>I hope you find the approach useful.  I know I do.</p>
 611
 612 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 613 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 614 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 615
 616       </div>
 617       <div class="tags">
 618
 619
 620         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 621
 622
 623       </div>
 624     </div>
 625     <div class="padding"></div>
 626
 627     <div class="entry">
 628       <div class="title">
 629         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html">Streaming the Linux desktop to Kodi using VLC and RTSP</a>
 630       </div>
 631       <div class="date">
 632         12th July 2018
 633       </div>
 634       <div class="body">
 635         <p>PS: See
 636 <ahref="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simple_streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_GStreamer_and_RTP.html">the
 637 followup post</a> for a even better approach.</p>
 638
 639 <p>A while back, I was asked by a friend how to stream the desktop to
 640 my projector connected to Kodi.  I sadly had to admit that I had no
 641 idea, as it was a task I never had tried.  Since then, I have been
 642 looking for a way to do so, preferable without much extra software to
 643 install on either side.  Today I found a way that seem to kind of
 644 work.  Not great, but it is a start.</p>
 645
 646 <p>I had a look at several approaches, for example
 647 <a href="https://github.com/mfoetsch/dlna_live_streaming">using uPnP
 648 DLNA as described in 2011</a>, but it required a uPnP server, fuse and
 649 local storage enough to store the stream locally.  This is not going
 650 to work well for me, lacking enough free space, and it would
 651 impossible for my friend to get working.</p>
 652
 653 <p>Next, it occurred to me that perhaps I could use VLC to create a
 654 video stream that Kodi could play.  Preferably using
 655 broadcast/multicast, to avoid having to change any setup on the Kodi
 656 side when starting such stream.  Unfortunately, the only recipe I
 657 could find using multicast used the rtp protocol, and this protocol
 658 seem to not be supported by Kodi.</p>
 659
 660 <p>On the other hand, the rtsp protocol is working!  Unfortunately I
 661 have to specify the IP address of the streaming machine in both the
 662 sending command and the file on the Kodi server.  But it is showing my
 663 desktop, and thus allow us to have a shared look on the big screen at
 664 the programs I work on.</p>
 665
 666 <p>I did not spend much time investigating codeces.  I combined the
 667 rtp and rtsp recipes from
 668 <a href="https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Streaming_HowTo/Command_Line_Examples/">the
 669 VLC Streaming HowTo/Command Line Examples</a>, and was able to get
 670 this working on the desktop/streaming end.</p>
 671
 672 <blockquote><pre>
 673 vlc screen:// --sout \
 674   '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{dst=projector.local,port=1234,sdp=rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/test.sdp}'
 675 </pre></blockquote>
 676
 677 <p>I ssh-ed into my Kodi box and created a file like this with the
 678 same IP address:</p>
 679
 680 <blockquote><pre>
 681 echo rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/test.sdp \
 682   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
 683 </pre></blockquote>
 684
 685 <p>Note the 192.168.11.4 IP address is my desktops IP address.  As far
 686 as I can tell the IP must be hardcoded for this to work.  In other
 687 words, if someone elses machine is going to do the steaming, you have
 688 to update screenstream.m3u on the Kodi machine and adjust the vlc
 689 recipe.  To get started, locate the file in Kodi and select the m3u
 690 file while the VLC stream is running.  The desktop then show up in my
 691 big screen. :)</p>
 692
 693 <p>When using the same technique to stream a video file with audio,
 694 the audio quality is really bad.  No idea if the problem is package
 695 loss or bad parameters for the transcode.  I do not know VLC nor Kodi
 696 enough to tell.</p>
 697
 698 <p><strong>Update 2018-07-12</strong>: Johannes Schauer send me a few
 699 succestions and reminded me about an important step.  The "screen:"
 700 input source is only available once the vlc-plugin-access-extra
 701 package is installed on Debian.  Without it, you will see this error
 702 message: "VLC is unable to open the MRL 'screen://'.  Check the log
 703 for details."  He further found that it is possible to drop some parts
 704 of the VLC command line to reduce the amount of hardcoded information.
 705 It is also useful to consider using cvlc to avoid having the VLC
 706 window in the desktop view.  In sum, this give us this command line on
 707 the source end
 708
 709 <blockquote><pre>
 710 cvlc screen:// --sout \
 711   '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{sdp=rtsp://:8080/}'
 712 </pre></blockquote>
 713
 714 <p>and this on the Kodi end<p>
 715
 716 <blockquote><pre>
 717 echo rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/ \
 718   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
 719 </pre></blockquote>
 720
 721 <p>Still bad image quality, though.  But I did discover that streaming
 722 a DVD using dvdsimple:///dev/dvd as the source had excellent video and
 723 audio quality, so I guess the issue is in the input or transcoding
 724 parts, not the rtsp part.  I've tried to change the vb and ab
 725 parameters to use more bandwidth, but it did not make a
 726 difference.</p>
 727
 728 <p>I further received a suggestion from Einar Haraldseid to try using
 729 gstreamer instead of VLC, and this proved to work great!  He also
 730 provided me with the trick to get Kodi to use a multicast stream as
 731 its source.  By using this monstrous oneliner, I can stream my desktop
 732 with good video quality in reasonable framerate to the 239.255.0.1
 733 multicast address on port 1234:
 734
 735 <blockquote><pre>
 736 gst-launch-1.0 ximagesrc use-damage=0 ! video/x-raw,framerate=30/1 ! \
 737   videoconvert ! queue2 ! \
 738   x264enc bitrate=8000 speed-preset=superfast tune=zerolatency qp-min=30 \
 739   key-int-max=15 bframes=2 ! video/x-h264,profile=high ! queue2 ! \
 740   mpegtsmux alignment=7 name=mux ! rndbuffersize max=1316 min=1316 ! \
 741   udpsink host=239.255.0.1 port=1234 ttl-mc=1 auto-multicast=1 sync=0 \
 742   pulsesrc device=$(pactl list | grep -A2 'Source #' | \
 743     grep 'Name: .*\.monitor$' |  cut -d" " -f2|head -1) ! \
 744   audioconvert ! queue2 ! avenc_aac ! queue2 ! mux.
 745 </pre></blockquote>
 746
 747 <p>and this on the Kodi end<p>
 748
 749 <blockquote><pre>
 750 echo udp://@239.255.0.1:1234 \
 751   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
 752 </pre></blockquote>
 753
 754 <p>Note the trick to pick a valid pulseaudio source.  It might not
 755 pick the one you need.  This approach will of course lead to trouble
 756 if more than one source uses the same multicast port and address.
 757 Note the ttl-mc=1 setting, which limit the multicast packages to the
 758 local network.  If the value is increased, your screen will be
 759 broadcasted further, one network "hop" for each increase (read up on
 760 multicast to learn more. :)!</p>
 761
 762 <p>Having cracked how to get Kodi to receive multicast streams, I
 763 could use this VLC command to stream to the same multicast address.
 764 The image quality is way better than the rtsp approach, but gstreamer
 765 seem to be doing a better job.</p>
 766
 767 <blockquote><pre>
 768 cvlc screen:// --sout '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{mux=ts,dst=239.255.0.1,port=1234,sdp=sap}'
 769 </pre></blockquote>
 770
 771 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 772 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 773 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 774
 775       </div>
 776       <div class="tags">
 777
 778
 779         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 780
 781
 782       </div>
 783     </div>
 784     <div class="padding"></div>
 785
 786     <div class="entry">
 787       <div class="title">
 788         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2018_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian in 2018?</a>
 789       </div>
 790       <div class="date">
 791          9th July 2018
 792       </div>
 793       <div class="body">
 794         <p>Five years ago,
 795 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">I
 796 measured what the most supported MIME type in Debian was</a>, by
 797 analysing the desktop files in all packages in the archive.  Since
 798 then, the DEP-11 AppStream system has been put into production, making
 799 the task a lot easier.  This made me want to repeat the measurement,
 800 to see how much things changed.  Here are the new numbers, for
 801 unstable only this time:
 802
 803 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
 804
 805 <pre>
 806   count MIME type
 807   ----- -----------------------
 808      56 image/jpeg
 809      55 image/png
 810      49 image/tiff
 811      48 image/gif
 812      39 image/bmp
 813      38 text/plain
 814      37 audio/mpeg
 815      34 application/ogg
 816      33 audio/x-flac
 817      32 audio/x-mp3
 818      30 audio/x-wav
 819      30 audio/x-vorbis+ogg
 820      29 image/x-portable-pixmap
 821      27 inode/directory
 822      27 image/x-portable-bitmap
 823      27 audio/x-mpeg
 824      26 application/x-ogg
 825      25 audio/x-mpegurl
 826      25 audio/ogg
 827      24 text/html
 828 </pre>
 829
 830 <p>The list was created like this using a sid chroot: "cat
 831 /var/lib/apt/lists/*sid*_dep11_Components-amd64.yml.gz| zcat | awk '/^
 832 - \S+\/\S+$/ {print $2 }' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20"</p>
 833
 834 <p>It is interesting to see how image formats have passed text/plain
 835 as the most announced supported MIME type.  These days, thanks to the
 836 AppStream system, if you run into a file format you do not know, and
 837 want to figure out which packages support the format, you can find the
 838 MIME type of the file using "file --mime &lt;filename&gt;", and then
 839 look up all packages announcing support for this format in their
 840 AppStream metadata (XML or .desktop file) using "appstreamcli
 841 what-provides mimetype &lt;mime-type&gt;.  For example if you, like
 842 me, want to know which packages support inode/directory, you can get a
 843 list like this:</p>
 844
 845 <p><blockquote><pre>
 846 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype inode/directory | grep Package: | sort
 847 Package: anjuta
 848 Package: audacious
 849 Package: baobab
 850 Package: cervisia
 851 Package: chirp
 852 Package: dolphin
 853 Package: doublecmd-common
 854 Package: easytag
 855 Package: enlightenment
 856 Package: ephoto
 857 Package: filelight
 858 Package: gwenview
 859 Package: k4dirstat
 860 Package: kaffeine
 861 Package: kdesvn
 862 Package: kid3
 863 Package: kid3-qt
 864 Package: nautilus
 865 Package: nemo
 866 Package: pcmanfm
 867 Package: pcmanfm-qt
 868 Package: qweborf
 869 Package: ranger
 870 Package: sirikali
 871 Package: spacefm
 872 Package: spacefm
 873 Package: vifm
 874 %
 875 </pre></blockquote></p>
 876
 877 <p>Using the same method, I can quickly discover that the Sketchup file
 878 format is not yet supported by any package in Debian:</p>
 879
 880 <p><blockquote><pre>
 881 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype  application/vnd.sketchup.skp
 882 Could not find component providing 'mimetype::application/vnd.sketchup.skp'.
 883 %
 884 </pre></blockquote></p>
 885
 886 <p>Yesterday I used it to figure out which packages support the STL 3D
 887 format:</p>
 888
 889 <p><blockquote><pre>
 890 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype  application/sla|grep Package
 891 Package: cura
 892 Package: meshlab
 893 Package: printrun
 894 %
 895 </pre></blockquote></p>
 896
 897 <p>PS: A new version of Cura was uploaded to Debian yesterday.</p>
 898
 899 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 900 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 901 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 902
 903       </div>
 904       <div class="tags">
 905
 906
 907         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 908
 909
 910       </div>
 911     </div>
 912     <div class="padding"></div>
 913
 914     <div class="entry">
 915       <div class="title">
 916         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_APT_upgrade_without_enough_free_space_on_the_disk___.html">Debian APT upgrade without enough free space on the disk...</a>
 917       </div>
 918       <div class="date">
 919          8th July 2018
 920       </div>
 921       <div class="body">
 922         <p>Quite regularly, I let my Debian Sid/Unstable chroot stay untouch
 923 for a while, and when I need to update it there is not enough free
 924 space on the disk for apt to do a normal 'apt upgrade'.  I normally
 925 would resolve the issue by doing 'apt install &lt;somepackages&gt;' to
 926 upgrade only some of the packages in one batch, until the amount of
 927 packages to download fall below the amount of free space available.
 928 Today, I had about 500 packages to upgrade, and after a while I got
 929 tired of trying to install chunks of packages manually.  I concluded
 930 that I did not have the spare hours required to complete the task, and
 931 decided to see if I could automate it.  I came up with this small
 932 script which I call 'apt-in-chunks':</p>
 933
 934 <p><blockquote><pre>
 935 #!/bin/sh
 936 #
 937 # Upgrade packages when the disk is too full to upgrade every
 938 # upgradable package in one lump.  Fetching packages to upgrade using
 939 # apt, and then installing using dpkg, to avoid changing the package
 940 # flag for manual/automatic.
 941
 942 set -e
 943
 944 ignore() {
 945     if [ "$1" ]; then
 946         grep -v "$1"
 947     else
 948         cat
 949     fi
 950 }
 951
 952 for p in $(apt list --upgradable | ignore "$@" |cut -d/ -f1 | grep -v '^Listing...'); do
 953     echo "Upgrading $p"
 954     apt clean
 955     apt install --download-only -y $p
 956     for f in /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb; do
 957         if [ -e "$f" ]; then
 958             dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb
 959             break
 960         fi
 961     done
 962 done
 963 </pre></blockquote></p>
 964
 965 <p>The script will extract the list of packages to upgrade, try to
 966 download the packages needed to upgrade one package, install the
 967 downloaded packages using dpkg.  The idea is to upgrade packages
 968 without changing the APT mark for the package (ie the one recording of
 969 the package was manually requested or pulled in as a dependency).  To
 970 use it, simply run it as root from the command line.  If it fail, try
 971 'apt install -f' to clean up the mess and run the script again.  This
 972 might happen if the new packages conflict with one of the old
 973 packages.  dpkg is unable to remove, while apt can do this.</p>
 974
 975 <p>It take one option, a package to ignore in the list of packages to
 976 upgrade.  The option to ignore a package is there to be able to skip
 977 the packages that are simply too large to unpack.  Today this was
 978 'ghc', but I have run into other large packages causing similar
 979 problems earlier (like TeX).</p>
 980
 981 <p>Update 2018-07-08: Thanks to Paul Wise, I am aware of two
 982 alternative ways to handle this.  The "unattended-upgrades
 983 --minimal-upgrade-steps" option will try to calculate upgrade sets for
 984 each package to upgrade, and then upgrade them in order, smallest set
 985 first.  It might be a better option than my above mentioned script.
 986 Also, "aptutude upgrade" can upgrade single packages, thus avoiding
 987 the need for using "dpkg -i" in the script above.</p>
 988
 989 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 990 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 991 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 992
 993       </div>
 994       <div class="tags">
 995
 996
 997         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 998
 999
1000       </div>
1001     </div>
1002     <div class="padding"></div>
1003
1004     <div class="entry">
1005       <div class="title">
1006         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Version_3_1_of_Cura__the_3D_print_slicer__is_now_in_Debian.html">Version 3.1 of Cura, the 3D print slicer, is now in Debian</a>
1007       </div>
1008       <div class="date">
1009         13th February 2018
1010       </div>
1011       <div class="body">
1012         <p>A new version of the
1013 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura">3D printer slicer
1014 software Cura</a>, version 3.1.0, is now available in Debian Testing
1015 (aka Buster) and Debian Unstable (aka Sid).  I hope you find it
1016 useful.  It was uploaded the last few days, and the last update will
1017 enter testing tomorrow.  See the
1018 <a href="https://ultimaker.com/en/products/cura-software/release-notes">release
1019 notes</a> for the list of bug fixes and new features.  Version 3.2
1020 was announced 6 days ago.  We will try to get it into Debian as
1021 well.</p>
1022
1023 <p>More information related to 3D printing is available on the
1024 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/3DPrinting">3D printing</a> and
1025 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/3D-printer">3D printer</a> wiki pages
1026 in Debian.</p>
1027
1028 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1029 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1030 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1031
1032       </div>
1033       <div class="tags">
1034
1035
1036         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1037
1038
1039       </div>
1040     </div>
1041     <div class="padding"></div>
1042
1043     <div class="entry">
1044       <div class="title">
1045         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cura__the_nice_3D_print_slicer__is_now_in_Debian_Unstable.html">Cura, the nice 3D print slicer, is now in Debian Unstable</a>
1046       </div>
1047       <div class="date">
1048         17th December 2017
1049       </div>
1050       <div class="body">
1051         <p>After several months of working and waiting, I am happy to report
1052 that the nice and user friendly 3D printer slicer software Cura just
1053 entered Debian Unstable.  It consist of five packages,
1054 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura">cura</a>,
1055 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura-engine">cura-engine</a>,
1056 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libarcus">libarcus</a>,
1057 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/fdm-materials">fdm-materials</a>,
1058 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libsavitar">libsavitar</a> and
1059 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/uranium">uranium</a>.  The last
1060 two, uranium and cura, entered Unstable yesterday.  This should make
1061 it easier for Debian users to print on at least the Ultimaker class of
1062 3D printers.  My nearest 3D printer is an Ultimaker 2+, so it will
1063 make life easier for at least me. :)</p>
1064
1065 <p>The work to make this happen was done by Gregor Riepl, and I was
1066 happy to assist him in sponsoring the packages.  With the introduction
1067 of Cura, Debian is up to three 3D printer slicers at your service,
1068 Cura, Slic3r and Slic3r Prusa.  If you own or have access to a 3D
1069 printer, give it a go. :)</p>
1070
1071 <p>The 3D printer software is maintained by the 3D printer Debian
1072 team, flocking together on the
1073 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/3dprinter-general">3dprinter-general</a>
1074 mailing list and the
1075 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-3dprinting">#debian-3dprinting</a>
1076 IRC channel.</p>
1077
1078 <p>The next step for Cura in Debian is to update the cura package to
1079 version 3.0.3 and then update the entire set of packages to version
1080 3.1.0 which showed up the last few days.</p>
1081
1082       </div>
1083       <div class="tags">
1084
1085
1086         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1087
1088
1089       </div>
1090     </div>
1091     <div class="padding"></div>
1092
1093     <div class="entry">
1094       <div class="title">
1095         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Generating_3D_prints_in_Debian_using_Cura_and_Slic3r__prusa_.html">Generating 3D prints in Debian using Cura and Slic3r(-prusa)</a>
1096       </div>
1097       <div class="date">
1098          9th October 2017
1099       </div>
1100       <div class="body">
1101         <p>At my nearby maker space,
1102 <a href="http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Sonen</a>, I heard the story that it
1103 was easier to generate gcode files for theyr 3D printers (Ultimake 2+)
1104 on Windows and MacOS X than Linux, because the software involved had
1105 to be manually compiled and set up on Linux while premade packages
1106 worked out of the box on Windows and MacOS X.  I found this annoying,
1107 as the software involved,
1108 <a href="https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura">Cura</a>, is free software
1109 and should be trivial to get up and running on Linux if someone took
1110 the time to package it for the relevant distributions.  I even found
1111 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/706656">a request for adding into
1112 Debian</a> from 2013, which had seem some activity over the years but
1113 never resulted in the software showing up in Debian.  So a few days
1114 ago I offered my help to try to improve the situation.</p>
1115
1116 <p>Now I am very happy to see that all the packages required by a
1117 working Cura in Debian are uploaded into Debian and waiting in the NEW
1118 queue for the ftpmasters to have a look.  You can track the progress
1119 on
1120 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=3dprinter-general%40lists.alioth.debian.org">the
1121 status page for the 3D printer team</a>.</p>
1122
1123 <p>The uploaded packages are a bit behind upstream, and was uploaded
1124 now to get slots in <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW
1125 queue</a> while we work up updating the packages to the latest
1126 upstream version.</p>
1127
1128 <p>On a related note, two competitors for Cura, which I found harder
1129 to use and was unable to configure correctly for Ultimaker 2+ in the
1130 short time I spent on it, are already in Debian.  If you are looking
1131 for 3D printer "slicers" and want something already available in
1132 Debian, check out
1133 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r">slic3r</a> and
1134 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r-prusa">slic3r-prusa</a>.
1135 The latter is a fork of the former.</p>
1136
1137 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1138 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1139 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1140
1141       </div>
1142       <div class="tags">
1143
1144
1145         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1146
1147
1148       </div>
1149     </div>
1150     <div class="padding"></div>
1151
1152     <div class="entry">
1153       <div class="title">
1154         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Visualizing_GSM_radio_chatter_using_gr_gsm_and_Hopglass.html">Visualizing GSM radio chatter using gr-gsm and Hopglass</a>
1155       </div>
1156       <div class="date">
1157         29th September 2017
1158       </div>
1159       <div class="body">
1160         <p>Every mobile phone announce its existence over radio to the nearby
1161 mobile cell towers.  And this radio chatter is available for anyone
1162 with a radio receiver capable of receiving them.  Details about the
1163 mobile phones with very good accuracy is of course collected by the
1164 phone companies, but this is not the topic of this blog post.  The
1165 mobile phone radio chatter make it possible to figure out when a cell
1166 phone is nearby, as it include the SIM card ID (IMSI).  By paying
1167 attention over time, one can see when a phone arrive and when it leave
1168 an area.  I believe it would be nice to make this information more
1169 available to the general public, to make more people aware of how
1170 their phones are announcing their whereabouts to anyone that care to
1171 listen.</p>
1172
1173 <p>I am very happy to report that we managed to get something
1174 visualizing this information up and running for
1175 <a href="http://norwaymakers.org/osf17">Oslo Skaperfestival 2017</a>
1176 (Oslo Makers Festival) taking place today and tomorrow at Deichmanske
1177 library.  The solution is based on the
1178 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">simple
1179 recipe for listening to GSM chatter</a> I posted a few days ago, and
1180 will show up at the stand of <a href="http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Åpen
1181 Sone from the Computer Science department of the University of
1182 Oslo</a>.  The presentation will show the nearby mobile phones (aka
1183 IMSIs) as dots in a web browser graph, with lines to the dot
1184 representing mobile base station it is talking to. It was working in
1185 the lab yesterday, and was moved into place this morning.</p>
1186
1187 <p>We set up a fairly powerful desktop machine using Debian
1188 Buster/Testing with several (five, I believe) RTL2838 DVB-T receivers
1189 connected and visualize the visible cell phone towers using an
1190 <a href="https://github.com/marlow925/hopglass">English version of
1191 Hopglass</a>.  A fairly powerfull machine is needed as the
1192 grgsm_livemon_headless processes from
1193 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm</a> converting
1194 the radio signal to data packages is quite CPU intensive.</p>
1195
1196 <p>The frequencies to listen to, are identified using a slightly
1197 patched scan-and-livemon (to set the --args values for each receiver),
1198 and the Hopglass data is generated using the
1199 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/IMSI-catcher/tree/meshviewer-output">patches
1200 in my meshviewer-output branch</a>.  For some reason we could not get
1201 more than four SDRs working.  There is also a geographical map trying
1202 to show the location of the base stations, but I believe their
1203 coordinates are hardcoded to some random location in Germany, I
1204 believe.  The code should be replaced with code to look up location in
1205 a text file, a sqlite database or one of the online databases
1206 mentioned in
1207 <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher/issues/14">the github
1208 issue for the topic</a>.
1209
1210 <p>If this sound interesting, visit the stand at the festival!</p>
1211
1212       </div>
1213       <div class="tags">
1214
1215
1216         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1217
1218
1219       </div>
1220     </div>
1221     <div class="padding"></div>
1222
1223     <div class="entry">
1224       <div class="title">
1225         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">Easier recipe to observe the cell phones around you</a>
1226       </div>
1227       <div class="date">
1228         24th September 2017
1229       </div>
1230       <div class="body">
1231         <p>A little more than a month ago I wrote
1232 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">how
1233 to observe the SIM card ID (aka IMSI number) of mobile phones talking
1234 to nearby mobile phone base stations using Debian GNU/Linux and a
1235 cheap USB software defined radio</a>, and thus being able to pinpoint
1236 the location of people and equipment (like cars and trains) with an
1237 accuracy of a few kilometer.  Since then we have worked to make the
1238 procedure even simpler, and it is now possible to do this without any
1239 manual frequency tuning and without building your own packages.</p>
1240
1241 <p>The <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm</a>
1242 package is now included in Debian testing and unstable, and the
1243 IMSI-catcher code no longer require root access to fetch and decode
1244 the GSM data collected using gr-gsm.</p>
1245
1246 <p>Here is an updated recipe, using packages built by Debian and a git
1247 clone of two python scripts:</p>
1248
1249 <ol>
1250
1251 <li>Start with a Debian machine running the Buster version (aka
1252   testing).</li>
1253
1254 <li>Run '<tt>apt install gr-gsm python-numpy python-scipy
1255   python-scapy</tt>' as root to install required packages.</li>
1256
1257 <li>Fetch the code decoding GSM packages using '<tt>git clone
1258   github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher.git</tt>'.</li>
1259
1260 <li>Insert USB software defined radio supported by GNU Radio.</li>
1261
1262 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '<tt>python
1263   scan-and-livemon</tt>' to locate the frequency of nearby base
1264   stations and start listening for GSM packages on one of them.</li>
1265
1266 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '<tt>python
1267   simple_IMSI-catcher.py</tt>' to display the collected information.</li>
1268
1269 </ol>
1270
1271 <p>Note, due to a bug somewhere the scan-and-livemon program (actually
1272 <a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/issues/336">its underlying
1273 program grgsm_scanner</a>) do not work with the HackRF radio.  It does
1274 work with RTL 8232 and other similar USB radio receivers you can get
1275 very cheaply
1276 (<a href="https://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=rtl+2832">for example
1277 from ebay</a>), so for now the solution is to scan using the RTL radio
1278 and only use HackRF for fetching GSM data.</p>
1279
1280 <p>As far as I can tell, a cell phone only show up on one of the
1281 frequencies at the time, so if you are going to track and count every
1282 cell phone around you, you need to listen to all the frequencies used.
1283 To listen to several frequencies, use the --numrecv argument to
1284 scan-and-livemon to use several receivers.  Further, I am not sure if
1285 phones using 3G or 4G will show as talking GSM to base stations, so
1286 this approach might not see all phones around you.  I typically see
1287 0-400 IMSI numbers an hour when looking around where I live.</p>
1288
1289 <p>I've tried to run the scanner on a
1290 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi 2 and 3
1291 running Debian Buster</a>, but the grgsm_livemon_headless process seem
1292 to be too CPU intensive to keep up.  When GNU Radio print 'O' to
1293 stdout, I am told there it is caused by a buffer overflow between the
1294 radio and GNU Radio, caused by the program being unable to read the
1295 GSM data fast enough.  If you see a stream of 'O's from the terminal
1296 where you started scan-and-livemon, you need a give the process more
1297 CPU power.  Perhaps someone are able to optimize the code to a point
1298 where it become possible to set up RPi3 based GSM sniffers?  I tried
1299 using Raspbian instead of Debian, but there seem to be something wrong
1300 with GNU Radio on raspbian, causing glibc to abort().</p>
1301
1302       </div>
1303       <div class="tags">
1304
1305
1306         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1307
1308
1309       </div>
1310     </div>
1311     <div class="padding"></div>
1312
1313     <div class="entry">
1314       <div class="title">
1315         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">Simpler recipe on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher using Debian</a>
1316       </div>
1317       <div class="date">
1318          9th August 2017
1319       </div>
1320       <div class="body">
1321         <p>On friday, I came across an interesting article in the Norwegian
1322 web based ICT news magazine digi.no on
1323 <a href="https://www.digi.no/artikler/sikkerhetsforsker-lagde-enkel-imsi-catcher-for-60-kroner-na-kan-mobiler-kartlegges-av-alle/398588">how
1324 to collect the IMSI numbers of nearby cell phones</a> using the cheap
1325 DVB-T software defined radios.  The article refered to instructions
1326 and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjwgNd_as30">a recipe by
1327 Keld Norman on Youtube on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher</a>, and I decided to test them out.</p>
1328
1329 <p>The instructions said to use Ubuntu, install pip using apt (to
1330 bypass apt), use pip to install pybombs (to bypass both apt and pip),
1331 and the ask pybombs to fetch and build everything you need from
1332 scratch.  I wanted to see if I could do the same on the most recent
1333 Debian packages, but this did not work because pybombs tried to build
1334 stuff that no longer build with the most recent openssl library or
1335 some other version skew problem.  While trying to get this recipe
1336 working, I learned that the apt->pip->pybombs route was a long detour,
1337 and the only piece of software dependency missing in Debian was the
1338 gr-gsm package.  I also found out that the lead upstream developer of
1339 gr-gsm (the name stand for GNU Radio GSM) project already had a set of
1340 Debian packages provided in an Ubuntu PPA repository.  All I needed to
1341 do was to dget the Debian source package and built it.</p>
1342
1343 <p>The IMSI collector is a python script listening for packages on the
1344 loopback network device and printing to the terminal some specific GSM
1345 packages with IMSI numbers in them.  The code is fairly short and easy
1346 to understand.  The reason this work is because gr-gsm include a tool
1347 to read GSM data from a software defined radio like a DVB-T USB stick
1348 and other software defined radios, decode them and inject them into a
1349 network device on your Linux machine (using the loopback device by
1350 default).  This proved to work just fine, and I've been testing the
1351 collector for a few days now.</p>
1352
1353 <p>The updated and simpler recipe is thus to</p>
1354
1355 <ol>
1356
1357 <li>start with a Debian machine running Stretch or newer,</li>
1358
1359 <li>build and install the gr-gsm package available from
1360 <a href="http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/">http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/</a>,</li>
1361
1362 <li>clone the git repostory from <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher">https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher</a>,</li>
1363
1364 <li>run grgsm_livemon and adjust the frequency until the terminal
1365 where it was started is filled with a stream of text (meaning you
1366 found a GSM station).</li>
1367
1368 <li>go into the IMSI-catcher directory and run 'sudo python simple_IMSI-catcher.py' to extract the IMSI numbers.</li>
1369
1370 </ol>
1371
1372 <p>To make it even easier in the future to get this sniffer up and
1373 running, I decided to package
1374 <a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/">the gr-gsm project</a>
1375 for Debian (<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/871055">WNPP
1376 #871055</a>), and the package was uploaded into the NEW queue today.
1377 Luckily the gnuradio maintainer has promised to help me, as I do not
1378 know much about gnuradio stuff yet.</p>
1379
1380 <p>I doubt this "IMSI cacher" is anywhere near as powerfull as
1381 commercial tools like
1382 <a href="https://www.thespyphone.com/portable-imsi-imei-catcher/">The
1383 Spy Phone Portable IMSI / IMEI Catcher</a> or the
1384 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker">Harris
1385 Stingray</a>, but I hope the existance of cheap alternatives can make
1386 more people realise how their whereabouts when carrying a cell phone
1387 is easily tracked.  Seeing the data flow on the screen, realizing that
1388 I live close to a police station and knowing that the police is also
1389 wearing cell phones, I wonder how hard it would be for criminals to
1390 track the position of the police officers to discover when there are
1391 police near by, or for foreign military forces to track the location
1392 of the Norwegian military forces, or for anyone to track the location
1393 of government officials...</p>
1394
1395 <p>It is worth noting that the data reported by the IMSI-catcher
1396 script mentioned above is only a fraction of the data broadcasted on
1397 the GSM network.  It will only collect one frequency at the time,
1398 while a typical phone will be using several frequencies, and not all
1399 phones will be using the frequencies tracked by the grgsm_livemod
1400 program.  Also, there is a lot of radio chatter being ignored by the
1401 simple_IMSI-catcher script, which would be collected by extending the
1402 parser code.  I wonder if gr-gsm can be set up to listen to more than
1403 one frequency?</p>
1404
1405       </div>
1406       <div class="tags">
1407
1408
1409         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1410
1411
1412       </div>
1413     </div>
1414     <div class="padding"></div>
1415
1416     <div class="entry">
1417       <div class="title">
1418         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_is_now_available.html">Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook is now available</a>
1419       </div>
1420       <div class="date">
1421         25th July 2017
1422       </div>
1423       <div class="body">
1424         <p align="center"><img align="center" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-07-25-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.png"/></p>
1425
1426 <p>I finally received a copy of the Norwegian Bokmål edition of
1427 "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
1428 Handbook</a>".  This test copy arrived in the mail a few days ago, and
1429 I am very happy to hold the result in my hand.   We spent around one and a half year translating it. This paperbook edition
1430 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/#norwegian">is available
1431 from lulu.com</a>.  If you buy it quickly, you save 25% on the list
1432 price.  The book is also available for download in electronic form as
1433 PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, as can be
1434 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/">read online
1435 as a web page</a>.</p>
1436
1437 <p>This is the second book I publish (the first was the book
1438 "<a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a>" by Lawrence Lessig
1439 in
1440 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">English</a>,
1441 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">French</a>
1442 and
1443 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Norwegian
1444 Bokmål</a>), and I am very excited to finally wrap up this
1445 project.  I hope
1446 "<a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/rapha%C3%ABl-hertzog-and-roland-mas/h%C3%A5ndbok-for-debian-administratoren/paperback/product-23262290.html">Håndbok
1447 for Debian-administratoren</a>" will be well received.</p>
1448
1449       </div>
1450       <div class="tags">
1451
1452
1453         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1454
1455
1456       </div>
1457     </div>
1458     <div class="padding"></div>
1459
1460     <div class="entry">
1461       <div class="title">
1462         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/N_r_nynorskoversettelsen_svikter_til_eksamen___.html">Når nynorskoversettelsen svikter til eksamen...</a>
1463       </div>
1464       <div class="date">
1465          3rd June 2017
1466       </div>
1467       <div class="body">
1468         <p><a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/norge/Krever-at-elever-ma-fa-annullert-eksamen-etter-rot-med-oppgavetekster-622459b.html">Aftenposten
1469 melder i dag</a> om feil i eksamensoppgavene for eksamen i politikk og
1470 menneskerettigheter, der teksten i bokmåls og nynorskutgaven ikke var
1471 like.  Oppgaveteksten er gjengitt i artikkelen, og jeg ble nysgjerring
1472 på om den fri oversetterløsningen
1473 <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium</a> ville gjort en bedre
1474 jobb enn Utdanningsdirektoratet.  Det kan se slik ut.</p>
1475
1476 <p>Her er bokmålsoppgaven fra eksamenen:</p>
1477
1478 <blockquote>
1479 <p>Drøft utfordringene knyttet til nasjonalstatenes og andre aktørers
1480 rolle og muligheter til å håndtere internasjonale utfordringer, som
1481 for eksempel flykningekrisen.</p>
1482
1483 <p>Vedlegge er eksempler på tekster som kan gi relevante perspektiver
1484 på temaet:</p>
1485 <ol>
1486 <li>Flykningeregnskapet 2016, UNHCR og IDMC
1487 <li>«Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet, 26. november 2015
1488 </ol>
1489
1490 </blockquote>
1491
1492 <p>Dette oversetter Apertium slik:</p>
1493
1494 <blockquote>
1495 <p>Drøft utfordringane knytte til nasjonalstatane sine og rolla til
1496 andre aktørar og høve til å handtera internasjonale utfordringar, som
1497 til dømes *flykningekrisen.</p>
1498
1499 <p>Vedleggja er døme på tekster som kan gje relevante perspektiv på
1500 temaet:</p>
1501
1502 <ol>
1503 <li>*Flykningeregnskapet 2016, *UNHCR og *IDMC</li>
1504 <li>«*Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet, 26. november 2015</li>
1505 </ol>
1506
1507 </blockquote>
1508
1509 <p>Ord som ikke ble forstått er markert med stjerne (*), og trenger
1510 ekstra språksjekk.  Men ingen ord er forsvunnet, slik det var i
1511 oppgaven elevene fikk presentert på eksamen.  Jeg mistenker dog at
1512 "andre aktørers rolle og muligheter til ..." burde vært oversatt til
1513 "rolla til andre aktørar og deira høve til ..." eller noe slikt, men
1514 det er kanskje flisespikking.  Det understreker vel bare at det alltid
1515 trengs korrekturlesning etter automatisk oversettelse.</p>
1516
1517       </div>
1518       <div class="tags">
1519
1520
1521         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
1522
1523
1524       </div>
1525     </div>
1526     <div class="padding"></div>
1527
1528     <div class="entry">
1529       <div class="title">
1530         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Detecting_NFS_hangs_on_Linux_without_hanging_yourself___.html">Detecting NFS hangs on Linux without hanging yourself...</a>
1531       </div>
1532       <div class="date">
1533          9th March 2017
1534       </div>
1535       <div class="body">
1536         <p>Over the years, administrating thousand of NFS mounting linux
1537 computers at the time, I often needed a way to detect if the machine
1538 was experiencing NFS hang.  If you try to use <tt>df</tt> or look at a
1539 file or directory affected by the hang, the process (and possibly the
1540 shell) will hang too.  So you want to be able to detect this without
1541 risking the detection process getting stuck too.  It has not been
1542 obvious how to do this.  When the hang has lasted a while, it is
1543 possible to find messages like these in dmesg:</p>
1544
1545 <p><blockquote>
1546 nfs: server nfsserver not responding, still trying
1547 <br>nfs: server nfsserver OK
1548 </blockquote></p>
1549
1550 <p>It is hard to know if the hang is still going on, and it is hard to
1551 be sure looking in dmesg is going to work.  If there are lots of other
1552 messages in dmesg the lines might have rotated out of site before they
1553 are noticed.</p>
1554
1555 <p>While reading through the nfs client implementation in linux kernel
1556 code, I came across some statistics that seem to give a way to detect
1557 it.  The om_timeouts sunrpc value in the kernel will increase every
1558 time the above log entry is inserted into dmesg.  And after digging a
1559 bit further, I discovered that this value show up in
1560 /proc/self/mountstats on Linux.</p>
1561
1562 <p>The mountstats content seem to be shared between files using the
1563 same file system context, so it is enough to check one of the
1564 mountstats files to get the state of the mount point for the machine.
1565 I assume this will not show lazy umounted NFS points, nor NFS mount
1566 points in a different process context (ie with a different filesystem
1567 view), but that does not worry me.</p>
1568
1569 <p>The content for a NFS mount point look similar to this:</p>
1570
1571 <p><blockquote><pre>
1572 [...]
1573 device /dev/mapper/Debian-var mounted on /var with fstype ext3
1574 device nfsserver:/mnt/nfsserver/home0 mounted on /mnt/nfsserver/home0 with fstype nfs statvers=1.1
1575         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
1576         age:    7863311
1577         caps:   caps=0x3fe7,wtmult=4096,dtsize=8192,bsize=0,namlen=255
1578         sec:    flavor=1,pseudoflavor=1
1579         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
1580         bytes:  166253035039 219519120027 0 0 40783504807 185466229638 11677877 45561809
1581         RPC iostats version: 1.0  p/v: 100003/3 (nfs)
1582         xprt:   tcp 925 1 6810 0 0 111505412 111480497 109 2672418560317 0 248 53869103 22481820
1583         per-op statistics
1584                 NULL: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1585              GETATTR: 61063106 61063108 0 9621383060 6839064400 453650 77291321 78926132
1586              SETATTR: 463469 463470 0 92005440 66739536 63787 603235 687943
1587               LOOKUP: 17021657 17021657 0 3354097764 4013442928 57216 35125459 35566511
1588               ACCESS: 14281703 14290009 5 2318400592 1713803640 1709282 4865144 7130140
1589             READLINK: 125 125 0 20472 18620 0 1112 1118
1590                 READ: 4214236 4214237 0 715608524 41328653212 89884 22622768 22806693
1591                WRITE: 8479010 8494376 22 187695798568 1356087148 178264904 51506907 231671771
1592               CREATE: 171708 171708 0 38084748 46702272 873 1041833 1050398
1593                MKDIR: 3680 3680 0 773980 993920 26 23990 24245
1594              SYMLINK: 903 903 0 233428 245488 6 5865 5917
1595                MKNOD: 80 80 0 20148 21760 0 299 304
1596               REMOVE: 429921 429921 0 79796004 61908192 3313 2710416 2741636
1597                RMDIR: 3367 3367 0 645112 484848 22 5782 6002
1598               RENAME: 466201 466201 0 130026184 121212260 7075 5935207 5961288
1599                 LINK: 289155 289155 0 72775556 67083960 2199 2565060 2585579
1600              READDIR: 2933237 2933237 0 516506204 13973833412 10385 3190199 3297917
1601          READDIRPLUS: 1652839 1652839 0 298640972 6895997744 84735 14307895 14448937
1602               FSSTAT: 6144 6144 0 1010516 1032192 51 9654 10022
1603               FSINFO: 2 2 0 232 328 0 1 1
1604             PATHCONF: 1 1 0 116 140 0 0 0
1605               COMMIT: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1606
1607 device binfmt_misc mounted on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc with fstype binfmt_misc
1608 [...]
1609 </pre></blockquote></p>
1610
1611 <p>The key number to look at is the third number in the per-op list.
1612 It is the number of NFS timeouts experiences per file system
1613 operation.  Here 22 write timeouts and 5 access timeouts.  If these
1614 numbers are increasing, I believe the machine is experiencing NFS
1615 hang.  Unfortunately the timeout value do not start to increase right
1616 away.  The NFS operations need to time out first, and this can take a
1617 while.  The exact timeout value depend on the setup.  For example the
1618 defaults for TCP and UDP mount points are quite different, and the
1619 timeout value is affected by the soft, hard, timeo and retrans NFS
1620 mount options.</p>
1621
1622 <p>The only way I have been able to get working on Debian and RedHat
1623 Enterprise Linux for getting the timeout count is to peek in /proc/.
1624 But according to
1625 <ahref="http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/816-4555/netmonitor-12/index.html">Solaris
1626 10 System Administration Guide: Network Services</a>, the 'nfsstat -c'
1627 command can be used to get these timeout values.  But this do not work
1628 on Linux, as far as I can tell.  I
1629 <ahref="http://bugs.debian.org/857043">asked Debian about this</a>,
1630 but have not seen any replies yet.</p>
1631
1632 <p>Is there a better way to figure out if a Linux NFS client is
1633 experiencing NFS hangs?  Is there a way to detect which processes are
1634 affected?  Is there a way to get the NFS mount going quickly once the
1635 network problem causing the NFS hang has been cleared?  I would very
1636 much welcome some clues, as we regularly run into NFS hangs.</p>
1637
1638       </div>
1639       <div class="tags">
1640
1641
1642         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
1643
1644
1645       </div>
1646     </div>
1647     <div class="padding"></div>
1648
1649     <div class="entry">
1650       <div class="title">
1651         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_complete__proofreading_in_progress.html">Norwegian Bokmål translation of The Debian Administrator's Handbook complete, proofreading in progress</a>
1652       </div>
1653       <div class="date">
1654          3rd March 2017
1655       </div>
1656       <div class="body">
1657         <p>For almost a year now, we have been working on making a Norwegian
1658 Bokmål edition of <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian
1659 Administrator's Handbook</a>.  Now, thanks to the tireless effort of
1660 Ole-Erik, Ingrid and Andreas, the initial translation is complete, and
1661 we are working on the proof reading to ensure consistent language and
1662 use of correct computer science terms.  The plan is to make the book
1663 available on paper, as well as in electronic form.  For that to
1664 happen, the proof reading must be completed and all the figures need
1665 to be translated.  If you want to help out, get in touch.</p>
1666
1667 <p><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-handbook/debian-handbook-nb-NO.pdf">A
1668
1669 fresh PDF edition</a> in A4 format (the final book will have smaller
1670 pages) of the book created every morning is available for
1671 proofreading.  If you find any errors, please
1672 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">visit
1673 Weblate and correct the error</a>.  The
1674 <a href="http://l.github.io/debian-handbook/stat/nb-NO/index.html">state
1675 of the translation including figures</a> is a useful source for those
1676 provide Norwegian bokmål screen shots and figures.</p>
1677
1678       </div>
1679       <div class="tags">
1680
1681
1682         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1683
1684
1685       </div>
1686     </div>
1687     <div class="padding"></div>
1688
1689     <div class="entry">
1690       <div class="title">
1691         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlimited_randomness_with_the_ChaosKey_.html">Unlimited randomness with the ChaosKey?</a>
1692       </div>
1693       <div class="date">
1694          1st March 2017
1695       </div>
1696       <div class="body">
1697         <p>A few days ago I ordered a small batch of
1698 <a href="http://altusmetrum.org/ChaosKey/">the ChaosKey</a>, a small
1699 USB dongle for generating entropy created by Bdale Garbee and Keith
1700 Packard.  Yesterday it arrived, and I am very happy to report that it
1701 work great!  According to its designers, to get it to work out of the
1702 box, you need the Linux kernel version 4.1 or later.  I tested on a
1703 Debian Stretch machine (kernel version 4.9), and there it worked just
1704 fine, increasing the available entropy very quickly.  I wrote a small
1705 test oneliner to test.  It first print the current entropy level,
1706 drain /dev/random, and then print the entropy level for five seconds.
1707 Here is the situation without the ChaosKey inserted:</p>
1708
1709 <blockquote><pre>
1710 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1711   dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
1712   for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
1713      cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1714      sleep 1; \
1715   done
1716 300
1717 0+1 oppføringer inn
1718 0+1 oppføringer ut
1719 28 byte kopiert, 0,000264565 s, 106 kB/s
1720 4
1721 8
1722 12
1723 17
1724 21
1725 %
1726 </pre></blockquote>
1727
1728 <p>The entropy level increases by 3-4 every second.  In such case any
1729 application requiring random bits (like a HTTPS enabled web server)
1730 will halt and wait for more entrpy.  And here is the situation with
1731 the ChaosKey inserted:</p>
1732
1733 <blockquote><pre>
1734 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1735   dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
1736   for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
1737      cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1738      sleep 1; \
1739   done
1740 1079
1741 0+1 oppføringer inn
1742 0+1 oppføringer ut
1743 104 byte kopiert, 0,000487647 s, 213 kB/s
1744 433
1745 1028
1746 1031
1747 1035
1748 1038
1749 %
1750 </pre></blockquote>
1751
1752 <p>Quite the difference. :) I bought a few more than I need, in case
1753 someone want to buy one here in Norway. :)</p>
1754
1755 <p>Update: The dongle was presented at Debconf last year.  You might
1756 find <a href="https://debconf16.debconf.org/talks/94/">the talk
1757 recording illuminating</a>.  It explains exactly what the source of
1758 randomness is, if you are unable to spot it from the schema drawing
1759 available from the ChaosKey web site linked at the start of this blog
1760 post.</p>
1761
1762       </div>
1763       <div class="tags">
1764
1765
1766         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1767
1768
1769       </div>
1770     </div>
1771     <div class="padding"></div>
1772
1773     <div class="entry">
1774       <div class="title">
1775         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Where_did_that_package_go___mdash__geolocated_IP_traceroute.html">Where did that package go? &mdash; geolocated IP traceroute</a>
1776       </div>
1777       <div class="date">
1778          9th January 2017
1779       </div>
1780       <div class="body">
1781         <p>Did you ever wonder where the web trafic really flow to reach the
1782 web servers, and who own the network equipment it is flowing through?
1783 It is possible to get a glimpse of this from using traceroute, but it
1784 is hard to find all the details.  Many years ago, I wrote a system to
1785 map the Norwegian Internet (trying to figure out if our plans for a
1786 network game service would get low enough latency, and who we needed
1787 to talk to about setting up game servers close to the users.  Back
1788 then I used traceroute output from many locations (I asked my friends
1789 to run a script and send me their traceroute output) to create the
1790 graph and the map.  The output from traceroute typically look like
1791 this:
1792
1793 <p><pre>
1794 traceroute to www.stortinget.no (85.88.67.10), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1795  1  uio-gw10.uio.no (129.240.202.1)  0.447 ms  0.486 ms  0.621 ms
1796  2  uio-gw8.uio.no (129.240.24.229)  0.467 ms  0.578 ms  0.675 ms
1797  3  oslo-gw1.uninett.no (128.39.65.17)  0.385 ms  0.373 ms  0.358 ms
1798  4  te3-1-2.br1.fn3.as2116.net (193.156.90.3)  1.174 ms  1.172 ms  1.153 ms
1799  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
1800  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
1801  7  89.191.10.146 (89.191.10.146)  0.931 ms  0.917 ms  0.955 ms
1802  8  * * *
1803  9  * * *
1804 [...]
1805 </pre></p>
1806
1807 <p>This show the DNS names and IP addresses of (at least some of the)
1808 network equipment involved in getting the data traffic from me to the
1809 www.stortinget.no server, and how long it took in milliseconds for a
1810 package to reach the equipment and return to me.  Three packages are
1811 sent, and some times the packages do not follow the same path.  This
1812 is shown for hop 5, where three different IP addresses replied to the
1813 traceroute request.</p>
1814
1815 <p>There are many ways to measure trace routes.  Other good traceroute
1816 implementations I use are traceroute (using ICMP packages) mtr (can do
1817 both ICMP, UDP and TCP) and scapy (python library with ICMP, UDP, TCP
1818 traceroute and a lot of other capabilities).  All of them are easily
1819 available in <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>.</p>
1820
1821 <p>This time around, I wanted to know the geographic location of
1822 different route points, to visualize how visiting a web page spread
1823 information about the visit to a lot of servers around the globe.  The
1824 background is that a web site today often will ask the browser to get
1825 from many servers the parts (for example HTML, JSON, fonts,
1826 JavaScript, CSS, video) required to display the content.  This will
1827 leak information about the visit to those controlling these servers
1828 and anyone able to peek at the data traffic passing by (like your ISP,
1829 the ISPs backbone provider, FRA, GCHQ, NSA and others).</p>
1830
1831 <p>Lets pick an example, the Norwegian parliament web site
1832 www.stortinget.no.  It is read daily by all members of parliament and
1833 their staff, as well as political journalists, activits and many other
1834 citizens of Norway.  A visit to the www.stortinget.no web site will
1835 ask your browser to contact 8 other servers: ajax.googleapis.com,
1836 insights.hotjar.com, script.hotjar.com, static.hotjar.com,
1837 stats.g.doubleclick.net, www.google-analytics.com,
1838 www.googletagmanager.com and www.netigate.se.  I extracted this by
1839 asking <a href="http://phantomjs.org/">PhantomJS</a> to visit the
1840 Stortinget web page and tell me all the URLs PhantomJS downloaded to
1841 render the page (in HAR format using
1842 <a href="https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/examples/netsniff.js">their
1843 netsniff example</a>.  I am very grateful to Gorm for showing me how
1844 to do this).  My goal is to visualize network traces to all IP
1845 addresses behind these DNS names, do show where visitors personal
1846 information is spread when visiting the page.</p>
1847
1848 <p align="center"><a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml"><img
1849 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geoip-small.png" alt="map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using GeoIP"/></a></p>
1850
1851 <p>When I had a look around for options, I could not find any good
1852 free software tools to do this, and decided I needed my own traceroute
1853 wrapper outputting KML based on locations looked up using GeoIP.  KML
1854 is easy to work with and easy to generate, and understood by several
1855 of the GIS tools I have available.  I got good help from by NUUG
1856 colleague Anders Einar with this, and the result can be seen in
1857 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/kmltraceroute">my
1858 kmltraceroute git repository</a>.  Unfortunately, the quality of the
1859 free GeoIP databases I could find (and the for-pay databases my
1860 friends had access to) is not up to the task.  The IP addresses of
1861 central Internet infrastructure would typically be placed near the
1862 controlling companies main office, and not where the router is really
1863 located, as you can see from <a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml">the
1864 KML file I created</a> using the GeoLite City dataset from MaxMind.
1865
1866 <p align="center"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg"><img
1867 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy-small.png" alt="scapy traceroute graph for URLs used by www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
1868
1869 <p>I also had a look at the visual traceroute graph created by
1870 <a href="http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/">the scrapy project</a>,
1871 showing IP network ownership (aka AS owner) for the IP address in
1872 question.
1873 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg">The
1874 graph display a lot of useful information about the traceroute in SVG
1875 format</a>, and give a good indication on who control the network
1876 equipment involved, but it do not include geolocation.  This graph
1877 make it possible to see the information is made available at least for
1878 UNINETT, Catchcom, Stortinget, Nordunet, Google, Amazon, Telia, Level
1879 3 Communications and NetDNA.</p>
1880
1881 <p align="center"><a href="https://geotraceroute.com/index.php?node=4&host=www.stortinget.no"><img
1882 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-small.png" alt="example geotraceroute view for www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
1883
1884 <p>In the process, I came across the
1885 <a href="https://geotraceroute.com/">web service GeoTraceroute</a> by
1886 Salim Gasmi.  Its methology of combining guesses based on DNS names,
1887 various location databases and finally use latecy times to rule out
1888 candidate locations seemed to do a very good job of guessing correct
1889 geolocation.  But it could only do one trace at the time, did not have
1890 a sensor in Norway and did not make the geolocations easily available
1891 for postprocessing.  So I contacted the developer and asked if he
1892 would be willing to share the code (he refused until he had time to
1893 clean it up), but he was interested in providing the geolocations in a
1894 machine readable format, and willing to set up a sensor in Norway.  So
1895 since yesterday, it is possible to run traces from Norway in this
1896 service thanks to a sensor node set up by
1897 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG assosiation</a>, and get the
1898 trace in KML format for further processing.</p>
1899
1900 <p align="center"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.kml"><img
1901 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.png" alt="map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using geotraceroute"/></a></p>
1902
1903 <p>Here we can see a lot of trafic passes Sweden on its way to
1904 Denmark, Germany, Holland and Ireland.  Plenty of places where the
1905 Snowden confirmations verified the traffic is read by various actors
1906 without your best interest as their top priority.</p>
1907
1908 <p>Combining KML files is trivial using a text editor, so I could loop
1909 over all the hosts behind the urls imported by www.stortinget.no and
1910 ask for the KML file from GeoTraceroute, and create a combined KML
1911 file with all the traces (unfortunately only one of the IP addresses
1912 behind the DNS name is traced this time.  To get them all, one would
1913 have to request traces using IP number instead of DNS names from
1914 GeoTraceroute).  That might be the next step in this project.</p>
1915
1916 <p>Armed with these tools, I find it a lot easier to figure out where
1917 the IP traffic moves and who control the boxes involved in moving it.
1918 And every time the link crosses for example the Swedish border, we can
1919 be sure Swedish Signal Intelligence (FRA) is listening, as GCHQ do in
1920 Britain and NSA in USA and cables around the globe.  (Hm, what should
1921 we tell them? :) Keep that in mind if you ever send anything
1922 unencrypted over the Internet.</p>
1923
1924 <p>PS: KML files are drawn using
1925 <a href="http://ivanrublev.me/kml/">the KML viewer from Ivan
1926 Rublev<a/>, as it was less cluttered than the local Linux application
1927 Marble.  There are heaps of other options too.</p>
1928
1929 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1930 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1931 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1932
1933       </div>
1934       <div class="tags">
1935
1936
1937         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
1938
1939
1940       </div>
1941     </div>
1942     <div class="padding"></div>
1943
1944     <div class="entry">
1945       <div class="title">
1946         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Appstream_just_learned_how_to_map_hardware_to_packages_too_.html">Appstream just learned how to map hardware to packages too!</a>
1947       </div>
1948       <div class="date">
1949         23rd December 2016
1950       </div>
1951       <div class="body">
1952         <p>I received a very nice Christmas present today.  As my regular
1953 readers probably know, I have been working on the
1954 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the Isenkram
1955 system</a> for many years.  The goal of the Isenkram system is to make
1956 it easier for users to figure out what to install to get a given piece
1957 of hardware to work in Debian, and a key part of this system is a way
1958 to map hardware to packages.  Isenkram have its own mapping database,
1959 and also uses data provided by each package using the AppStream
1960 metadata format.  And today,
1961 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/appstream">AppStream</a> in
1962 Debian learned to look up hardware the same way Isenkram is doing it,
1963 ie using fnmatch():</p>
1964
1965 <p><pre>
1966 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias \
1967   usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
1968 Identifier: pymissile [generic]
1969 Name: pymissile
1970 Summary: Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher
1971 Package: pymissile
1972 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias usb:v0694p0002d0000
1973 Identifier: libnxt [generic]
1974 Name: libnxt
1975 Summary: utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick
1976 Package: libnxt
1977 ---
1978 Identifier: t2n [generic]
1979 Name: t2n
1980 Summary: Simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
1981 Package: t2n
1982 ---
1983 Identifier: python-nxt [generic]
1984 Name: python-nxt
1985 Summary: Python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
1986 Package: python-nxt
1987 ---
1988 Identifier: nbc [generic]
1989 Name: nbc
1990 Summary: C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
1991 Package: nbc
1992 %
1993 </pre></p>
1994
1995 <p>A similar query can be done using the combined AppStream and
1996 Isenkram databases using the isenkram-lookup tool:</p>
1997
1998 <p><pre>
1999 % isenkram-lookup usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
2000 pymissile
2001 % isenkram-lookup usb:v0694p0002d0000
2002 libnxt
2003 nbc
2004 python-nxt
2005 t2n
2006 %
2007 </pre></p>
2008
2009 <p>You can find modalias values relevant for your machine using
2010 <tt>cat $(find /sys/devices/ -name modalias)</tt>.
2011
2012 <p>If you want to make this system a success and help Debian users
2013 make the most of the hardware they have, please
2014 help<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add
2015 AppStream metadata for your package following the guidelines</a>
2016 documented in the wiki.  So far only 11 packages provide such
2017 information, among the several hundred hardware specific packages in
2018 Debian. The Isenkram database on the other hand contain 101 packages,
2019 mostly related to USB dongles.  Most of the packages with hardware
2020 mapping in AppStream are LEGO Mindstorms related, because I have, as
2021 part of my involvement in
2022 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the Debian LEGO
2023 team</a> given priority to making sure LEGO users get proposed the
2024 complete set of packages in Debian for that particular hardware.  The
2025 team also got a nice Christmas present today.  The
2026 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nxt-firmware">nxt-firmware
2027 package</a> made it into Debian.  With this package in place, it is
2028 now possible to use the LEGO Mindstorms NXT unit with only free
2029 software, as the nxt-firmware package contain the source and firmware
2030 binaries for the NXT brick.</p>
2031
2032 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2033 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2034 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2035
2036       </div>
2037       <div class="tags">
2038
2039
2040         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
2041
2042
2043       </div>
2044     </div>
2045     <div class="padding"></div>
2046
2047     <div class="entry">
2048       <div class="title">
2049         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_updated_with_a_lot_more_hardware_package_mappings.html">Isenkram updated with a lot more hardware-package mappings</a>
2050       </div>
2051       <div class="date">
2052         20th December 2016
2053       </div>
2054       <div class="body">
2055         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
2056 system</a> I wrote two years ago to make it easier in Debian to find
2057 and install packages to get your hardware dongles to work, is still
2058 going strong.  It is a system to look up the hardware present on or
2059 connected to the current system, and map the hardware to Debian
2060 packages.  It can either be done using the tools in isenkram-cli or
2061 using the user space daemon in the isenkram package.  The latter will
2062 notify you, when inserting new hardware, about what packages to
2063 install to get the dongle working.  It will even provide a button to
2064 click on to ask packagekit to install the packages.</p>
2065
2066 <p>Here is an command line example from my Thinkpad laptop:</p>
2067
2068 <p><pre>
2069 % isenkram-lookup
2070 bluez
2071 cheese
2072 ethtool
2073 fprintd
2074 fprintd-demo
2075 gkrellm-thinkbat
2076 hdapsd
2077 libpam-fprintd
2078 pidgin-blinklight
2079 thinkfan
2080 tlp
2081 tp-smapi-dkms
2082 tp-smapi-source
2083 tpb
2084 %
2085 </pre></p>
2086
2087 <p>It can also list the firware package providing firmware requested
2088 by the load kernel modules, which in my case is an empty list because
2089 I have all the firmware my machine need:
2090
2091 <p><pre>
2092 % /usr/sbin/isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2093 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
2094 %
2095 </pre></p>
2096
2097 <p>The last few days I had a look at several of the around 250
2098 packages in Debian with udev rules.  These seem like good candidates
2099 to install when a given hardware dongle is inserted, and I found
2100 several that should be proposed by isenkram.  I have not had time to
2101 check all of them, but am happy to report that now there are 97
2102 packages packages mapped to hardware by Isenkram.  11 of these
2103 packages provide hardware mapping using AppStream, while the rest are
2104 listed in the modaliases file provided in isenkram.</p>
2105
2106 <p>These are the packages with hardware mappings at the moment.  The
2107 <strong>marked packages</strong> are also announcing their hardware
2108 support using AppStream, for everyone to use:</p>
2109
2110 <p>air-quality-sensor, alsa-firmware-loaders, argyll,
2111 <strong>array-info</strong>, avarice, avrdude, b43-fwcutter,
2112 bit-babbler, bluez, bluez-firmware, <strong>brltty</strong>,
2113 <strong>broadcom-sta-dkms</strong>, calibre, cgminer, cheese, colord,
2114 <strong>colorhug-client</strong>, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux,
2115 dfu-util, dolphin-emu, ekeyd, ethtool, firmware-ipw2x00, fprintd,
2116 fprintd-demo, <strong>galileo</strong>, gkrellm-thinkbat, gphoto2,
2117 gpsbabel, gpsbabel-gui, gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, gr-fcdproplus,
2118 gr-osmosdr, gtkpod, hackrf, hdapsd, hdmi2usb-udev, hpijs-ppds, hplip,
2119 ipw3945-source, ipw3945d, kde-config-tablet, kinect-audio-setup,
2120 <strong>libnxt</strong>, libpam-fprintd, <strong>lomoco</strong>,
2121 madwimax, minidisc-utils, mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mtkbabel,
2122 <strong>nbc</strong>, <strong>nqc</strong>, nut-hal-drivers, ola,
2123 open-vm-toolbox, open-vm-tools, openambit, pcgminer, pcmciautils,
2124 pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, printer-driver-splix,
2125 <strong>pymissile</strong>, python-nxt, qlandkartegt,
2126 qlandkartegt-garmin, rosegarden, rt2x00-source, sispmctl,
2127 soapysdr-module-hackrf, solaar, squeak-plugins-scratch, sunxi-tools,
2128 <strong>t2n</strong>, thinkfan, thinkfinger-tools, tlp, tp-smapi-dkms,
2129 tp-smapi-source, tpb, tucnak, uhd-host, usbmuxd, viking,
2130 virtualbox-ose-guest-x11, w1retap, xawtv, xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse,
2131 xserver-xorg-input-wacom, xserver-xorg-video-qxl,
2132 xserver-xorg-video-vmware, yubikey-personalization and
2133 zd1211-firmware</p>
2134
2135 <p>If you know of other packages, please let me know with a wishlist
2136 bug report against the isenkram-cli package, and ask the package
2137 maintainer to
2138 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add AppStream
2139 metadata according to the guidelines</a> to provide the information
2140 for everyone.  In time, I hope to get rid of the isenkram specific
2141 hardware mapping and depend exclusively on AppStream.</p>
2142
2143 <p>Note, the AppStream metadata for broadcom-sta-dkms is matching too
2144 much hardware, and suggest that the package with with any ethernet
2145 card.  See <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/838735">bug #838735</a> for
2146 the details.  I hope the maintainer find time to address it soon.  In
2147 the mean time I provide an override in isenkram.</p>
2148
2149       </div>
2150       <div class="tags">
2151
2152
2153         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
2154
2155
2156       </div>
2157     </div>
2158     <div class="padding"></div>
2159
2160     <div class="entry">
2161       <div class="title">
2162         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oolite__a_life_in_space_as_vagabond_and_mercenary___nice_free_software.html">Oolite, a life in space as vagabond and mercenary - nice free software</a>
2163       </div>
2164       <div class="date">
2165         11th December 2016
2166       </div>
2167       <div class="body">
2168         <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-12-11-nice-oolite.png"/></p>
2169
2170 <p>In my early years, I played
2171 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Classic_Elite">the epic game
2172 Elite</a> on my PC.  I spent many months trading and fighting in
2173 space, and reached the 'elite' fighting status before I moved on.  The
2174 original Elite game was available on Commodore 64 and the IBM PC
2175 edition I played had a 64 KB executable.  I am still impressed today
2176 that the authors managed to squeeze both a 3D engine and details about
2177 more than 2000 planet systems across 7 galaxies into a binary so
2178 small.</p>
2179
2180 <p>I have known about <a href="http://www.oolite.org/">the free
2181 software game Oolite inspired by Elite</a> for a while, but did not
2182 really have time to test it properly until a few days ago.  It was
2183 great to discover that my old knowledge about trading routes were
2184 still valid.  But my fighting and flying abilities were gone, so I had
2185 to retrain to be able to dock on a space station.  And I am still not
2186 able to make much resistance when I am attacked by pirates, so I
2187 bougth and mounted the most powerful laser in the rear to be able to
2188 put up at least some resistance while fleeing for my life. :)</p>
2189
2190 <p>When playing Elite in the late eighties, I had to discover
2191 everything on my own, and I had long lists of prices seen on different
2192 planets to be able to decide where to trade what.  This time I had the
2193 advantages of the
2194 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Main_Page">Elite wiki</a>,
2195 where information about each planet is easily available with common
2196 price ranges and suggested trading routes.  This improved my ability
2197 to earn money and I have been able to earn enough to buy a lot of
2198 useful equipent in a few days.  I believe I originally played for
2199 months before I could get a docking computer, while now I could get it
2200 after less then a week.</p>
2201
2202 <p>If you like science fiction and dreamed of a life as a vagabond in
2203 space, you should try out Oolite.  It is available for Linux, MacOSX
2204 and Windows, and is included in Debian and derivatives since 2011.</p>
2205
2206 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2207 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2208 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2209
2210       </div>
2211       <div class="tags">
2212
2213
2214         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
2215
2216
2217       </div>
2218     </div>
2219     <div class="padding"></div>
2220
2221     <div class="entry">
2222       <div class="title">
2223         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Quicker_Debian_installations_using_eatmydata.html">Quicker Debian installations using eatmydata</a>
2224       </div>
2225       <div class="date">
2226         25th November 2016
2227       </div>
2228       <div class="body">
2229         <p>Two years ago, I did some experiments with eatmydata and the Debian
2230 installation system, observing how using
2231 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">eatmydata
2232 could speed up the installation</a> quite a bit.  My testing measured
2233 speedup around 20-40 percent for Debian Edu, where we install around
2234 1000 packages from within the installer.  The eatmydata package
2235 provide a way to disable/delay file system flushing.  This is a bit
2236 risky in the general case, as files that should be stored on disk will
2237 stay only in memory a bit longer than expected, causing problems if a
2238 machine crashes at an inconvenient time.  But for an installation, if
2239 the machine crashes during installation the process is normally
2240 restarted, and avoiding disk operations as much as possible to speed
2241 up the process make perfect sense.
2242
2243 <p>I added code in the Debian Edu specific installation code to enable
2244 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libeatmydata">eatmydata</a>,
2245 but did not have time to push it any further.  But a few months ago I
2246 picked it up again and worked with the libeatmydata package maintainer
2247 Mattia Rizzolo to make it easier for everyone to get this installation
2248 speedup in Debian.  Thanks to our cooperation There is now an
2249 eatmydata-udeb package in Debian testing and unstable, and simply
2250 enabling/installing it in debian-installer (d-i) is enough to get the
2251 quicker installations.  It can be enabled using preseeding.  The
2252 following untested kernel argument should do the trick:</p>
2253
2254 <blockquote><pre>
2255 preseed/early_command="anna-install eatmydata-udeb"
2256 </pre></blockquote>
2257
2258 <p>This should ask d-i to install the package inside the d-i
2259 environment early in the installation sequence.  Having it installed
2260 in d-i in turn will make sure the relevant scripts are called just
2261 after debootstrap filled /target/ with the freshly installed Debian
2262 system to configure apt to run dpkg with eatmydata.  This is enough to
2263 speed up the installation process.  There is a proposal to
2264 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/841153">extend the idea a bit further
2265 by using /etc/ld.so.preload instead of apt.conf</a>, but I have not
2266 tested its impact.</p>
2267
2268
2269       </div>
2270       <div class="tags">
2271
2272
2273         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2274
2275
2276       </div>
2277     </div>
2278     <div class="padding"></div>
2279
2280     <div class="entry">
2281       <div class="title">
2282         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oversette_bokm_l_til_nynorsk__enklere_enn_du_tror_takket_v_re_Apertium.html">Oversette bokmål til nynorsk, enklere enn du tror takket være Apertium</a>
2283       </div>
2284       <div class="date">
2285         24th November 2016
2286       </div>
2287       <div class="body">
2288         <p>I Norge er det mange som trenger å skrive både bokmål og nynorsk.
2289 Eksamensoppgaver, offentlige brev og nyheter er eksempler på tekster
2290 der det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skoleoppgavene som
2291 elever over det ganske land skal levere inn hvert år.  Det mange ikke
2292 vet er at selv om de kommersielle alternativene
2293 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google Translate</a> og
2294 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing Translator</a> ikke kan
2295 bidra med å oversette mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finnes det et
2296 utmerket fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Oversetterverktøyet
2297 Apertium har støtte for en rekke språkkombinasjoner, og takket være
2298 den utrettelige innsatsen til blant annet Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
2299 en bruke webtjenesten til å fylle inn en tekst på bokmål eller
2300 nynorsk, og få den automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
2301 Resultatet er ikke perfekt, men et svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og til
2302 er resultatet så bra at det kan benyttes uten endringer.  Jeg vet
2303 f.eks. at store deler av Joomla ble oversatt til nynorsk ved hjelp
2304 Apertium.  Høres det ut som noe du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så fall
2305 <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
2306 teksten din i webskjemaet der.
2307
2308 <p>Hvis du trenger maskinell tilgang til den bakenforliggende
2309 teknologien kan du enten installere pakken
2310 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">apertium-nno-nob</a>
2311 på en Debian-maskin eller bruke web-API-et tilgjengelig fra
2312 api.apertium.org.  Se
2313 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">API-dokumentasjonen</a>
2314 for detaljer om web-API-et.  Her kan du se hvordan resultatet blir for
2315 denne teksten som ble skrevet på bokmål over maskinoversatt til
2316 nynorsk.</p>
2317
2318 <hr/>
2319
2320 <p>I Noreg er det mange som treng å skriva både bokmål og nynorsk.
2321 Eksamensoppgåver, offentlege brev og nyhende er døme på tekster der
2322 det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skuleoppgåvene som
2323 elevar over det ganske land skal levera inn kvart år.  Det mange ikkje
2324 veit er at sjølv om dei kommersielle alternativa
2325 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google *Translate</a> og
2326 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing *Translator</a> ikkje
2327 kan bidra med å omsetja mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finst det eit
2328 utmerka fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Omsetjarverktøyet
2329 *Apertium har støtte for ei rekkje språkkombinasjonar, og takka vera
2330 den utrøyttelege innsatsen til blant anna Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
2331 ein bruka *webtjenesten til å fylla inn ei tekst på bokmål eller
2332 nynorsk, og få den *automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
2333 Resultatet er ikkje perfekt, men eit svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og
2334 til er resultatet så bra at det kan nyttast utan endringar.  Eg veit
2335 t.d. at store delar av *Joomla vart omsett til nynorsk ved hjelp
2336 *Apertium.  Høyrast det ut som noko du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så
2337 fall <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">*Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
2338 teksta di i *webskjemaet der.
2339
2340 <p>Viss du treng *maskinell tilgjenge til den *bakenforliggende
2341 teknologien kan du anten installera pakken
2342 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">*apertium-*nno-*nob</a>
2343 på ein *Debian-maskin eller bruka *web-*API-eit tilgjengeleg frå
2344 *api.*apertium.org.  Sjå
2345 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">*API-dokumentasjonen</a>
2346 for detaljar om *web-*API-eit.  Her kan du sjå korleis resultatet vert
2347 for denne teksta som vart skreva på bokmål over *maskinoversatt til
2348 nynorsk.</p>
2349
2350       </div>
2351       <div class="tags">
2352
2353
2354         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
2355
2356
2357       </div>
2358     </div>
2359     <div class="padding"></div>
2360
2361     <div class="entry">
2362       <div class="title">
2363         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_profiler_for_multi_threaded_software_is_now_in_Debian.html">Coz profiler for multi-threaded software is now in Debian</a>
2364       </div>
2365       <div class="date">
2366         13th November 2016
2367       </div>
2368       <div class="body">
2369         <p><a href="http://coz-profiler.org/">The Coz profiler</a>, a nice
2370 profiler able to run benchmarking experiments on the instrumented
2371 multi-threaded program, finally
2372 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/coz-profiler">made it into
2373 Debian unstable yesterday</A>.  Lluís Vilanova and I have spent many
2374 months since
2375 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">I
2376 blogged about the coz tool</a> in August working with upstream to make
2377 it suitable for Debian.  There are still issues with clang
2378 compatibility, inline assembly only working x86 and minimized
2379 JavaScript libraries.</p>
2380
2381 <p>To test it, install 'coz-profiler' using apt and run it like this:</p>
2382
2383 <p><blockquote>
2384 <tt>coz run --- /path/to/binary-with-debug-info</tt>
2385 </blockquote></p>
2386
2387 <p>This will produce a profile.coz file in the current working
2388 directory with the profiling information.  This is then given to a
2389 JavaScript application provided in the package and available from
2390 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">a project web page</a>.
2391 To start the local copy, invoke it in a browser like this:</p>
2392
2393 <p><blockquote>
2394 <tt>sensible-browser /usr/share/coz-profiler/viewer/index.htm</tt>
2395 </blockquote></p>
2396
2397 <p>See the project home page and the
2398 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">USENIX
2399 ;login: article on Coz</a> for more information on how it is
2400 working.</p>
2401
2402       </div>
2403       <div class="tags">
2404
2405
2406         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2407
2408
2409       </div>
2410     </div>
2411     <div class="padding"></div>
2412
2413     <div class="entry">
2414       <div class="title">
2415         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_own_self_balancing_Lego_Segway.html">My own self balancing Lego Segway</a>
2416       </div>
2417       <div class="date">
2418          4th November 2016
2419       </div>
2420       <div class="body">
2421         <p>A while back I received a Gyro sensor for the NXT
2422 <a href="mindstorms.lego.com">Mindstorms</a> controller as a birthday
2423 present.  It had been on my wishlist for a while, because I wanted to
2424 build a Segway like balancing lego robot.  I had already built
2425 <a href="http://www.nxtprograms.com/NXT2/segway/">a simple balancing
2426 robot</a> with the kids, using the light/color sensor included in the
2427 NXT kit as the balance sensor, but it was not working very well.  It
2428 could balance for a while, but was very sensitive to the light
2429 condition in the room and the reflective properties of the surface and
2430 would fall over after a short while.  I wanted something more robust,
2431 and had
2432 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=NGY1044">the
2433 gyro sensor from HiTechnic</a> I believed would solve it on my
2434 wishlist for some years before it suddenly showed up as a gift from my
2435 loved ones. :)</p>
2436
2437 <p>Unfortunately I have not had time to sit down and play with it
2438 since then.  But that changed some days ago, when I was searching for
2439 lego segway information and came across a recipe from HiTechnic for
2440 building
2441 <a href="http://www.hitechnic.com/blog/gyro-sensor/htway/">the
2442 HTWay</a>, a segway like balancing robot.  Build instructions and
2443 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/upload/786-HTWayC.nxc">source
2444 code</a> was included, so it was just a question of putting it all
2445 together.  And thanks to the great work of many Debian developers, the
2446 compiler needed to build the source for the NXT is already included in
2447 Debian, so I was read to go in less than an hour.  The resulting robot
2448 do not look very impressive in its simplicity:</p>
2449
2450 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-robot.jpeg"></p>
2451
2452 <p>Because I lack the infrared sensor used to control the robot in the
2453 design from HiTechnic, I had to comment out the last task
2454 (taskControl).  I simply placed /* and */ around it get the program
2455 working without that sensor present.  Now it balances just fine until
2456 the battery status run low:</p>
2457
2458 <p align="center"><video width="70%" controls="true">
2459    <source src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-balancing.ogv" type="video/ogg">
2460 </video></p>
2461
2462 <p>Now we would like to teach it how to follow a line and take remote
2463 control instructions using the included Bluetooth receiver in the NXT.</p>
2464
2465 <p>If you, like me, love LEGO and want to make sure we find the tools
2466 they need to work with LEGO in Debian and all our derivative
2467 distributions like Ubuntu, check out
2468 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the LEGO designers
2469 project page</a> and join the Debian LEGO team.  Personally I own a
2470 RCX and NXT controller (no EV3), and would like to make sure the
2471 Debian tools needed to program the systems I own work as they
2472 should.</p>
2473
2474       </div>
2475       <div class="tags">
2476
2477
2478         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
2479
2480
2481       </div>
2482     </div>
2483     <div class="padding"></div>
2484
2485     <div class="entry">
2486       <div class="title">
2487         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile phone</a>
2488       </div>
2489       <div class="date">
2490         10th October 2016
2491       </div>
2492       <div class="body">
2493         <p>In July
2494 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">I
2495 wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working</a> without
2496 the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone).  It is
2497 time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.</p>
2498
2499 <p>The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use
2500 it regularly to chat with my loved ones.  I had a major snag at the
2501 end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my
2502 setup, identity and keys.  The reason behind this major mess was
2503 running out of disk space.  To avoid that ever happening again I have
2504 started storing everything in <tt>userdata/</tt> in git, to be able to
2505 roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake.  I
2506 had to use it once after introducing the git backup.  When rolling
2507 back to an earlier version, one need to use the 'reset session' option
2508 in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the
2509 problem.  I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the
2510 protocol to detect rollback attacks.  The git repository is rather big
2511 (674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the
2512 content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare
2513 time.</p>
2514
2515 <p>I've also hit the 90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this
2516 make it impossible to send messages using Signal.  I could still
2517 receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send.
2518 I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to
2519 upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no
2520 protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and
2521 thus try to keep the number of support requests down.</p>
2522
2523 <p>Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly,
2524 making the old patch fail to apply cleanly.  Below is an updated
2525 patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal.  The
2526 original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console
2527 and call a function from there.  I got help from a friend with more
2528 JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI
2529 button instead.  This mean that to get started you just need to run
2530 the wrapper and click the 'Register without mobile phone' to get going
2531 now.  I've also modified the timeout code to always set it to 90 days
2532 in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.</p>
2533
2534 <p>So, the updated recipe for Debian Jessie:</p>
2535
2536 <ol>
2537
2538 <li>First, install required packages to get the source code and the
2539 browser you need.  Signal only work with Chrome/Chromium, as far as I
2540 know, so you need to install it.
2541
2542 <pre>
2543 apt install git tor chromium
2544 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
2545 </pre></li>
2546
2547 <li>Modify the source code using command listed in the the patch
2548 block below.</li>
2549
2550 <li>Start Signal using the run-signal-app wrapper (for example using
2551 <tt>`pwd`/run-signal-app</tt>).
2552
2553 <li>Click on the 'Register without mobile phone', will in a phone
2554 number you can receive calls to the next minute, receive the
2555 verification code and enter it into the form field and press
2556 'Register'.  Note, the phone number you use will be user Signal
2557 username, ie the way others can find you on Signal.</li>
2558
2559 <li>You can now use Signal to contact others.  Note, new contacts do
2560 not show up in the contact list until you restart Signal, and there is
2561 no way to assign names to Contacts.  There is also no way to create or
2562 update chat groups.  I suspect this is because the web app do not have
2563 a associated contact database.</li>
2564
2565 </ol>
2566
2567 <p>I am still a bit uneasy about using Signal, because of the way its
2568 main author moxie0 reject federation and accept dependencies to major
2569 corporations like Google (part of the code is fetched from Google) and
2570 Amazon (the central coordination point is owned by Amazon).  See for
2571 example
2572 <a href="https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37">the
2573 LibreSignal issue tracker</a> for a thread documenting the authors
2574 view on these issues.  But the network effect is strong in this case,
2575 and several of the people I want to communicate with already use
2576 Signal.  Perhaps we can all move to <a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a>
2577 once it <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/830265">work on my
2578 laptop</a>?  It already work on Windows and Android, and is included
2579 in <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">Debian</a> and
2580 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ring">Ubuntu</a>, but not
2581 working on Debian Stable.</p>
2582
2583 <p>Anyway, this is the patch I apply to the Signal code to get it
2584 working.  It switch to the production servers, disable to timeout,
2585 make registration easier and add the shell wrapper:</p>
2586
2587 <pre>
2588 cd Signal-Desktop; cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p1
2589 diff --git a/js/background.js b/js/background.js
2590 index 24b4c1d..579345f 100644
2591 --- a/js/background.js
2592 +++ b/js/background.js
2593 @@ -33,9 +33,9 @@
2594          });
2595      });
2596
2597 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
2598 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org';
2599      var SERVER_PORTS = [80, 4433, 8443];
2600 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
2601 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
2602      var messageReceiver;
2603      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
2604          if (messageReceiver) {
2605 diff --git a/js/expire.js b/js/expire.js
2606 index 639aeae..beb91c3 100644
2607 --- a/js/expire.js
2608 +++ b/js/expire.js
2609 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
2610  ;(function() {
2611      'use strict';
2612 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
2613 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = Date.now() + (90 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
2614
2615      window.extension = window.extension || {};
2616
2617 diff --git a/js/views/install_view.js b/js/views/install_view.js
2618 index 7816f4f..1d6233b 100644
2619 --- a/js/views/install_view.js
2620 +++ b/js/views/install_view.js
2621 @@ -38,7 +38,8 @@
2622              return {
2623                  'click .step1': this.selectStep.bind(this, 1),
2624                  'click .step2': this.selectStep.bind(this, 2),
2625 -                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3)
2626 +                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3),
2627 +                'click .callreg': function() { extension.install('standalone') },
2628              };
2629          },
2630          clearQR: function() {
2631 diff --git a/options.html b/options.html
2632 index dc0f28e..8d709f6 100644
2633 --- a/options.html
2634 +++ b/options.html
2635 @@ -14,7 +14,10 @@
2636          &lt;div class='nav'>
2637            &lt;h1>{{ installWelcome }}&lt;/h1>
2638            &lt;p>{{ installTagline }}&lt;/p>
2639 -          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a> &lt;/div>
2640 +          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a>
2641 +           &lt;br> &lt;a class="button callreg">Register without mobile phone&lt;/a>
2642 +
2643 +         &lt;/div>
2644            &lt;span class='dot step1 selected'>&lt;/span>
2645            &lt;span class='dot step2'>&lt;/span>
2646            &lt;span class='dot step3'>&lt;/span>
2647 --- /dev/null   2016-10-07 09:55:13.730181472 +0200
2648 +++ b/run-signal-app   2016-10-10 08:54:09.434172391 +0200
2649 @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
2650 +#!/bin/sh
2651 +set -e
2652 +cd $(dirname $0)
2653 +mkdir -p userdata
2654 +userdata="`pwd`/userdata"
2655 +if [ -d "$userdata" ] && [ ! -d "$userdata/.git" ] ; then
2656 +    (cd $userdata && git init)
2657 +fi
2658 +(cd $userdata && git add . && git commit -m "Current status." || true)
2659 +exec chromium \
2660 +  --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
2661 +  --user-data-dir=$userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
2662 EOF
2663 chmod a+rx run-signal-app
2664 </pre>
2665
2666 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2667 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2668 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2669
2670       </div>
2671       <div class="tags">
2672
2673
2674         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2675
2676
2677       </div>
2678     </div>
2679     <div class="padding"></div>
2680
2681     <div class="entry">
2682       <div class="title">
2683         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html">Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier</a>
2684       </div>
2685       <div class="date">
2686          7th October 2016
2687       </div>
2688       <div class="body">
2689         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
2690 system</a> provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
2691 packages support the hardware in a given machine.  The command line
2692 tool <tt>isenkram-lookup</tt> and the tasksel options provide a
2693 convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
2694 hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
2695 firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
2696 a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
2697 while using the computer.  For example, if you plug in a smart card
2698 reader, the system will ask if you want to install <tt>pcscd</tt> if
2699 that package isn't already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
2700 camera the system will ask if you want to install <tt>cheese</tt> if
2701 cheese is currently missing.  This already work just fine.</p>
2702
2703 <p>But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
2704 package names.  When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
2705 I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
2706 made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
2707 http.  This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
2708 as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.</p>
2709
2710 <p>The hardware is identified using modalias strings.  The modalias
2711 design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
2712 made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
2713 globbing.  It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
2714 identifiers.</p>
2715
2716 <p>The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
2717 information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
2718 isenkram propose obsolete packages too.  But along came AppStream, a
2719 cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
2720 software packages.  When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
2721 people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
2722 modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
2723 mapping hardware to packages.  This idea was accepted and AppStream is
2724 now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
2725 distribution neutral way.  I wrote
2726 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">a
2727 recipe on how to add such meta-information</a> in a blog post last
2728 December.  If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
2729 announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.</p>
2730
2731 <p>In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
2732 RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream.  The effect is
2733 that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
2734 machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
2735 it working.  The intention is that this should allow the local user to
2736 start programming his robot controller right away without having to
2737 guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.</p>
2738
2739 <p>But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
2740 unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
2741 annoying.  The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
2742 the USB device for programming the unit.  This used to work, but no
2743 longer in Jessie and Stretch.  After some investigation and asking
2744 around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
2745 changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices.  The
2746 ConsoleKit mechanism from <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>
2747 no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
2748 plugdev group during login.  Michael Biebl told me that this method
2749 was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead.  This was good
2750 news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
2751 directory like LDAP.  Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
2752 access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
2753 process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
2754 setup.  Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
2755 for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.</p>
2756
2757 <p>The new system uses a udev tag, 'uaccess'.  It can either be
2758 applied directly for a device, or is applied in
2759 /lib/udev/rules.d/70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices.  As the
2760 LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
2761 tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages.  Here
2762 is one example.  For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
2763 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/60-nqc.rules</tt> file now look like this:
2764
2765 <p><pre>
2766 SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="0694", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", \
2767     SYMLINK+="rcx-%k", TAG+="uaccess"
2768 </pre></p>
2769
2770 <p>The key part is the 'TAG+="uaccess"' at the end.  I suspect all
2771 packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
2772 changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
2773 <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>).  Perhaps a lintian check should be created
2774 to detect this?</p>
2775
2776 <p>I've been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
2777 It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
2778 detail like the udev-acl tag used by
2779 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>.  If it is, I guess the
2780 indirect method is the preferred way.  Michael
2781 <a href="https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288">asked for more
2782 documentation from the systemd project</a> and I hope it will make
2783 this clearer.  For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
2784 is already handled by <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>, and add the tag
2785 directly if no such class exist.</p>
2786
2787 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
2788 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
2789 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
2790
2791 <p>To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
2792 please join us on our IRC channel
2793 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> and join
2794 the <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/">Debian
2795 LEGO team</a> in the Alioth project we created yesterday.  A mailing
2796 list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)</p>
2797
2798 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2799 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2800 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2801
2802       </div>
2803       <div class="tags">
2804
2805
2806         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>.
2807
2808
2809       </div>
2810     </div>
2811     <div class="padding"></div>
2812
2813     <div class="entry">
2814       <div class="title">
2815         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_draft_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_now_public.html">First draft Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook now public</a>
2816       </div>
2817       <div class="date">
2818         30th August 2016
2819       </div>
2820       <div class="body">
2821         <p>In April we
2822 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">started
2823 to work</a> on a Norwegian Bokmål edition of the "open access" book on
2824 how to set up and administrate a Debian system.  Today I am happy to
2825 report that the first draft is now publicly available.  You can find
2826 it on <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/">get the Debian
2827 Administrator's Handbook page</a> (under Other languages).  The first
2828 eight chapters have a first draft translation, and we are working on
2829 proofreading the content.  If you want to help out, please start
2830 contributing using
2831 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
2832 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
2833 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
2834 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
2835 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
2836 contributors</a>.  A good way to contribute is to proofread the text
2837 and update weblate if you find errors.</p>
2838
2839 <p>Our goal is still to make the Norwegian book available on paper as well as
2840 electronic form.</p>
2841
2842       </div>
2843       <div class="tags">
2844
2845
2846         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2847
2848
2849       </div>
2850     </div>
2851     <div class="padding"></div>
2852
2853     <div class="entry">
2854       <div class="title">
2855         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">Coz can help you find bottlenecks in multi-threaded software - nice free software</a>
2856       </div>
2857       <div class="date">
2858         11th August 2016
2859       </div>
2860       <div class="body">
2861         <p>This summer, I read a great article
2862 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">coz:
2863 This Is the Profiler You're Looking For</a>" in USENIX ;login: about
2864 how to profile multi-threaded programs.  It presented a system for
2865 profiling software by running experiences in the running program,
2866 testing how run time performance is affected by "speeding up" parts of
2867 the code to various degrees compared to a normal run.  It does this by
2868 slowing down parallel threads while the "faster up" code is running
2869 and measure how this affect processing time.  The processing time is
2870 measured using probes inserted into the code, either using progress
2871 counters (COZ_PROGRESS) or as latency meters (COZ_BEGIN/COZ_END).  It
2872 can also measure unmodified code by measuring complete the program
2873 runtime and running the program several times instead.</p>
2874
2875 <p>The project and presentation was so inspiring that I would like to
2876 get the system into Debian.  I
2877 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=830708">created
2878 a WNPP request for it</a> and contacted upstream to try to make the
2879 system ready for Debian by sending patches.  The build process need to
2880 be changed a bit to avoid running 'git clone' to get dependencies, and
2881 to include the JavaScript web page used to visualize the collected
2882 profiling information included in the source package.
2883 But I expect that should work out fairly soon.</p>
2884
2885 <p>The way the system work is fairly simple.  To run an coz experiment
2886 on a binary with debug symbols available, start the program like this:
2887
2888 <p><blockquote><pre>
2889 coz run --- program-to-run
2890 </pre></blockquote></p>
2891
2892 <p>This will create a text file profile.coz with the instrumentation
2893 information.  To show what part of the code affect the performance
2894 most, use a web browser and either point it to
2895 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/</a>
2896 or use the copy from git (in the gh-pages branch).  Check out this web
2897 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
2898 profiling more useful you include &lt;coz.h&gt; and insert the
2899 COZ_PROGRESS or COZ_BEGIN and COZ_END at appropriate places in the
2900 code, rebuild and run the profiler.  This allow coz to do more
2901 targeted experiments.</p>
2902
2903 <p>A video published by ACM
2904 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0V-p1odPg">presenting the
2905 Coz profiler</a> is available from Youtube.  There is also a paper
2906 from the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles available
2907 titled
2908 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/curtsinger">Coz:
2909 finding code that counts with causal profiling</a>.</p>
2910
2911 <p><a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz">The source code</a>
2912 for Coz is available from github.  It will only build with clang
2913 because it uses a
2914 <a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55606">C++
2915 feature missing in GCC</a>, but I've submitted
2916 <a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz/pull/67">a patch to solve
2917 it</a> and hope it will be included in the upstream source soon.</p>
2918
2919 <p>Please get in touch if you, like me, would like to see this piece
2920 of software in Debian.  I would very much like some help with the
2921 packaging effort, as I lack the in depth knowledge on how to package
2922 C++ libraries.</p>
2923
2924       </div>
2925       <div class="tags">
2926
2927
2928         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
2929
2930
2931       </div>
2932     </div>
2933     <div class="padding"></div>
2934
2935     <div class="entry">
2936       <div class="title">
2937         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlocking_HTC_Desire_HD_on_Linux_using_unruu_and_fastboot.html">Unlocking HTC Desire HD on Linux using unruu and fastboot</a>
2938       </div>
2939       <div class="date">
2940          7th July 2016
2941       </div>
2942       <div class="body">
2943         <p>Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved
2944 to be a slight challenge.  Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it
2945 again.  It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up
2946 <a href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy">an
2947 hardened Android installation</a> from the Tor project blog on a
2948 device I had access to.  It is a old mobile phone with a broken
2949 microphone The initial idea had been to just
2950 <a href="http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_ace">install
2951 CyanogenMod on it</a>, but did not quite find time to start on it
2952 until a few days ago.</p>
2953
2954 <p>The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot
2955 loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select
2956 'fastboot' before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux
2957 machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running 'fastboot
2958 oem get_identifier_token', (5) request the device unlocking key using
2959 the <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader/">HTC developer web
2960 site</a> and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.</p>
2961
2962 <p>Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029
2963 or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027.  This
2964 apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and
2965 running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft
2966 require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not.  So I had to
2967 come up with a different approach.  I got a lot of help from AndyCap
2968 on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without
2969 him.</p>
2970
2971 <p>First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from
2972 <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/ruu/PD9810000_Ace_Sense30_S_hboot_2.00.0029.exe">the
2973 windows binary for HTC Desire HD</a> downloaded as 'the RUU' from HTC.
2974 For this there is is <a href="https://github.com/kmdm/unruu/">a github
2975 project named unruu</a> using libunshield.  The unshield tool did not
2976 recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip,
2977 containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which
2978 devices it would work for.</p>
2979
2980 <p>Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device.  For this I
2981 followed some instructions
2982 <a href="http://www.htc1guru.com/2013/09/new-ruu-zips-posted/">available
2983 from HTC1Guru.com</a>, and ran these commands as root on a Linux
2984 machine with Debian testing:</p>
2985
2986 <p><pre>
2987 adb reboot-bootloader
2988 fastboot oem rebootRUU
2989 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
2990 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
2991 fastboot reboot
2992 </pre></p>
2993
2994 <p>The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect,
2995 as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing.
2996 The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the
2997 device on while holding volume down and the power button should work
2998 too.</p>
2999
3000 <p>With the new hboot version in place I could start following the
3001 instructions on the HTC developer web site.  I got the device token
3002 like this:</p>
3003
3004 <p><pre>
3005 fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2>&1 | sed 's/(bootloader) //'
3006 </pre>
3007
3008 <p>And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like
3009 this:</p>
3010
3011 <p><pre>
3012 fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
3013 </pre></p>
3014
3015 <p>And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I
3016 could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device.
3017 So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone
3018 before I start.  We will see what happen next.  Perhaps I should
3019 install <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> on it. :)</p>
3020
3021       </div>
3022       <div class="tags">
3023
3024
3025         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3026
3027
3028       </div>
3029     </div>
3030     <div class="padding"></div>
3031
3032     <div class="entry">
3033       <div class="title">
3034         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">How to use the Signal app if you only have a land line (ie no mobile phone)</a>
3035       </div>
3036       <div class="date">
3037          3rd July 2016
3038       </div>
3039       <div class="body">
3040         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to test
3041 <a href="https://whispersystems.org/">the Signal app</a>, as it is
3042 said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
3043 friends and family are already using it.  As I by choice do not own a
3044 mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected.  And I wanted to
3045 have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
3046 machine.  But yesterday I managed to get it working.  I used the
3047 Github source, compared it to the source in
3048 <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US">the
3049 Signal Chrome app</a> available from the Chrome web store, applied
3050 patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
3051 asked for the hidden "register without a smart phone" form.  Here is
3052 the recipe how I did it.</p>
3053
3054 <p>First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
3055
3056 <pre>
3057 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
3058 </pre>
3059
3060 <p>Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be
3061 able to talk to other Signal users:</p>
3062
3063 <pre>
3064 cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p0
3065 diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js
3066 --- ./js/background.js  2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
3067 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js    2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
3068 @@ -47,8 +47,8 @@
3069          });
3070      });
3071
3072 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
3073 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
3074 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:4433';
3075 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
3076      var messageReceiver;
3077      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
3078          if (messageReceiver) {
3079 diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
3080 --- ./js/expire.js      2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
3081 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
3082 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
3083  ;(function() {
3084      'use strict';
3085 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
3086 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 1474492690000;
3087
3088      window.extension = window.extension || {};
3089
3090 EOF
3091 </pre>
3092
3093 <p>The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
3094 an expiration timestamp.  This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
3095 It is set 90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
3096 The value is seconds since 1970 times 1000, as far as I can tell.</p>
3097
3098 <p>Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
3099 script to launch Signal in Chromium.</p>
3100
3101 <pre>
3102 #!/bin/sh
3103 cd $(dirname $0)
3104 mkdir -p userdata
3105 exec chromium \
3106   --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
3107   --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
3108 </pre>
3109
3110 <p> The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
3111 SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
3112 Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
3113 will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
3114 connections if they use source IP address.</p>
3115
3116 <p>When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
3117 "Standalone Registration" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
3118 repository.  I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
3119 Chromium debugging tool, visited the 'Console' tab and wrote
3120 'extension.install("standalone")' on the console prompt to get the
3121 registration form.  Then I entered by land line phone number and
3122 pressed 'Call'.  5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
3123 repeated the verification code three times.  After entering the number
3124 into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
3125 Signal from my laptop.
3126
3127 <p>As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
3128 whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
3129 but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
3130 setup.  It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
3131 content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
3132 exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
3133 So better than many options, but not great.  And sadly the usage is
3134 connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
3135 to associate it to my home and person.  I would prefer it if only
3136 those I knew could tell who I was on Signal.  There are options
3137 avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
3138 using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.</p>
3139
3140 <p><strong>Update 2017-01-10</strong>: There is an updated blog post
3141 on this topic in
3142 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience
3143 and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile
3144 phone</a>.</p>
3145
3146       </div>
3147       <div class="tags">
3148
3149
3150         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3151
3152
3153       </div>
3154     </div>
3155     <div class="padding"></div>
3156
3157     <div class="entry">
3158       <div class="title">
3159         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?</a>
3160       </div>
3161       <div class="date">
3162          6th June 2016
3163       </div>
3164       <div class="body">
3165         <p>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
3166 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">which
3167 multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
3168 MIME types</a>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
3169 the various players claimed support for.  The range was from 55 to 130
3170 MIME types.  I suspect most media formats are supported by all
3171 players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
3172 their desktop files.  There are probably also some bogus MIME types
3173 listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.</p>
3174
3175 <p>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
3176 the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
3177 and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
3178 favorite media player VLC.  The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
3179 yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
3180 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">Multimedia
3181 player MIME type support status</a> Debian wiki page.</p>
3182
3183 <p>The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?  It is VLC, followed by
3184 totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
3185 kmplayer.  I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
3186 several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
3187 toten and parole.</p>
3188
3189 <p>A sad observation is that only 14 MIME types are listed as
3190 supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
3191 desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
3192 audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
3193 video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
3194 video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo.  Personally I find
3195 it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
3196 players in Debian.  As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
3197 formats.</p>
3198
3199       </div>
3200       <div class="tags">
3201
3202
3203         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3204
3205
3206       </div>
3207     </div>
3208     <div class="padding"></div>
3209
3210     <div class="entry">
3211       <div class="title">
3212         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html">A program should be able to open its own files on Linux</a>
3213       </div>
3214       <div class="date">
3215          5th June 2016
3216       </div>
3217       <div class="body">
3218         <p>Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
3219 decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
3220 talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine.  I
3221 wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
3222 the day before I would give the talk.  The next day I took a plane to
3223 the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
3224 started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
3225 that kpresenter refused to load its own data file.  I cursed a bit and
3226 started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
3227 present when I arrived.  I tested that the saved files could be
3228 loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued.  I continued to polish the
3229 slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
3230 be loaded into kpresenter.  In the end I had to rewrite the slides
3231 three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
3232 shorter.  After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem &ndash;
3233 kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
3234 Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
3235 program to make slides.  The point I'm trying to make is that we
3236 expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
3237 embarrassing to its developers if it can't.</p>
3238
3239 <p>Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
3240 files from the desktop file browser?  It is not a uncommon problem.  A
3241 while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
3242 gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
3243 browser would refuse to open.  No video player claimed to understand
3244 such file.  I tracked down the cause being <tt>file --mime-type</tt>
3245 returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
3246 installed listed as a MIME type they would understand.  I asked for
3247 <a href="http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=382">file to change its
3248 behavour</a> and use the MIME type video/ogg instead.  I also asked
3249 several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
3250 the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files.  After a
3251 while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
3252 output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.</p>
3253
3254 <p>But history repeats itself.  A few days ago I tested the music
3255 system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
3256 browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
3257 (*.rg).  I've reported <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/825993">the
3258 rosegarden problem to BTS</a> and a fix is commited to git and will be
3259 included in the next upload.  To increase the chance of me remembering
3260 how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
3261 from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.</p>
3262
3263 <p>The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
3264 There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file.  The output from
3265 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> mentioned above, and the content of the
3266 shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/).  The file MIME
3267 type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
3268 information is collected from
3269 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/">the
3270 desktop files</a> available in /usr/share/applications/.  If there is
3271 one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
3272 activated when asking to open a given file.  If there are more, one
3273 can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
3274 selecting the wanted one using 'Open with' or similar.  In general
3275 this work well.  But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
3276 type (preferably
3277 <a href="http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">a
3278 MIME type registered with IANA</a>), file and/or the shared MIME
3279 registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
3280 type in its list of supported MIME types.</p>
3281
3282 <p>The <tt>/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml</tt> entry for
3283 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec">the
3284 Shared MIME database</a> look like this:</p>
3285
3286 <p><blockquote><pre>
3287 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
3288 &lt;mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info"&gt;
3289   &lt;mime-type type="audio/x-rosegarden"&gt;
3290     &lt;sub-class-of type="application/x-gzip"/&gt;
3291     &lt;comment&gt;Rosegarden project file&lt;/comment&gt;
3292     &lt;glob pattern="*.rg"/&gt;
3293   &lt;/mime-type&gt;
3294 &lt;/mime-info&gt;
3295 </pre></blockquote></p>
3296
3297 <p>This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
3298 (it is a gzipped XML file).  Note, it is much better to use an
3299 official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
3300 unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.</p>
3301
3302 <p>The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
3303 audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
3304 file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:</p>
3305
3306 <p><blockquote><pre>
3307 % grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
3308 MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
3309 X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
3310 %
3311 </pre></blockquote></p>
3312
3313 <p>The fix was to add "audio/x-rosegarden;" at the end of the
3314 MimeType= line.</p>
3315
3316 <p>If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
3317 selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
3318 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> for the file, ensure the file ending and
3319 MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
3320 that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
3321 support for this MIME type.  If not, please report a bug to have it
3322 fixed. :)</p>
3323
3324       </div>
3325       <div class="tags">
3326
3327
3328         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3329
3330
3331       </div>
3332     </div>
3333     <div class="padding"></div>
3334
3335     <div class="entry">
3336       <div class="title">
3337         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html">Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version 0.23 available in Debian unstable</a>
3338       </div>
3339       <div class="date">
3340         25th May 2016
3341       </div>
3342       <div class="body">
3343         <p><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
3344 system</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
3345 related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
3346 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
3347 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
3348 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
3349 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
3350 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
3351 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
3352 install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
3353 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
3354 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).</p>
3355
3356 <p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
3357 good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
3358 is going away and is generally being replaced by
3359 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit</a>,
3360 so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
3361 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
3362 rewrite finally took place.  I've just uploaded a new version of
3363 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
3364 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
3365 install the <tt>isenkram</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
3366 and see if it is recognised.</p>
3367
3368 <p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
3369 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
3370 program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:</p>
3371
3372 <p><blockquote><pre>
3373 % isenkram-lookup
3374 bluez
3375 cheese
3376 fprintd
3377 fprintd-demo
3378 gkrellm-thinkbat
3379 hdapsd
3380 libpam-fprintd
3381 pidgin-blinklight
3382 thinkfan
3383 tleds
3384 tp-smapi-dkms
3385 tp-smapi-source
3386 tpb
3387 %p
3388 </pre></blockquote></p>
3389
3390 <p>The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
3391 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
3392 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
3393 cross distribution appstream system</a>.
3394 See
3395 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
3396 blog posts about isenkram</a> to learn how to do that.</p>
3397
3398       </div>
3399       <div class="tags">
3400
3401
3402         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
3403
3404
3405       </div>
3406     </div>
3407     <div class="padding"></div>
3408
3409     <div class="entry">
3410       <div class="title">
3411         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html">Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian</a>
3412       </div>
3413       <div class="date">
3414         23rd May 2016
3415       </div>
3416       <div class="body">
3417         <p>Yesterday I updated the
3418 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
3419 package in Debian</a> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
3420 enterprising users.  There were some nice user and visible changes.
3421 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work.  A design flaw in
3422 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
3423 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
3424 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
3425 called from the desktop menu.  I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
3426 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
3427 graph window pop up as expected.</p>
3428
3429 <p>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
3430 graphs (the one showing the last few hours).  New is also the user of
3431 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red.  The percentages
3432 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
3433 capacity.</p>
3434
3435 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-rate.png"/></p>
3436
3437 <p>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
3438 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
3439 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time.  The red
3440 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers 100 percent:
3441
3442 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-history.png"/></p>
3443
3444 <p>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to 80
3445 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
3446 shrinking. :(</p>
3447
3448 <p>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
3449 more hardware models.  On some hardware, Linux power supply
3450 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
3451 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/.  Now
3452 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
3453 machine.</p>
3454
3455 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
3456 check out the
3457 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
3458 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
3459 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from <a
3460 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
3461 Patches are very welcome.</p>
3462
3463 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3464 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3465 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3466
3467       </div>
3468       <div class="tags">
3469
3470
3471         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3472
3473
3474       </div>
3475     </div>
3476     <div class="padding"></div>
3477
3478     <div class="entry">
3479       <div class="title">
3480         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html">Debian now with ZFS on Linux included</a>
3481       </div>
3482       <div class="date">
3483         12th May 2016
3484       </div>
3485       <div class="body">
3486         <p>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
3487 <a href="http://zfsonlinux.org/">ZFS for Linux</a> finally entered
3488 Debian.  The package status can be seen on
3489 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux">the package tracker
3490 for zfs-linux</a>.  and
3491 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
3492 team status page</a>. If you want to help out, please join us.
3493 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">The
3494 source code</a> is available via git on Alioth.  It would also be
3495 great if you could help out with
3496 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms">the dkms package</a>, as
3497 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.</p>
3498
3499       </div>
3500       <div class="tags">
3501
3502
3503         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3504
3505
3506       </div>
3507     </div>
3508     <div class="padding"></div>
3509
3510     <div class="entry">
3511       <div class="title">
3512         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">What is the best multimedia player in Debian?</a>
3513       </div>
3514       <div class="date">
3515          8th May 2016
3516       </div>
3517       <div class="body">
3518         <p><strong>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
3519 Debian claim support for most file formats.</strong></p>
3520
3521 <p>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
3522 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
3523 Edu.  I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
3524 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
3525 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
3526 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">The
3527 result</a> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
3528 not been updated for a while.  But browser plugins are less relevant
3529 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
3530 players.</p>
3531
3532 <p>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
3533 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
3534 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why.  The cause is a
3535 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
3536 desktop file</a>.  In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
3537 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
3538 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
3539 two for VLC.  This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
3540 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
3541 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
3542 support most file formats.</p>
3543
3544 <p>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
3545 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">a
3546 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
3547 in the table</a>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
3548 listed first in the table.</p>
3549
3550 </p>The best multimedia player in Debian?  It is totem, followed by
3551 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
3552 kmplayer.  Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
3553 support?</p>
3554
3555       </div>
3556       <div class="tags">
3557
3558
3559         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3560
3561
3562       </div>
3563     </div>
3564     <div class="padding"></div>
3565
3566     <div class="entry">
3567       <div class="title">
3568         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html">The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled</a>
3569       </div>
3570       <div class="date">
3571          4th May 2016
3572       </div>
3573       <div class="body">
3574         A friend of mine made me aware of
3575 <a href="https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/">The Pyra</a>, a
3576 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled.  I
3577 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)</p>
3578
3579 <p>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
3580 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a 5"
3581 LCD touch screen.  The 6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
3582 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
3583 confirming this.  The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
3584 last I heard last night was that 22 more orders were needed before
3585 production started.</p>
3586
3587 <p>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
3588 Debian.  Please let me know if you know of any others.  Is it the
3589 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?</p>
3590
3591       </div>
3592       <div class="tags">
3593
3594
3595         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3596
3597
3598       </div>
3599     </div>
3600     <div class="padding"></div>
3601
3602     <div class="entry">
3603       <div class="title">
3604         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Lets make a Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
3605       </div>
3606       <div class="date">
3607         10th April 2016
3608       </div>
3609       <div class="body">
3610         <p>During this weekends
3611 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml">bug
3612 squashing party and developer gathering</a>, we decided to do our part
3613 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
3614 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
3615 <a href="http://debian-handbook.info/">Debian Administrator's Handbook
3616 project</a> to get started.  If you want to help out, please start
3617 contributing using
3618 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
3619 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
3620 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
3621 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
3622 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
3623 contributors</a>.</p>
3624
3625 <p>The book is already available on paper in English, French and
3626 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
3627 Bokmål too.  In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
3628 Mobi versions available.  And there are incomplete translations
3629 available for many more languages.</p>
3630
3631       </div>
3632       <div class="tags">
3633
3634
3635         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3636
3637
3638       </div>
3639     </div>
3640     <div class="padding"></div>
3641
3642     <div class="entry">
3643       <div class="title">
3644         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_in_two_hundred_Debian_users_using_ZFS_on_Linux_.html">One in two hundred Debian users using ZFS on Linux?</a>
3645       </div>
3646       <div class="date">
3647          7th April 2016
3648       </div>
3649       <div class="body">
3650         <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
3651 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found.  I use
3652 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
3653 But I might be wrong.</p>
3654
3655 <p>According to
3656 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
3657 results for spl-linux</a>, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
3658 0.53% of the population, with the package installed.  As far as I know
3659 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
3660 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
3661 installation on Linux in Debian.  In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
3662 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
3663 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
3664 results for zfsutils</a> show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
3665 the population.  So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.</p>
3666
3667 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
3668 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
3669 in April 2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
3670 cleared, the package is still not in Debian.  The package is again in
3671 the NEW queue.  Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
3672 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
3673 to give up.  The current status can be seen on
3674 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
3675 team status page</a>, and
3676 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
3677 source code</a> is available on Alioth.</p>
3678
3679 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
3680 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
3681 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
3682 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
3683 to help out the team.  This was the background for my blog post about
3684 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
3685 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>, and I
3686 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
3687 copyright file.  It is not very easy to check every one of the around
3688 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
3689 right.  If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
3690 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.</p>
3691
3692       </div>
3693       <div class="tags">
3694
3695
3696         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3697
3698
3699       </div>
3700     </div>
3701     <div class="padding"></div>
3702
3703     <div class="entry">
3704       <div class="title">
3705         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html">Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian</a>
3706       </div>
3707       <div class="date">
3708         23rd March 2016
3709       </div>
3710       <div class="body">
3711         <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
3712 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
3713 later processing and graphing.  The original collector store the
3714 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
3715 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
3716 full level, last full level and current battery level.  This make it
3717 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
3718 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.</p>
3719
3720 <p>The new tools are available in <tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/</tt>
3721 in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable.  Get the new battery level graph
3722 and lifetime prediction by running:
3723
3724 <p><pre>
3725 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
3726 </pre></p>
3727
3728 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.</p>
3729
3730 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
3731 entry yet):</p>
3732
3733 <p><pre>
3734 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
3735 </pre></p>
3736
3737 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
3738 when there are few data points.  The graphs look a bit better with a
3739 few years of data.</p>
3740
3741 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
3742 collector broke in Debian.  The scripts in
3743 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/</tt> were no longer executed.  I
3744 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
3745 know.  The issue is reported as
3746 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #818649</a> against
3747 pm-utils.  I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
3748 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
3749 disconnected.  With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
3750 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.</p>
3751
3752 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
3753 check out the
3754 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
3755 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
3756 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
3757 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
3758 As always, patches are very welcome.</p>
3759
3760       </div>
3761       <div class="tags">
3762
3763
3764         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3765
3766
3767       </div>
3768     </div>
3769     <div class="padding"></div>
3770
3771     <div class="entry">
3772       <div class="title">
3773         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html">Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</a>
3774       </div>
3775       <div class="date">
3776         15th March 2016
3777       </div>
3778       <div class="body">
3779         <p>Back in September, I blogged about
3780 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
3781 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
3782 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
3783 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
3784 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
3785 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
3786 package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
3787 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
3788 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
3789 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.</p>
3790
3791 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
3792 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
3793 battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
3794 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
3795 able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
3796 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
3797 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
3798 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
3799 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
3800 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
3801 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
3802
3803 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width="70%" align="center"></p>
3804
3805 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
3806 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
3807 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
3808 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
3809 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
3810 bit more before I make a new release.</p>
3811
3812 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
3813 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
3814 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
3815 and graphing.</p>
3816
3817 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
3818 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
3819 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
3820 on
3821 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
3822 I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
3823
3824       </div>
3825       <div class="tags">
3826
3827
3828         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3829
3830
3831       </div>
3832     </div>
3833     <div class="padding"></div>
3834
3835     <div class="entry">
3836       <div class="title">
3837         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>
3838       </div>
3839       <div class="date">
3840         19th February 2016
3841       </div>
3842       <div class="body">
3843         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
3844 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
3845 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
3846 the code in the package in question, preferably in
3847 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
3848 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
3849
3850 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
3851 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
3852 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
3853 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
3854 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
3855 out what was wrong with
3856 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
3857 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
3858 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
3859 semi-automatically.</p>
3860
3861 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
3862 file based on the code in the source package,
3863 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
3864 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
3865 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
3866 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
3867 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
3868 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
3869 option in
3870 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
3871 blog posts from 2014</a>.
3872
3873 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
3874
3875 <p><pre>
3876 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
3877 </pre></p>
3878
3879 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
3880 this might not be the best option.</p>
3881
3882 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
3883 this approach in
3884 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
3885 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
3886 dpkg-copyright' option:
3887
3888 <p><pre>
3889 cme update dpkg-copyright
3890 </pre></p>
3891
3892 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
3893 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
3894
3895 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
3896 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
3897 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
3898 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
3899 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
3900 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
3901 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
3902 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
3903 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
3904 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
3905
3906 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
3907 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
3908 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
3909 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
3910
3911 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
3912 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
3913 planet.debian.org.</p>
3914
3915 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3916 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3917 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3918
3919 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
3920 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
3921
3922 <p><pre>
3923 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
3924   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
3925 </pre></p>
3926
3927 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
3928 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
3929 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
3930 with my packages in the future.</p>
3931
3932 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
3933 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
3934 command line.</p>
3935
3936       </div>
3937       <div class="tags">
3938
3939
3940         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3941
3942
3943       </div>
3944     </div>
3945     <div class="padding"></div>
3946
3947     <div class="entry">
3948       <div class="title">
3949         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html">Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</a>
3950       </div>
3951       <div class="date">
3952          4th February 2016
3953       </div>
3954       <div class="body">
3955         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
3956 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
3957 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
3958 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
3959 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
3960 about. :)</p>
3961
3962 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
3963 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
3964 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
3965 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
3966 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
3967 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
3968
3969 <blockquote><pre>
3970 % apt install appstream
3971 [...]
3972 % apt update
3973 [...]
3974 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
3975   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
3976 firmware-qlogic
3977 %
3978 </pre></blockquote>
3979
3980 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
3981 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
3982 a way appstream can use.</p>
3983
3984 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
3985 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
3986 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
3987 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
3988 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
3989 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
3990
3991 <blockquote><pre>
3992 % apt install appstream
3993 [...]
3994 % apt update
3995 [...]
3996 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
3997   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
3998 bkchem
3999 phototonic
4000 inkscape
4001 shutter
4002 tetzle
4003 geeqie
4004 xia
4005 pinta
4006 gthumb
4007 karbon
4008 comix
4009 mirage
4010 viewnior
4011 postr
4012 ristretto
4013 kolourpaint4
4014 eog
4015 eom
4016 gimagereader
4017 midori
4018 %
4019 </pre></blockquote>
4020
4021 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
4022 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
4023
4024       </div>
4025       <div class="tags">
4026
4027
4028         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4029
4030
4031       </div>
4032     </div>
4033     <div class="padding"></div>
4034
4035     <div class="entry">
4036       <div class="title">
4037         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html">Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software</a>
4038       </div>
4039       <div class="date">
4040         24th January 2016
4041       </div>
4042       <div class="body">
4043         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
4044 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
4045 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
4046 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
4047 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
4048 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
4049 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
4050 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
4051 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
4052 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
4053 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
4054 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
4055 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
4056 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
4057 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
4058 entities.</p>
4059
4060 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
4061
4062 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
4063 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
4064 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
4065 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
4066 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
4067 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
4068 tool to do so is called
4069 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
4070 discovered it when I read
4071 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
4072 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
4073 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
4074 The python program was in Debian, but
4075 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
4076 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
4077 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
4078 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
4079 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
4080 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
4081 are now included
4082 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
4083
4084 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
4085 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
4086 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
4087 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
4088 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
4089 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
4090 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
4091 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
4092 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
4093 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
4094 about yourself with the services.</p>
4095
4096 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
4097 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
4098 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
4099 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
4100 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
4101 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
4102 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
4103 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
4104 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
4105 things.  A similar technique have been
4106 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
4107 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
4108 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
4109 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
4110 public.</p>
4111
4112 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
4113 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
4114 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
4115 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
4116
4117 <p>(I have uploaded
4118 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
4119 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
4120 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
4121
4122       </div>
4123       <div class="tags">
4124
4125
4126         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
4127
4128
4129       </div>
4130     </div>
4131     <div class="padding"></div>
4132
4133     <div class="entry">
4134       <div class="title">
4135         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html">Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</a>
4136       </div>
4137       <div class="date">
4138         15th January 2016
4139       </div>
4140       <div class="body">
4141         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
4142 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
4143 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
4144 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
4145 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
4146 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
4147 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
4148 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
4149 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
4150 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
4151 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
4152 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
4153 was not the first to propose this, as the
4154 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
4155 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
4156 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
4157 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
4158
4159 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
4160 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
4161 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
4162 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
4163 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
4164
4165 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
4166 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
4167 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
4168 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
4169 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
4170 done in /etc/.</p>
4171
4172 <blockquote><pre>
4173 apt install apt-transport-tor
4174 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
4175 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
4176 </pre></blockquote>
4177
4178 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
4179 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
4180 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
4181 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
4182
4183 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
4184 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
4185 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
4186 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
4187 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
4188 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
4189
4190 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
4191 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
4192 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
4193 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
4194 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
4195
4196 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
4197 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
4198 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
4199 system.</p>
4200
4201       </div>
4202       <div class="tags">
4203
4204
4205         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
4206
4207
4208       </div>
4209     </div>
4210     <div class="padding"></div>
4211
4212     <div class="entry">
4213       <div class="title">
4214         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html">OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</a>
4215       </div>
4216       <div class="date">
4217         23rd December 2015
4218       </div>
4219       <div class="body">
4220         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
4221 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
4222 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
4223 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
4224 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
4225 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
4226
4227 <p>A few days I came across
4228 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
4229 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
4230 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
4231 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
4232 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
4233 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
4234 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
4235 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
4236 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
4237 discovered the developer
4238 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
4239 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
4240 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
4241 archive.</p>
4242
4243 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
4244 it into Debian, where it currently
4245 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
4246 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
4247
4248 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
4249 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
4250 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
4251 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
4252 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
4253 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
4254 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
4255 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
4256 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
4257 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
4258 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
4259 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
4260
4261 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
4262 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
4263 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
4264 package show up in unstable.</p>
4265
4266       </div>
4267       <div class="tags">
4268
4269
4270         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
4271
4272
4273       </div>
4274     </div>
4275     <div class="padding"></div>
4276
4277     <div class="entry">
4278       <div class="title">
4279         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</a>
4280       </div>
4281       <div class="date">
4282         20th December 2015
4283       </div>
4284       <div class="body">
4285         <p>Around three years ago, I created
4286 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
4287 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
4288 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
4289 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
4290 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
4291 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
4292 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
4293 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
4294 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
4295 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
4296 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
4297 with.</p>
4298
4299 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
4300 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
4301 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
4302 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
4303 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
4304 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
4305 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
4306 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
4307 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
4308 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
4309 Debian version of appstream.</p>
4310
4311 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
4312 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
4313 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
4314 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
4315 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
4316 how do add the required
4317 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
4318 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
4319 this content:</p>
4320
4321 <blockquote><pre>
4322 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
4323 &lt;component&gt;
4324   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
4325   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
4326   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
4327   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
4328   &lt;description&gt;
4329     &lt;p&gt;
4330       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
4331       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
4332       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
4333       launcher.
4334     &lt;/p&gt;
4335   &lt;/description&gt;
4336   &lt;provides&gt;
4337     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
4338   &lt;/provides&gt;
4339 &lt;/component&gt;
4340 </pre></blockquote>
4341
4342 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
4343 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
4344 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
4345 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
4346 0202.</p>
4347
4348 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
4349 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
4350 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
4351 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
4352 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
4353 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
4354 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
4355 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
4356
4357 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
4358 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
4359 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
4360 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
4361 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
4362
4363 <blockquote><pre>
4364 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
4365 </pre></blockquote>
4366
4367 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
4368 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
4369 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
4370 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
4371 question.</p>
4372
4373 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
4374 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
4375
4376 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
4377 try running this command on the command line:</p>
4378
4379 <blockquote><pre>
4380 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
4381 </pre></blockquote>
4382
4383 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
4384 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
4385 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
4386
4387       </div>
4388       <div class="tags">
4389
4390
4391         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
4392
4393
4394       </div>
4395     </div>
4396     <div class="padding"></div>
4397
4398     <div class="entry">
4399       <div class="title">
4400         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html">The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust</a>
4401       </div>
4402       <div class="date">
4403         30th November 2015
4404       </div>
4405       <div class="body">
4406         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
4407 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
4408 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
4409 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
4410 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
4411
4412 <blockquote>
4413
4414 <p><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png" width="194" height="90" alt="Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!" align="right" border="0" /></a></p>
4415
4416 <blockquote>
4417 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
4418
4419 The first step is to choose a
4420 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
4421 code.<br/>
4422
4423 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
4424 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
4425
4426 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
4427 work<br/>
4428
4429 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
4430 </blockquote>
4431
4432 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
4433 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
4434 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
4435 0x57</a></small></p>
4436
4437 <p>As the Debian Website
4438 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
4439 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
4440 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
4441 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
4442 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
4443 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
4444 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
4445 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
4446 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
4447 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
4448 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
4449 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
4450 Freedom">FaiF</a>
4451 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
4452 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
4453 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
4454 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
4455 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
4456 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
4457 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
4458 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
4459 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
4460 In March the SFC supported a
4461 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
4462 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
4463 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
4464 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
4465 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
4466 conferences
4467 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
4468 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
4469 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
4470 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
4471 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
4472 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
4473 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
4474 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
4475 Software.</p>
4476
4477 <p>If you support Free Software,
4478 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
4479 what the SFC do, agree with their
4480 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
4481 principles</a>, are happy about their
4482 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
4483 work on a project that is an SFC
4484 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
4485 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
4486 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
4487 Allan Webber</a>,
4488 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
4489 Smith</a>,
4490 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
4491 Bacon</a>, myself and
4492 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
4493 becoming a
4494 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
4495 next week your donation will be
4496 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
4497 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
4498 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
4499 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
4500 social media accounts.</p>
4501
4502 </blockquote>
4503
4504 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
4505 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
4506 supporter too?</p>
4507
4508       </div>
4509       <div class="tags">
4510
4511
4512         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
4513
4514
4515       </div>
4516     </div>
4517     <div class="padding"></div>
4518
4519     <div class="entry">
4520       <div class="title">
4521         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
4522       </div>
4523       <div class="date">
4524         17th November 2015
4525       </div>
4526       <div class="body">
4527         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
4528 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
4529 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
4530 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
4531 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
4532 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
4533 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
4534 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
4535 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
4536 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
4537
4538 <pre>
4539 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
4540       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
4541 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
4542 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
4543 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
4544 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
4545 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
4546 </pre>
4547
4548 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
4549 my old key.</p>
4550
4551 <p>If you signed my old key
4552 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
4553 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
4554 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
4555 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
4556
4557       </div>
4558       <div class="tags">
4559
4560
4561         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
4562
4563
4564       </div>
4565     </div>
4566     <div class="padding"></div>
4567
4568     <div class="entry">
4569       <div class="title">
4570         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
4571       </div>
4572       <div class="date">
4573         24th September 2015
4574       </div>
4575       <div class="body">
4576         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
4577 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
4578 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
4579 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
4580 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
4581 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
4582 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
4583
4584 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
4585
4586 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
4587 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
4588 by someone else.  I found
4589 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
4590 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
4591 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
4592 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
4593 from him.  Via
4594 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
4595 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
4596 discovered
4597 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
4598 available in Debian.</p>
4599
4600 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
4601 battery stats ever since. Now my
4602 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
4603 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
4604 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
4605 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
4606
4607 <pre>
4608 #!/bin/sh
4609 # Inspired by
4610 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
4611 # See also
4612 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
4613 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
4614
4615 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
4616     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
4617
4618 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
4619     (
4620         printf "timestamp,"
4621         for f in $files; do
4622             printf "%s," $f
4623         done
4624         echo
4625     ) > "$logfile"
4626 fi
4627
4628 log_battery() {
4629     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
4630     # when several log processes run in parallel.
4631     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
4632         for f in $files; do \
4633             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
4634         done)
4635     echo "$msg"
4636 }
4637
4638 cd /sys/class/power_supply
4639
4640 for bat in BAT*; do
4641     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
4642 done
4643 </pre>
4644
4645 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
4646 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
4647 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
4648 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
4649 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
4650 The code for the Debian package
4651 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
4652 available on github</a>.</p>
4653
4654 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
4655
4656 <pre>
4657 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
4658 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
4659 [...]
4660 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
4661 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
4662 </pre>
4663
4664 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
4665 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
4666 battery.</p>
4667
4668 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
4669 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
4670 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
4671 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
4672 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
4673 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
4674 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
4675 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
4676 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
4677 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
4678 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
4679 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
4680 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
4681 Linux too.</p>
4682
4683 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
4684 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
4685 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
4686 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
4687 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
4688 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
4689 load).</p>
4690
4691 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
4692 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
4693 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
4694 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
4695 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
4696 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
4697 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
4698 those.</p>
4699
4700 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
4701 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
4702 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
4703 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
4704 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
4705 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
4706 specific.</p>
4707
4708       </div>
4709       <div class="tags">
4710
4711
4712         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4713
4714
4715       </div>
4716     </div>
4717     <div class="padding"></div>
4718
4719     <div class="entry">
4720       <div class="title">
4721         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
4722       </div>
4723       <div class="date">
4724          5th July 2015
4725       </div>
4726       <div class="body">
4727         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
4728 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
4729 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
4730 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
4731 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
4732 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
4733 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
4734 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
4735 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
4736 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
4737 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
4738
4739 <p>One tip I got was to use the
4740 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
4741 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
4742 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
4743 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
4744 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
4745 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
4746
4747 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
4748 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
4749 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
4750 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
4751 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
4752 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
4753 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
4754 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
4755 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
4756 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
4757 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
4758 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
4759 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
4760 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
4761 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
4762
4763 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
4764 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
4765 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
4766 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
4767
4768 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
4769 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
4770
4771 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
4772 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
4773 different
4774 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
4775 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
4776
4777       </div>
4778       <div class="tags">
4779
4780
4781         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4782
4783
4784       </div>
4785     </div>
4786     <div class="padding"></div>
4787
4788     <div class="entry">
4789       <div class="title">
4790         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
4791       </div>
4792       <div class="date">
4793          3rd July 2015
4794       </div>
4795       <div class="body">
4796         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
4797 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
4798 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
4799 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
4800 flickering.</p>
4801
4802 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
4803 still as
4804 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
4805 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
4806 good help from
4807 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
4808 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
4809 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
4810 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
4811 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
4812 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
4813 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
4814 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
4815 deteriorated since X41.</p>
4816
4817 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
4818 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
4819 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
4820 have suggestions.</p>
4821
4822 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
4823 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
4824 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
4825
4826       </div>
4827       <div class="tags">
4828
4829
4830         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4831
4832
4833       </div>
4834     </div>
4835     <div class="padding"></div>
4836
4837     <div class="entry">
4838       <div class="title">
4839         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
4840       </div>
4841       <div class="date">
4842         22nd November 2014
4843       </div>
4844       <div class="body">
4845         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
4846 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
4847 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
4848 courtesy of
4849 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
4850 Schubert</a> and
4851 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
4852 McVittie</a>.
4853
4854 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
4855 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
4856 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
4857 you upgrade:</p>
4858
4859 <p><blockquote><pre>
4860 Package: systemd-sysv
4861 Pin: release o=Debian
4862 Pin-Priority: -1
4863 </pre></blockquote><p>
4864
4865 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
4866 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
4867 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
4868 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
4869 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
4870
4871 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
4872 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
4873 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
4874 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
4875 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
4876 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
4877
4878 <p><blockquote><pre>
4879 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
4880 </pre></blockquote><p>
4881
4882 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
4883
4884 <p><blockquote><pre>
4885 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
4886 </pre></blockquote><p>
4887
4888 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
4889 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
4890
4891 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
4892 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
4893 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
4894 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
4895 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
4896 Jessie is released.</p>
4897
4898 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
4899 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
4900 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
4901 line.</p>
4902
4903       </div>
4904       <div class="tags">
4905
4906
4907         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4908
4909
4910       </div>
4911     </div>
4912     <div class="padding"></div>
4913
4914     <div class="entry">
4915       <div class="title">
4916         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
4917       </div>
4918       <div class="date">
4919         10th November 2014
4920       </div>
4921       <div class="body">
4922         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
4923 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
4924 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
4925
4926 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
4927 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
4928 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
4929 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
4930 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
4931 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
4932 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
4933 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
4934 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
4935 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
4936 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
4937 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
4938 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
4939 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
4940 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
4941
4942 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
4943 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
4944 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
4945 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
4946 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
4947 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
4948 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
4949 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
4950 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
4951 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
4952 were fairly easy, and
4953 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
4954 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
4955 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
4956 useful approach.</p>
4957
4958 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
4959 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
4960 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
4961 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
4962 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
4963 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
4964 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
4965 this:</p>
4966
4967 <p><blockquote><pre>
4968 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
4969   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
4970 </pre></blockquote></p>
4971
4972 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
4973 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
4974
4975 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
4976 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
4977 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
4978 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
4979 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
4980 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
4981 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
4982 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
4983 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
4984 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
4985 system.</p>
4986
4987 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
4988 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
4989 SMTorP. :)</p>
4990
4991       </div>
4992       <div class="tags">
4993
4994
4995         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
4996
4997
4998       </div>
4999     </div>
5000     <div class="padding"></div>
5001
5002     <div class="entry">
5003       <div class="title">
5004         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
5005       </div>
5006       <div class="date">
5007         22nd October 2014
5008       </div>
5009       <div class="body">
5010         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
5011 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
5012 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
5013 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
5014 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
5015 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
5016 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
5017 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
5018 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
5019 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
5020 lists I recently took over:</p>
5021
5022 <p><blockquote><pre>
5023 % time listadmin xiph
5024 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
5025 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
5026
5027 real    0m1.709s
5028 user    0m0.232s
5029 sys     0m0.012s
5030 %
5031 </pre></blockquote></p>
5032
5033 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
5034 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
5035 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
5036 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
5037 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
5038 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
5039 program.</p>
5040
5041 <p>If you install
5042 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
5043 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
5044 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
5045
5046 <p><blockquote><pre>
5047 username username@example.org
5048 spamlevel 23
5049 default discard
5050 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
5051
5052 password secret
5053 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
5054 mailman-list@lists.example.com
5055
5056 password hidden
5057 other-list@otherserver.example.org
5058 </pre></blockquote></p>
5059
5060 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
5061 learn the details.</p>
5062
5063 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
5064 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
5065 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
5066 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
5067
5068 <p><blockquote><pre>
5069 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
5070 </pre></blockquote></p>
5071
5072 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
5073 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
5074 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
5075 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
5076 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
5077 email.</p>
5078
5079 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
5080 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
5081 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
5082 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
5083 software.</p>
5084
5085 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5086 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5087 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5088
5089 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
5090 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
5091 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
5092 sure why.</p>
5093
5094       </div>
5095       <div class="tags">
5096
5097
5098         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
5099
5100
5101       </div>
5102     </div>
5103     <div class="padding"></div>
5104
5105     <div class="entry">
5106       <div class="title">
5107         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
5108       </div>
5109       <div class="date">
5110         17th October 2014
5111       </div>
5112       <div class="body">
5113         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
5114 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
5115 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
5116 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
5117 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
5118 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
5119 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
5120
5121 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
5122 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
5123 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
5124 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
5125 of this story.)</p>
5126
5127 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
5128 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
5129 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
5130 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
5131 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
5132 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
5133 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
5134 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
5135 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
5136 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
5137
5138 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
5139 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
5140 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
5141 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
5142
5143 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
5144 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
5145
5146 <p><blockquote><pre>
5147 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
5148 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
5149 </pre></blockquote></p>
5150
5151 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
5152 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
5153 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
5154 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
5155 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
5156 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
5157 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
5158 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
5159
5160 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
5161 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
5162
5163 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
5164 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
5165 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
5166 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
5167 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
5168
5169 <p><blockquote><pre>
5170 Task: isenkram-packages
5171 Section: hardware
5172 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
5173  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
5174  proposed.
5175 Test-new-install: show show
5176 Relevance: 8
5177 Packages: for-current-hardware
5178
5179 Task: isenkram-firmware
5180 Section: hardware
5181 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
5182  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
5183  packages are proposed.
5184 Test-new-install: mark show
5185 Relevance: 8
5186 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
5187 </pre></blockquote></p>
5188
5189 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
5190 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
5191 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
5192 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
5193 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
5194
5195 <p><blockquote><pre>
5196 #!/bin/sh
5197 #
5198 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
5199 export PATH
5200 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
5201 </pre></blockquote></p>
5202
5203 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
5204 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
5205
5206 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
5207 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
5208 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
5209 install.</p>
5210
5211 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
5212 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
5213 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
5214
5215       </div>
5216       <div class="tags">
5217
5218
5219         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
5220
5221
5222       </div>
5223     </div>
5224     <div class="padding"></div>
5225
5226     <div class="entry">
5227       <div class="title">
5228         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
5229       </div>
5230       <div class="date">
5231          4th October 2014
5232       </div>
5233       <div class="body">
5234         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
5235 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
5236 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
5237 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
5238
5239 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
5240
5241 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
5242 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
5243 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
5244
5245       </div>
5246       <div class="tags">
5247
5248
5249         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5250
5251
5252       </div>
5253     </div>
5254     <div class="padding"></div>
5255
5256     <div class="entry">
5257       <div class="title">
5258         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
5259       </div>
5260       <div class="date">
5261          4th October 2014
5262       </div>
5263       <div class="body">
5264         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
5265 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
5266 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
5267 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
5268 Dibb.</p>
5269
5270 <p>I just wrapped up
5271 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
5272 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
5273 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
5274 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
5275 0.17.</p>
5276
5277 <ul>
5278
5279  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
5280  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
5281    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
5282  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
5283  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
5284  <li>Fix include orders</li>
5285  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
5286  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
5287  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
5288    the palette size is the same.</li>
5289  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
5290  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
5291  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
5292  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
5293    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
5294
5295 </ul>
5296
5297 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
5298 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
5299 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
5300
5301       </div>
5302       <div class="tags">
5303
5304
5305         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
5306
5307
5308       </div>
5309     </div>
5310     <div class="padding"></div>
5311
5312     <div class="entry">
5313       <div class="title">
5314         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
5315       </div>
5316       <div class="date">
5317         26th September 2014
5318       </div>
5319       <div class="body">
5320         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5321 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
5322 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
5323 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
5324 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
5325 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
5326 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
5327 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
5328 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
5329 future.  The
5330 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
5331 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
5332 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
5333 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
5334 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
5335
5336 <p>First, download the test ISO via
5337 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
5338 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
5339 or rsync (use
5340 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
5341 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
5342 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
5343 install with some tweaking.</p>
5344
5345 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
5346 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
5347
5348 <p><blockquote><pre>
5349 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
5350 </pre></blockquote></p>
5351
5352 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
5353 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
5354 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
5355 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
5356
5357 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
5358 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
5359 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
5360 your need.</p>
5361
5362 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
5363 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
5364 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
5365 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
5366 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
5367 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
5368 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
5369 days.</p>
5370
5371 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
5372 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
5373 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
5374 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
5375 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
5376 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
5377 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
5378 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
5379 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
5380
5381 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
5382 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
5383 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
5384
5385       </div>
5386       <div class="tags">
5387
5388
5389         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5390
5391
5392       </div>
5393     </div>
5394     <div class="padding"></div>
5395
5396     <div class="entry">
5397       <div class="title">
5398         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
5399       </div>
5400       <div class="date">
5401         25th September 2014
5402       </div>
5403       <div class="body">
5404         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
5405 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
5406 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
5407 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
5408 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
5409 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
5410 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
5411 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
5412 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
5413 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
5414 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
5415 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
5416 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
5417
5418 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
5419 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
5420 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
5421 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
5422 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
5423 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
5424 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
5425 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
5426 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
5427 list</a>. :)</p>
5428
5429       </div>
5430       <div class="tags">
5431
5432
5433         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
5434
5435
5436       </div>
5437     </div>
5438     <div class="padding"></div>
5439
5440     <div class="entry">
5441       <div class="title">
5442         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
5443       </div>
5444       <div class="date">
5445         16th September 2014
5446       </div>
5447       <div class="body">
5448         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
5449 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
5450 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
5451 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
5452 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
5453 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
5454 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
5455 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
5456 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
5457 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
5458 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
5459 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
5460 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
5461 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
5462
5463 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
5464 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
5465 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
5466 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
5467 depend on the small and clever package
5468 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
5469 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
5470 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
5471 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
5472 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
5473 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
5474 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
5475 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
5476 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
5477 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
5478 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
5479
5480 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
5481 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
5482 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
5483 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
5484 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
5485 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
5486 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
5487 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
5488 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
5489 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
5490 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
5491 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
5492 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
5493 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
5494 dialog.</p>
5495
5496 <p><table>
5497
5498 <tr>
5499 <th>Machine/setup</th>
5500 <th>Original tasksel</th>
5501 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
5502 <th>Reduction</th>
5503 </tr>
5504
5505 <tr>
5506 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
5507 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
5508 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
5509 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
5510 </tr>
5511
5512 <tr>
5513 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
5514 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
5515 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
5516 <td>23 min 40%</td>
5517 </tr>
5518
5519 <tr>
5520 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
5521 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
5522 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
5523 <td>11 min 50%</td>
5524 </tr>
5525
5526 <tr>
5527 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
5528 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
5529 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
5530 <td>2 min 33%</td>
5531 </tr>
5532
5533 <tr>
5534 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
5535 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
5536 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
5537 <td>4 min 21%</td>
5538 </tr>
5539
5540 </table></p>
5541
5542 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
5543 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
5544 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
5545 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
5546 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
5547 installed.</p>
5548
5549 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
5550 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
5551 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
5552 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
5553 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
5554 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
5555 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
5556 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
5557 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
5558 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
5559 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
5560 for the entire installation.</p>
5561
5562 <p>I've implemented this in the
5563 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
5564 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
5565 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
5566 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
5567 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
5568
5569 <p><blockquote><pre>
5570 #!/bin/sh
5571 set -e
5572 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
5573 info() {
5574     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
5575 }
5576 error() {
5577     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
5578 }
5579 override_install() {
5580     apt-install eatmydata || true
5581     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
5582         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
5583             file=/usr/bin/$bin
5584             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
5585             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
5586                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
5587                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
5588                     > /target$file.edu
5589                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
5590                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
5591                     --rename --quiet --add $file
5592                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
5593             else
5594                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
5595             fi
5596         done
5597     else
5598         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
5599     fi
5600 }
5601
5602 override_install
5603 </pre></blockquote></p>
5604
5605 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
5606 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
5607
5608 <p><blockquote><pre>
5609 #! /bin/sh -e
5610 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
5611 error() {
5612     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
5613 }
5614 remove_install_override() {
5615     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
5616         file=/usr/bin/$bin
5617         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
5618             rm /target$file
5619             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
5620                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
5621             rm /target$file.edu
5622         else
5623             error "Missing divert for $file."
5624         fi
5625     done
5626     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
5627 }
5628
5629 remove_install_override
5630 </pre></blockquote></p>
5631
5632 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
5633 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
5634 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
5635
5636 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
5637 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
5638 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
5639 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
5640 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
5641 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
5642 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
5643 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
5644 everyone.</p>
5645
5646 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
5647 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
5648 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
5649 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
5650
5651 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
5652 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
5653 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
5654 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
5655 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
5656
5657 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
5658 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
5659 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
5660 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
5661 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
5662
5663       </div>
5664       <div class="tags">
5665
5666
5667         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5668
5669
5670       </div>
5671     </div>
5672     <div class="padding"></div>
5673
5674     <div class="entry">
5675       <div class="title">
5676         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
5677       </div>
5678       <div class="date">
5679         10th September 2014
5680       </div>
5681       <div class="body">
5682         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
5683 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
5684 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
5685 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
5686 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
5687 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
5688 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
5689 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
5690 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
5691 those problems are gone now.</p>
5692
5693 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
5694 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
5695 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
5696 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
5697 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
5698
5699 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
5700 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
5701 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
5702
5703 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
5704 line:</p>
5705
5706 <p><blockquote><pre>
5707 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
5708 </pre></blockquote></p>
5709
5710 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
5711 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
5712 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
5713 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
5714
5715 <p><blockquote><pre>
5716 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
5717 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
5718 %
5719 </pre></blockquote></p>
5720
5721 <p>Now if only
5722 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
5723 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
5724 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
5725 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
5726 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
5727 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
5728 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
5729 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
5730 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
5731
5732       </div>
5733       <div class="tags">
5734
5735
5736         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
5737
5738
5739       </div>
5740     </div>
5741     <div class="padding"></div>
5742
5743     <div class="entry">
5744       <div class="title">
5745         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
5746       </div>
5747       <div class="date">
5748         17th June 2014
5749       </div>
5750       <div class="body">
5751         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5752 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
5753 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
5754 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
5755 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
5756
5757 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
5758 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
5759 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
5760 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
5761 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
5762 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
5763 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
5764 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
5765 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
5766 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
5767 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
5768 goals.</p>
5769
5770 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
5771 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
5772 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
5773 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
5774 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
5775 chapters together into one large web page (aka
5776 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
5777 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
5778 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
5779 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
5780 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
5781 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
5782 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
5783 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
5784 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
5785 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
5786 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
5787 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
5788 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
5789 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
5790 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
5791 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
5792 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
5793 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
5794
5795 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
5796 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
5797 track the English original.  For this we use the
5798 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
5799 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
5800 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
5801 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
5802 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
5803 files), which the translations update with the native language
5804 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
5805 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
5806 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
5807 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
5808 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
5809 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
5810 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
5811 of the documentation.</p>
5812
5813 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
5814 recommend using
5815 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
5816 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
5817 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
5818 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
5819 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
5820 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
5821 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
5822 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
5823
5824 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
5825 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
5826 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
5827 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
5828 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
5829 translated images by storing translated versions in
5830 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
5831 package maintainers know more.</p>
5832
5833 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
5834 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
5835 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
5836 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
5837 PDF version</a> or the
5838 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
5839 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
5840 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
5841
5842 <p>To learn more, check out
5843 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
5844 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
5845 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
5846 manual on the wiki</a> and
5847 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
5848 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
5849
5850       </div>
5851       <div class="tags">
5852
5853
5854         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5855
5856
5857       </div>
5858     </div>
5859     <div class="padding"></div>
5860
5861     <div class="entry">
5862       <div class="title">
5863         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
5864       </div>
5865       <div class="date">
5866         23rd April 2014
5867       </div>
5868       <div class="body">
5869         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
5870 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
5871 So I implemented one, using
5872 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
5873 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
5874 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
5875 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
5876 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
5877 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
5878
5879 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
5880 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
5881 packages to install.  The first part is in
5882 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
5883 this:</p>
5884
5885 <p><blockquote><pre>
5886 Task: isenkram
5887 Section: hardware
5888 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
5889  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
5890  proposed.
5891 Test-new-install: mark show
5892 Relevance: 8
5893 Packages: for-current-hardware
5894 </pre></blockquote></p>
5895
5896 <p>The second part is in
5897 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
5898 this:</p>
5899
5900 <p><blockquote><pre>
5901 #!/bin/sh
5902 #
5903 (
5904     isenkram-lookup
5905     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
5906 ) | sort -u
5907 </pre></blockquote></p>
5908
5909 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
5910 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
5911 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
5912 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
5913 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
5914 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
5915
5916 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
5917 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
5918 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
5919 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
5920 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
5921 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
5922 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
5923 the python-apt code (bug
5924 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
5925 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
5926 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
5927 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
5928 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
5929 unstable today.</p>
5930
5931 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
5932 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
5933 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
5934 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
5935 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
5936 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
5937 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
5938 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
5939 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
5940
5941 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
5942 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
5943 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
5944 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
5945 package.  See also
5946 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
5947 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
5948 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
5949 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
5950
5951       </div>
5952       <div class="tags">
5953
5954
5955         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
5956
5957
5958       </div>
5959     </div>
5960     <div class="padding"></div>
5961
5962     <div class="entry">
5963       <div class="title">
5964         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
5965       </div>
5966       <div class="date">
5967         15th April 2014
5968       </div>
5969       <div class="body">
5970         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
5971 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
5972 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
5973 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
5974 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
5975 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
5976
5977 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
5978 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
5979 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
5980 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
5981 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
5982 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
5983 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
5984
5985 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
5986 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
5987 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
5988 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
5989 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
5990 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
5991 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
5992 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
5993 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
5994 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
5995 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
5996 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
5997
5998 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
5999 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
6000 become root:</p>
6001
6002 <p><pre>
6003 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
6004   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
6005   u-boot-tools
6006 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
6007   freedom-maker
6008 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
6009 </pre></p>
6010
6011 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
6012 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
6013 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
6014 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
6015 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
6016 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
6017 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
6018 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
6019
6020 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
6021 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
6022 the preseed values:</p>
6023
6024 <p><pre>
6025 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
6026 </pre></p>
6027
6028 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
6029 it still work.</p>
6030
6031 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
6032 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
6033 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
6034 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
6035 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
6036 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
6037 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
6038
6039 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
6040 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
6041 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
6042 irc.debian.org)</a> and
6043 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
6044 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
6045
6046       </div>
6047       <div class="tags">
6048
6049
6050         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6051
6052
6053       </div>
6054     </div>
6055     <div class="padding"></div>
6056
6057     <div class="entry">
6058       <div class="title">
6059         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
6060       </div>
6061       <div class="date">
6062          9th April 2014
6063       </div>
6064       <div class="body">
6065         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
6066 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
6067 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
6068 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
6069 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
6070 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
6071 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
6072 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
6073 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
6074 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
6075 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
6076 have looked at a system called
6077 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
6078 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
6079
6080 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
6081 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
6082 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
6083 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
6084 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
6085 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
6086 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
6087 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
6088 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
6089 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
6090 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
6091 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
6092 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
6093
6094 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
6095 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
6096 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
6097 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
6098 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
6099 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
6100 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
6101 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
6102 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
6103 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
6104 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
6105 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
6106 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
6107 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
6108 account.</p>
6109
6110 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
6111 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
6112 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
6113 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
6114 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
6115 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
6116 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
6117
6118 <p><blockquote><pre>
6119 [s3c]
6120 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
6121 backend-login: API-login
6122 backend-password: API-password
6123 fs-passphrase: local-password
6124 </pre></blockquote></p>
6125
6126 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
6127 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
6128 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
6129 details and password to create it:</p>
6130
6131 <p><blockquote><pre>
6132 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
6133 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
6134   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
6135 Enter backend login:
6136 Enter backend password:
6137 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
6138 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
6139 Enter encryption password:
6140 Confirm encryption password:
6141 Generating random encryption key...
6142 Creating metadata tables...
6143 Dumping metadata...
6144 ..objects..
6145 ..blocks..
6146 ..inodes..
6147 ..inode_blocks..
6148 ..symlink_targets..
6149 ..names..
6150 ..contents..
6151 ..ext_attributes..
6152 Compressing and uploading metadata...
6153 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
6154 # </pre></blockquote></p>
6155
6156 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
6157
6158 <p><blockquote><pre>
6159 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
6160   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
6161 Using 4 upload threads.
6162 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
6163 Reading metadata...
6164 ..objects..
6165 ..blocks..
6166 ..inodes..
6167 ..inode_blocks..
6168 ..symlink_targets..
6169 ..names..
6170 ..contents..
6171 ..ext_attributes..
6172 Mounting filesystem...
6173 # df -h /s3ql
6174 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
6175 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
6176 #
6177 </pre></blockquote></p>
6178
6179 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
6180 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
6181 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
6182 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
6183 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
6184 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
6185
6186 <p><blockquote><pre>
6187 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
6188 #
6189 </pre></blockquote></p>
6190
6191 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
6192 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
6193 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
6194 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
6195 file system:</p>
6196
6197 <p><blockquote><pre>
6198 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
6199 Using cached metadata.
6200 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
6201 Checking DB integrity...
6202 Creating temporary extra indices...
6203 Checking lost+found...
6204 Checking cached objects...
6205 Checking names (refcounts)...
6206 Checking contents (names)...
6207 Checking contents (inodes)...
6208 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
6209 Checking objects (reference counts)...
6210 Checking objects (backend)...
6211 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
6212 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
6213 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
6214 Checking objects (sizes)...
6215 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
6216 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
6217 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
6218 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
6219 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
6220 Checking inodes (sizes)...
6221 Checking extended attributes (names)...
6222 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
6223 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
6224 Checking directory reachability...
6225 Checking unix conventions...
6226 Checking referential integrity...
6227 Dropping temporary indices...
6228 Backing up old metadata...
6229 Dumping metadata...
6230 ..objects..
6231 ..blocks..
6232 ..inodes..
6233 ..inode_blocks..
6234 ..symlink_targets..
6235 ..names..
6236 ..contents..
6237 ..ext_attributes..
6238 Compressing and uploading metadata...
6239 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
6240 #
6241 </pre></blockquote></p>
6242
6243 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
6244 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
6245 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
6246 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
6247 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
6248 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
6249 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
6250 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
6251 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
6252 working set.</p>
6253
6254 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
6255 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
6256 busy:</p>
6257
6258 <p><blockquote><pre>
6259 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
6260   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
6261 Using 8 upload threads.
6262 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
6263 #
6264 </pre></blockquote></p>
6265
6266 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
6267 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
6268 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
6269 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
6270 s3qlctrl:
6271
6272 <p><blockquote><pre>
6273 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
6274 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
6275 #
6276 </pre></blockquote></p>
6277
6278 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
6279 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
6280 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
6281 a report:</p>
6282
6283 <p><blockquote><pre>
6284 # s3qlstat /s3ql
6285 Directory entries:    9141
6286 Inodes:               9143
6287 Data blocks:          8851
6288 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
6289 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
6290 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
6291 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
6292 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
6293 #
6294 </pre></blockquote></p>
6295
6296 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
6297 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
6298 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
6299 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
6300 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
6301 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
6302 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
6303 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
6304 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
6305 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
6306 best.</p>
6307
6308 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
6309 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
6310 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
6311 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
6312 poster is titled
6313 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
6314 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
6315 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
6316 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
6317 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
6318
6319 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
6320 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
6321 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
6322 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
6323 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
6324 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
6325 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
6326 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
6327
6328 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
6329 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
6330 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
6331 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
6332 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
6333 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
6334 only read from it.</p>
6335
6336 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6337 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6338 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6339
6340       </div>
6341       <div class="tags">
6342
6343
6344         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
6345
6346
6347       </div>
6348     </div>
6349     <div class="padding"></div>
6350
6351     <div class="entry">
6352       <div class="title">
6353         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
6354       </div>
6355       <div class="date">
6356         14th March 2014
6357       </div>
6358       <div class="body">
6359         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
6360 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
6361 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
6362 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
6363 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
6364 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
6365 release (0.2).</p>
6366
6367 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
6368 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
6369 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
6370 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
6371 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
6372 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
6373 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
6374 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
6375 and build using
6376 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
6377 with a user with sudo access to become root:
6378
6379 <pre>
6380 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
6381   freedom-maker
6382 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
6383   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
6384   u-boot-tools
6385 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
6386 </pre>
6387
6388 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
6389 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
6390 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
6391 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
6392 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
6393 kpartx call.</p>
6394
6395 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
6396 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
6397 the preseed values:</p>
6398
6399 <pre>
6400 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
6401 </pre>
6402
6403 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
6404 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
6405 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
6406 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
6407 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
6408 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
6409
6410 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
6411 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
6412 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
6413 irc.debian.org)</a> and
6414 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
6415 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
6416
6417       </div>
6418       <div class="tags">
6419
6420
6421         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6422
6423
6424       </div>
6425     </div>
6426     <div class="padding"></div>
6427
6428     <div class="entry">
6429       <div class="title">
6430         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
6431       </div>
6432       <div class="date">
6433         22nd February 2014
6434       </div>
6435       <div class="body">
6436         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
6437 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
6438 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
6439 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
6440 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
6441 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
6442 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
6443 proper home since then.</p>
6444
6445 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
6446 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
6447 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
6448 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
6449 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
6450
6451 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
6452 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
6453 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
6454 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
6455 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
6456 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
6457 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
6458 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
6459 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
6460
6461       </div>
6462       <div class="tags">
6463
6464
6465         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6466
6467
6468       </div>
6469     </div>
6470     <div class="padding"></div>
6471
6472     <div class="entry">
6473       <div class="title">
6474         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
6475       </div>
6476       <div class="date">
6477          3rd February 2014
6478       </div>
6479       <div class="body">
6480         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
6481 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
6482 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
6483 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
6484 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
6485 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
6486 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
6487 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
6488 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
6489
6490 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
6491 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
6492 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
6493 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
6494 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
6495 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
6496
6497 <p><blockquote><pre>
6498 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
6499 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
6500 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
6501 dhclient /dev/eth0
6502 </pre></blockquote></p>
6503
6504 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
6505 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
6506 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
6507
6508 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
6509 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
6510 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
6511 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
6512 side.</p>
6513
6514 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
6515 stuff:</p>
6516
6517 <p><blockquote><pre>
6518 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
6519 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
6520 EOF
6521 apt-get update
6522 apt-get dist-upgrade
6523 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
6524     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
6525 update-alternatives --config runsystem
6526 </pre></blockquote></p>
6527
6528 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
6529 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
6530 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
6531 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
6532 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
6533 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
6534 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
6535 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
6536 ssh instead.
6537
6538 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
6539 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
6540 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
6541 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
6542 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
6543 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
6544
6545 <p><blockquote><pre>
6546 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
6547 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
6548 EOF
6549 </pre></blockquote></p>
6550
6551 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
6552 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
6553 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
6554 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
6555
6556 <p><blockquote><pre>
6557 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
6558 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
6559 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
6560 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
6561 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
6562 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
6563 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
6564 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
6565 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
6566 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
6567 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
6568 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
6569 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
6570 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
6571 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
6572 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
6573 #
6574 </pre></blockquote></p>
6575
6576 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
6577 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
6578 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
6579 command line stuff.<p>
6580
6581       </div>
6582       <div class="tags">
6583
6584
6585         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6586
6587
6588       </div>
6589     </div>
6590     <div class="padding"></div>
6591
6592     <div class="entry">
6593       <div class="title">
6594         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
6595       </div>
6596       <div class="date">
6597         14th January 2014
6598       </div>
6599       <div class="body">
6600         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
6601 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
6602 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
6603 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
6604 the source.  The company behind it provide
6605 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
6606 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
6607 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
6608 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
6609 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
6610 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
6611 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
6612 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
6613 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
6614 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
6615 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
6616 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
6617 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
6618 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
6619 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
6620 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
6621 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
6622 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
6623 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
6624
6625 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
6626
6627 <ul>
6628
6629   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
6630   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
6631   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
6632
6633 </ul>
6634
6635 <p>You can
6636 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
6637 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
6638 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
6639 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
6640 include a test suite check.</p>
6641
6642       </div>
6643       <div class="tags">
6644
6645
6646         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6647
6648
6649       </div>
6650     </div>
6651     <div class="padding"></div>
6652
6653     <div class="entry">
6654       <div class="title">
6655         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
6656       </div>
6657       <div class="date">
6658         24th November 2013
6659       </div>
6660       <div class="body">
6661         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
6662 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
6663 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
6664 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
6665 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
6666 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
6667 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
6668 is working on.  I checked the
6669 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
6670 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
6671 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
6672 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
6673 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
6674 These are the release notes:</p>
6675
6676 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
6677
6678 <ul>
6679
6680   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
6681    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
6682    up.</li>
6683
6684   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
6685
6686   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
6687    Matthias Klose.</li>
6688
6689   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
6690    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
6691
6692   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
6693    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
6694    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
6695
6696 </ul>
6697
6698 <p>You can
6699 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
6700 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
6701 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
6702 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
6703 include a testsuite check.</p>
6704
6705       </div>
6706       <div class="tags">
6707
6708
6709         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6710
6711
6712       </div>
6713     </div>
6714     <div class="padding"></div>
6715
6716     <div class="entry">
6717       <div class="title">
6718         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
6719       </div>
6720       <div class="date">
6721          2nd November 2013
6722       </div>
6723       <div class="body">
6724         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
6725 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
6726 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
6727 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
6728 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
6729
6730 <p><pre>
6731 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
6732 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
6733 # Provides:          rsyslog
6734 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
6735 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
6736 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
6737 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
6738 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
6739 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
6740 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
6741 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
6742 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
6743 ### END INIT INFO
6744 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
6745 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
6746 </pre></p>
6747
6748 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
6749 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
6750 info/comments.</p>
6751
6752 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
6753 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
6754
6755 <p><pre>
6756 #!/bin/sh
6757
6758 # Define LSB log_* functions.
6759 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
6760 # and status_of_proc is working.
6761 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
6762
6763 #
6764 # Function that starts the daemon/service
6765
6766 #
6767 do_start()
6768 {
6769         # Return
6770         #   0 if daemon has been started
6771         #   1 if daemon was already running
6772         #   2 if daemon could not be started
6773         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
6774                 || return 1
6775         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
6776                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
6777                 || return 2
6778         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
6779         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
6780         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
6781 }
6782
6783 #
6784 # Function that stops the daemon/service
6785 #
6786 do_stop()
6787 {
6788         # Return
6789         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
6790         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
6791         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
6792         #   other if a failure occurred
6793         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
6794         RETVAL="$?"
6795         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
6796         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
6797         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
6798         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
6799         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
6800         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
6801         # sleep for some time.
6802         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
6803         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
6804         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
6805         rm -f $PIDFILE
6806         return "$RETVAL"
6807 }
6808
6809 #
6810 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
6811 #
6812 do_reload() {
6813         #
6814         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
6815         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
6816         # then implement that here.
6817         #
6818         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
6819         return 0
6820 }
6821
6822 SCRIPTNAME=$1
6823 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
6824 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
6825 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
6826     script="$1"
6827     shift
6828     . $script
6829 else
6830     exit 0
6831 fi
6832
6833 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
6834 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
6835
6836 # Exit if the package is not installed
6837 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
6838
6839 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
6840 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
6841
6842 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
6843 . /lib/init/vars.sh
6844
6845 case "$1" in
6846   start)
6847         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
6848         do_start
6849         case "$?" in
6850                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
6851                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
6852         esac
6853         ;;
6854   stop)
6855         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
6856         do_stop
6857         case "$?" in
6858                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
6859                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
6860         esac
6861         ;;
6862   status)
6863         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
6864         ;;
6865   #reload|force-reload)
6866         #
6867         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
6868         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
6869         #
6870         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
6871         #do_reload
6872         #log_end_msg $?
6873         #;;
6874   restart|force-reload)
6875         #
6876         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
6877         # 'force-reload' alias
6878         #
6879         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
6880         do_stop
6881         case "$?" in
6882           0|1)
6883                 do_start
6884                 case "$?" in
6885                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
6886                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
6887                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
6888                 esac
6889                 ;;
6890           *)
6891                 # Failed to stop
6892                 log_end_msg 1
6893                 ;;
6894         esac
6895         ;;
6896   *)
6897         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
6898         exit 3
6899         ;;
6900 esac
6901
6902 :
6903 </pre></p>
6904
6905 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
6906 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
6907 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
6908 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
6909
6910 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
6911 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
6912 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
6913 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
6914 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
6915
6916       </div>
6917       <div class="tags">
6918
6919
6920         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6921
6922
6923       </div>
6924     </div>
6925     <div class="padding"></div>
6926
6927     <div class="entry">
6928       <div class="title">
6929         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
6930       </div>
6931       <div class="date">
6932          1st November 2013
6933       </div>
6934       <div class="body">
6935         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
6936 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
6937 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
6938 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
6939 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
6940 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
6941 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
6942 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
6943 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
6944 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
6945 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
6946 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
6947
6948 <p>The source is now available from
6949 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
6950
6951       </div>
6952       <div class="tags">
6953
6954
6955         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6956
6957
6958       </div>
6959     </div>
6960     <div class="padding"></div>
6961
6962     <div class="entry">
6963       <div class="title">
6964         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
6965       </div>
6966       <div class="date">
6967         27th October 2013
6968       </div>
6969       <div class="body">
6970         <p>The
6971 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
6972 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
6973 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
6974 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
6975 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
6976 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
6977 of a plan to simplify the build system for
6978 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
6979 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
6980 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
6981 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
6982 Raspberry Pi.</p>
6983
6984 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
6985 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
6986 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
6987 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
6988 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
6989 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
6990 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
6991 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
6992 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
6993 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
6994 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
6995 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
6996 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
6997 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
6998 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
6999 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
7000 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
7001 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
7002 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
7003 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
7004 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
7005 available from
7006 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
7007 upstream project page</a>.</p>
7008
7009 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
7010 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
7011 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
7012 list:</p>
7013
7014 <p><pre>
7015 #!/bin/sh
7016 set -e # Exit on first error
7017 rootdir="$1"
7018 cd "$rootdir"
7019 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
7020 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
7021 EOF
7022 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
7023 # install a kernel somewhere too.
7024 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
7025     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
7026 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
7027 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
7028 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
7029 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
7030 </pre></p>
7031
7032 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
7033 to build the image:</p>
7034
7035 <pre>
7036 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
7037     --variant minbase \
7038     --arch armel \
7039     --distribution jessie \
7040     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
7041     --image test.img \
7042     --size 600M \
7043     --bootsize 64M \
7044     --boottype vfat \
7045     --log-level debug \
7046     --verbose \
7047     --no-kernel \
7048     --no-extlinux \
7049     --root-password raspberry \
7050     --hostname raspberrypi \
7051     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
7052     --customize `pwd`/customize \
7053     --package netbase \
7054     --package git-core \
7055     --package binutils \
7056     --package ca-certificates \
7057     --package wget \
7058     --package kmod
7059 </pre></p>
7060
7061 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
7062 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
7063 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
7064 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
7065 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
7066 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
7067 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
7068
7069 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
7070 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
7071 build dependency list.</p>
7072
7073 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
7074 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
7075 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
7076 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
7077
7078       </div>
7079       <div class="tags">
7080
7081
7082         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
7083
7084
7085       </div>
7086     </div>
7087     <div class="padding"></div>
7088
7089     <div class="entry">
7090       <div class="title">
7091         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
7092       </div>
7093       <div class="date">
7094         15th October 2013
7095       </div>
7096       <div class="body">
7097         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
7098 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
7099 these. :)</p>
7100
7101 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
7102 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
7103 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
7104 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
7105 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
7106 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
7107 hope you will to. :)</p>
7108
7109 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
7110 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
7111 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
7112 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
7113 donated.  Are you next?</p>
7114
7115 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
7116 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
7117 statement under the heading
7118 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
7119 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
7120 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
7121 too.</p>
7122
7123       </div>
7124       <div class="tags">
7125
7126
7127         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
7128
7129
7130       </div>
7131     </div>
7132     <div class="padding"></div>
7133
7134     <div class="entry">
7135       <div class="title">
7136         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
7137       </div>
7138       <div class="date">
7139         27th September 2013
7140       </div>
7141       <div class="body">
7142         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
7143 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
7144 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
7145 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
7146
7147 <ul>
7148
7149 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
7150 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
7151
7152 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
7153 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
7154
7155 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
7156 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
7157 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
7158 (Youtube)</li>
7159
7160 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
7161 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
7162
7163 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
7164 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
7165
7166 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
7167 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
7168 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
7169
7170 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
7171 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
7172 (Youtube)</li>
7173
7174 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
7175 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
7176
7177 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
7178 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
7179
7180 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
7181 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
7182 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
7183
7184 </ul>
7185
7186 <p>A larger list is available from
7187 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
7188 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
7189
7190 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
7191 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
7192 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
7193 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
7194 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
7195 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
7196 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
7197 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
7198 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
7199 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
7200 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
7201
7202       </div>
7203       <div class="tags">
7204
7205
7206         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7207
7208
7209       </div>
7210     </div>
7211     <div class="padding"></div>
7212
7213     <div class="entry">
7214       <div class="title">
7215         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
7216       </div>
7217       <div class="date">
7218         10th September 2013
7219       </div>
7220       <div class="body">
7221         <p>I was introduced to the
7222 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
7223 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
7224 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
7225 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
7226 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
7227 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
7228 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
7229 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
7230
7231 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
7232 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
7233 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
7234 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
7235 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
7236
7237 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
7238 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
7239 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
7240 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
7241 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
7242 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
7243 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
7244 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
7245 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
7246 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
7247 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
7248 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
7249 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
7250 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
7251 missing in Debian).</p>
7252
7253 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
7254 scripts
7255 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
7256 and a administrative web interface
7257 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
7258 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
7259 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
7260 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
7261 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
7262 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
7263 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
7264 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
7265 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
7266 this is really working yet, see
7267 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
7268 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
7269 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
7270 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
7271 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
7272 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
7273 with lots of half baked features.</p>
7274
7275 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
7276 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
7277 at.</p>
7278
7279 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
7280
7281 <ol>
7282
7283 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
7284 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
7285 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
7286 to the Debian installer:<p>
7287 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
7288
7289 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
7290 install on.</li>
7291
7292 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
7293 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
7294
7295 </ol>
7296
7297 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
7298
7299 <ol>
7300
7301 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
7302 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
7303 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
7304 <pre>
7305 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
7306 </pre></li>
7307 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
7308 <pre>
7309 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
7310    apt-key add -
7311 apt-get update
7312 apt-get install freedombox-setup
7313 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
7314 </pre></li>
7315 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
7316
7317 </ol>
7318
7319 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
7320 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
7321 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
7322 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
7323 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
7324
7325 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
7326 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
7327 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
7328 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
7329
7330 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
7331 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
7332 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
7333 irc.debian.org and the
7334 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
7335 mailing list</a>.</p>
7336
7337 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
7338 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
7339 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
7340 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
7341 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
7342 default password is 'secret'.</p>
7343
7344       </div>
7345       <div class="tags">
7346
7347
7348         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7349
7350
7351       </div>
7352     </div>
7353     <div class="padding"></div>
7354
7355     <div class="entry">
7356       <div class="title">
7357         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
7358       </div>
7359       <div class="date">
7360         18th August 2013
7361       </div>
7362       <div class="body">
7363         <p>Earlier, I reported about
7364 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
7365 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
7366 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
7367 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
7368 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
7369 currently on the disk.</p>
7370
7371 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
7372 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
7373 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
7374 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
7375 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
7376 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
7377 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
7378 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
7379 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
7380 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
7381 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
7382 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
7383 the broken disks.</p>
7384
7385       </div>
7386       <div class="tags">
7387
7388
7389         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7390
7391
7392       </div>
7393     </div>
7394     <div class="padding"></div>
7395
7396     <div class="entry">
7397       <div class="title">
7398         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
7399       </div>
7400       <div class="date">
7401         17th July 2013
7402       </div>
7403       <div class="body">
7404         <p>Today I switched to
7405 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
7406 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
7407 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
7408 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
7409 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
7410 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
7411 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
7412 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
7413 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
7414 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
7415 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
7416 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
7417 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
7418 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
7419 station from now on.</p>
7420
7421 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
7422 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
7423 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
7424 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
7425 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
7426 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
7427 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
7428 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
7429 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
7430 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
7431 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
7432 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
7433
7434 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
7435 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
7436 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
7437 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
7438 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
7439 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
7440 parameters are tuned:</p>
7441
7442 <ul>
7443
7444 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
7445     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
7446
7447 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
7448     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
7449     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
7450
7451 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
7452     systems.</li>
7453
7454 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
7455     /etc/fstab.</li>
7456
7457 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
7458
7459 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
7460     cron.daily).</li>
7461
7462 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
7463     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
7464
7465 </ul>
7466
7467 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
7468 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
7469 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
7470 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
7471 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
7472 from getting the data on the disk (see
7473 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
7474 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
7475 right thing to do.</p>
7476
7477 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
7478 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
7479 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
7480
7481 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
7482 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
7483 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
7484 instead of during my work.</p>
7485
7486 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
7487 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
7488
7489 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
7490 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
7491 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
7492
7493 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
7494 there.</p>
7495
7496 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
7497 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
7498 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
7499 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
7500 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
7501 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
7502 back.</p>
7503
7504       </div>
7505       <div class="tags">
7506
7507
7508         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7509
7510
7511       </div>
7512     </div>
7513     <div class="padding"></div>
7514
7515     <div class="entry">
7516       <div class="title">
7517         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
7518       </div>
7519       <div class="date">
7520         10th July 2013
7521       </div>
7522       <div class="body">
7523         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
7524 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
7525 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
7526 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
7527 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
7528 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
7529 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
7530 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
7531
7532 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
7533 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
7534 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
7535 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
7536 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
7537 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
7538 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
7539 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
7540 lock up when I download a new
7541 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
7542 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
7543 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
7544
7545 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
7546 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
7547 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
7548 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
7549 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
7550 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
7551
7552 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
7553 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
7554 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
7555 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
7556 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
7557 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
7558
7559 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
7560 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
7561 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
7562 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
7563 exist).</p>
7564
7565       </div>
7566       <div class="tags">
7567
7568
7569         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7570
7571
7572       </div>
7573     </div>
7574     <div class="padding"></div>
7575
7576     <div class="entry">
7577       <div class="title">
7578         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
7579       </div>
7580       <div class="date">
7581          9th July 2013
7582       </div>
7583       <div class="body">
7584         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
7585 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
7586 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
7587 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
7588 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7589 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
7590 Bitraf</a>.</p>
7591
7592 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
7593 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
7594 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
7595 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
7596 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
7597
7598       </div>
7599       <div class="tags">
7600
7601
7602         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7603
7604
7605       </div>
7606     </div>
7607     <div class="padding"></div>
7608
7609     <div class="entry">
7610       <div class="title">
7611         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
7612       </div>
7613       <div class="date">
7614          5th July 2013
7615       </div>
7616       <div class="body">
7617         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
7618 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
7619 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
7620 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
7621 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
7622 ended up picking a
7623 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
7624 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
7625 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
7626 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
7627 on that below.</p>
7628
7629 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
7630 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
7631 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
7632 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
7633 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
7634 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
7635 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
7636 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
7637 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
7638
7639 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
7640 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
7641 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
7642 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
7643 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
7644 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
7645 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
7646
7647 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
7648 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
7649
7650 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
7651 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
7652 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
7653 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
7654 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
7655 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
7656 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
7657 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
7658 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
7659 kernel developers as
7660 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
7661 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
7662 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
7663 Lenovo forums, both for
7664 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
7665 2012-11-10</a> and for
7666 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
7667 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
7668 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
7669 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
7670 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
7671 There is even a
7672 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
7673 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
7674 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
7675
7676 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
7677 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
7678 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
7679 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
7680 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
7681 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
7682 fixed. :)</p>
7683
7684       </div>
7685       <div class="tags">
7686
7687
7688         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7689
7690
7691       </div>
7692     </div>
7693     <div class="padding"></div>
7694
7695     <div class="entry">
7696       <div class="title">
7697         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
7698       </div>
7699       <div class="date">
7700          4th July 2013
7701       </div>
7702       <div class="body">
7703         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
7704 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
7705 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
7706 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
7707 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
7708 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
7709 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
7710 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
7711 with an expencive door stop.</p>
7712
7713 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
7714 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
7715 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
7716 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
7717 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
7718 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
7719 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
7720
7721 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
7722 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
7723 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
7724 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
7725 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
7726 new laptop now. :)</p>
7727
7728 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
7729
7730       </div>
7731       <div class="tags">
7732
7733
7734         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7735
7736
7737       </div>
7738     </div>
7739     <div class="padding"></div>
7740
7741     <div class="entry">
7742       <div class="title">
7743         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
7744       </div>
7745       <div class="date">
7746         25th June 2013
7747       </div>
7748       <div class="body">
7749         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
7750 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
7751 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
7752 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
7753 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
7754 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
7755 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
7756 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
7757 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
7758 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
7759 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
7760
7761 <p><pre>
7762 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
7763 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
7764 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
7765 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
7766 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
7767 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
7768 firmware-ipw2x00
7769 firmware-ipw2x00
7770 Preconfiguring packages ...
7771 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
7772 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
7773 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
7774 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
7775 #
7776 </pre></p>
7777
7778 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
7779 printed instead:</p>
7780
7781 <p><pre>
7782 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
7783 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
7784 #
7785 </pre></p>
7786
7787 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
7788 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
7789
7790 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
7791 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
7792 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
7793 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
7794 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
7795 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
7796 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
7797 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
7798 machine.</p>
7799
7800 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
7801 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
7802 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
7803 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
7804 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
7805 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
7806
7807       </div>
7808       <div class="tags">
7809
7810
7811         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
7812
7813
7814       </div>
7815     </div>
7816     <div class="padding"></div>
7817
7818     <div class="entry">
7819       <div class="title">
7820         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
7821       </div>
7822       <div class="date">
7823         11th June 2013
7824       </div>
7825       <div class="body">
7826         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
7827 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
7828 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
7829 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
7830 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
7831 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
7832 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
7833 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
7834 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
7835 i915 driver used by the
7836 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
7837 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
7838
7839 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
7840 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
7841 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
7842 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
7843 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
7844
7845 <pre>
7846 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
7847 update-initramfs -u -k all
7848 </pre>
7849
7850 <p>Since March 2012 there is
7851 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
7852 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
7853 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
7854 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
7855 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
7856 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
7857 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
7858 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
7859 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
7860 number.</p>
7861
7862 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
7863 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
7864
7865 <p><pre>
7866 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
7867     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
7868     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
7869  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
7870  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
7871     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
7872  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
7873     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
7874  Latency: 0
7875  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
7876  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
7877  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
7878  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
7879  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
7880  Capabilities: <access denied>
7881  Kernel driver in use: i915
7882 </pre></p>
7883
7884 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
7885
7886 <p><pre>
7887 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
7888        ...
7889         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
7890         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
7891        ...
7892 }
7893 </pre></p>
7894
7895 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
7896 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
7897 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
7898 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
7899 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
7900 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
7901 yet shown up in
7902 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
7903 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
7904 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
7905 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
7906 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
7907 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
7908
7909 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
7910 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
7911 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
7912 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
7913 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
7914 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
7915 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
7916 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
7917 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
7918 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
7919 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
7920 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
7921
7922 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
7923 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
7924 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
7925 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
7926 backlight.</p>
7927
7928       </div>
7929       <div class="tags">
7930
7931
7932         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7933
7934
7935       </div>
7936     </div>
7937     <div class="padding"></div>
7938
7939     <div class="entry">
7940       <div class="title">
7941         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
7942       </div>
7943       <div class="date">
7944         27th May 2013
7945       </div>
7946       <div class="body">
7947         <p>Two days ago, I asked
7948 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
7949 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
7950 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
7951 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
7952 and Windows 8.</p>
7953
7954 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
7955 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
7956 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
7957 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
7958 enough to tell.</p>
7959
7960 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
7961 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
7962 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
7963 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
7964 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
7965 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
7966 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
7967 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
7968 to follow.</p>
7969
7970 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
7971 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
7972 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
7973 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
7974 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
7975 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
7976 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
7977 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
7978
7979 <p>I've updated the
7980 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
7981 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
7982 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
7983 machine.</p>
7984
7985 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
7986 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
7987
7988       </div>
7989       <div class="tags">
7990
7991
7992         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7993
7994
7995       </div>
7996     </div>
7997     <div class="padding"></div>
7998
7999     <div class="entry">
8000       <div class="title">
8001         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
8002       </div>
8003       <div class="date">
8004         25th May 2013
8005       </div>
8006       <div class="body">
8007         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
8008 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
8009 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
8010 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
8011 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
8012 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
8013
8014 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
8015 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
8016 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
8017 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
8018 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
8019 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
8020 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
8021 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
8022 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
8023 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
8024
8025 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
8026 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
8027 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
8028 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
8029 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
8030 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
8031
8032 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
8033 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
8034 on new Laptops?</p>
8035
8036       </div>
8037       <div class="tags">
8038
8039
8040         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8041
8042
8043       </div>
8044     </div>
8045     <div class="padding"></div>
8046
8047     <div class="entry">
8048       <div class="title">
8049         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
8050       </div>
8051       <div class="date">
8052         17th May 2013
8053       </div>
8054       <div class="body">
8055         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
8056 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
8057 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
8058 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
8059 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
8060 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
8061 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
8062 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
8063 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
8064 donate some money</a>.
8065
8066 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
8067 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
8068 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
8069 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
8070 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
8071
8072 <p>The script,
8073 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
8074 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
8075 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
8076 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
8077
8078 <ol>
8079
8080 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
8081 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
8082 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
8083     our configuration.</li>
8084 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
8085     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
8086     according to the profile specified in the config above,
8087     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
8088 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
8089     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
8090 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
8091
8092 </ol>
8093
8094 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
8095 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
8096 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
8097 the needed packages.</p>
8098
8099 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
8100 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
8101 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
8102 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
8103 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
8104 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
8105
8106 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
8107 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
8108 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
8109
8110 <p><pre>
8111 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
8112 DESKTOP="lxde"
8113 </pre></p>
8114
8115 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
8116 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
8117 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
8118 boot.</p>
8119
8120       </div>
8121       <div class="tags">
8122
8123
8124         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8125
8126
8127       </div>
8128     </div>
8129     <div class="padding"></div>
8130
8131     <div class="entry">
8132       <div class="title">
8133         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
8134       </div>
8135       <div class="date">
8136         11th May 2013
8137       </div>
8138       <div class="body">
8139         <P>In January,
8140 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
8141 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
8142 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
8143 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
8144 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
8145 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
8146 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
8147 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
8148 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
8149 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
8150 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
8151 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
8152
8153 <p><table>
8154 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
8155 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
8156 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
8157 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
8158 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
8159 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
8160 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
8161 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
8162 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
8163 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
8164 </table></p>
8165
8166 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
8167 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
8168 available in experimental.</p>
8169
8170 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
8171 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
8172 for LEGO designers.</p>
8173
8174       </div>
8175       <div class="tags">
8176
8177
8178         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
8179
8180
8181       </div>
8182     </div>
8183     <div class="padding"></div>
8184
8185     <div class="entry">
8186       <div class="title">
8187         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
8188       </div>
8189       <div class="date">
8190          5th May 2013
8191       </div>
8192       <div class="body">
8193         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
8194 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
8195 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
8196 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
8197 soon.</p>
8198
8199 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
8200 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
8201 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
8202 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
8203 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
8204 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
8205 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
8206 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
8207 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
8208 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
8209 Edu.</a>
8210
8211 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
8212 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
8213 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
8214 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
8215 follow.<p>
8216
8217       </div>
8218       <div class="tags">
8219
8220
8221         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8222
8223
8224       </div>
8225     </div>
8226     <div class="padding"></div>
8227
8228     <div class="entry">
8229       <div class="title">
8230         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
8231       </div>
8232       <div class="date">
8233          3rd April 2013
8234       </div>
8235       <div class="body">
8236         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
8237 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
8238 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
8239 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
8240
8241 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
8242 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
8243 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
8244 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
8245 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
8246 BTS. :)</p>
8247
8248       </div>
8249       <div class="tags">
8250
8251
8252         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
8253
8254
8255       </div>
8256     </div>
8257     <div class="padding"></div>
8258
8259     <div class="entry">
8260       <div class="title">
8261         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
8262       </div>
8263       <div class="date">
8264          2nd February 2013
8265       </div>
8266       <div class="body">
8267         <p>My
8268 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
8269 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
8270 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
8271 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
8272 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
8273 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
8274 version too.</p>
8275
8276 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
8277 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
8278 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
8279 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
8280 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
8281 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
8282 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
8283 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
8284
8285 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
8286 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
8287 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
8288 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
8289 it. :)</p>
8290
8291 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
8292 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
8293 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8294
8295       </div>
8296       <div class="tags">
8297
8298
8299         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8300
8301
8302       </div>
8303     </div>
8304     <div class="padding"></div>
8305
8306     <div class="entry">
8307       <div class="title">
8308         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
8309       </div>
8310       <div class="date">
8311         22nd January 2013
8312       </div>
8313       <div class="body">
8314         <p>Yesterday, I
8315 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
8316 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
8317 pluggable hardware devices, which I
8318 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
8319 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
8320 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
8321 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
8322 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
8323 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
8324 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
8325 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
8326 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
8327 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
8328
8329 <pre>
8330 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
8331 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
8332 </pre>
8333
8334 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
8335 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
8336 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
8337 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
8338
8339 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
8340 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
8341 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
8342 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
8343 word.</p>
8344
8345 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
8346 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
8347 process.</p>
8348
8349 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
8350 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
8351
8352       </div>
8353       <div class="tags">
8354
8355
8356         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
8357
8358
8359       </div>
8360     </div>
8361     <div class="padding"></div>
8362
8363     <div class="entry">
8364       <div class="title">
8365         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
8366       </div>
8367       <div class="date">
8368         21st January 2013
8369       </div>
8370       <div class="body">
8371         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
8372 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
8373 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
8374 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
8375 it, fetch the
8376 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
8377 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
8378 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
8379 autostart script.</p>
8380
8381 <p>The design is simple:</p>
8382
8383 <ul>
8384
8385 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
8386 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
8387
8388 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
8389 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
8390 initially did.</li>
8391
8392 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
8393 the APT database, a database
8394 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
8395 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
8396
8397 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
8398 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
8399 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
8400 package or packages.</li>
8401
8402 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
8403 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
8404
8405 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
8406 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
8407
8408 </ul>
8409
8410 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
8411 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
8412 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
8413 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
8414
8415 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
8416 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
8417 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
8418 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
8419 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
8420
8421 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
8422 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
8423 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
8424 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
8425 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
8426 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
8427 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
8428 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
8429
8430 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
8431 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
8432 '<tt>svn checkout
8433 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
8434 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
8435 devscripts package.</p>
8436
8437 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
8438 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
8439 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
8440 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
8441 instructions</a> for details.</p>
8442
8443       </div>
8444       <div class="tags">
8445
8446
8447         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
8448
8449
8450       </div>
8451     </div>
8452     <div class="padding"></div>
8453
8454     <div class="entry">
8455       <div class="title">
8456         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
8457       </div>
8458       <div class="date">
8459         19th January 2013
8460       </div>
8461       <div class="body">
8462         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
8463 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
8464 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
8465 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
8466 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
8467 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
8468 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
8469 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
8470 not a durable solution.
8471
8472 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
8473 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
8474
8475 <ul>
8476
8477 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
8478   than A4).</li>
8479 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
8480 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
8481 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
8482 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
8483 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
8484 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
8485 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
8486 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
8487 size).</li>
8488 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
8489   X.org packages.</li>
8490 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
8491   the time).
8492
8493 </ul>
8494
8495 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
8496 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
8497 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
8498 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
8499 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
8500 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
8501 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
8502 still be useful.</p>
8503
8504 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
8505 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
8506 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
8507 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
8508 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
8509 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
8510
8511       </div>
8512       <div class="tags">
8513
8514
8515         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8516
8517
8518       </div>
8519     </div>
8520     <div class="padding"></div>
8521
8522     <div class="entry">
8523       <div class="title">
8524         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</a>
8525       </div>
8526       <div class="date">
8527         18th January 2013
8528       </div>
8529       <div class="body">
8530         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
8531 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
8532 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
8533 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
8534 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
8535 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
8536 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
8537
8538 <pre>
8539 #!/usr/bin/python
8540 import sys
8541 import apt
8542 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
8543     cache = apt.Cache()
8544     cache.open(None)
8545     thepkgs = []
8546     for pkg in cache:
8547         version = pkg.candidate
8548         if version is None:
8549             version = pkg.installed
8550         if version is None:
8551             continue
8552         record = version.record
8553         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
8554             continue
8555         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
8556         for t in mime_types:
8557             t = t.rstrip().strip()
8558             if t == mimetype:
8559                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
8560     return thepkgs
8561 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
8562 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
8563     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
8564 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
8565 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
8566     print "  %s" %pkg
8567 </pre>
8568
8569 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
8570
8571 <pre>
8572 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
8573 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
8574   gecko-mediaplayer
8575 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
8576 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
8577   browser-plugin-gnash
8578 %
8579 </pre>
8580
8581 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
8582 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
8583 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
8584 anyone working on adding it?</p>
8585
8586 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
8587 request for icweasel support for this feature is
8588 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
8589 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
8590 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
8591 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
8592
8593       </div>
8594       <div class="tags">
8595
8596
8597         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8598
8599
8600       </div>
8601     </div>
8602     <div class="padding"></div>
8603
8604     <div class="entry">
8605       <div class="title">
8606         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
8607       </div>
8608       <div class="date">
8609         16th January 2013
8610       </div>
8611       <div class="body">
8612         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
8613 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
8614 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
8615 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
8616 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
8617 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
8618 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
8619 downloaded by the browser.</p>
8620
8621 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
8622 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
8623 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
8624 can be found on the
8625 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
8626 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
8627 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
8628 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
8629 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
8630
8631 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
8632
8633 <pre>
8634   count MIME type
8635   ----- -----------------------
8636      32 text/plain
8637      30 audio/mpeg
8638      29 image/png
8639      28 image/jpeg
8640      27 application/ogg
8641      26 audio/x-mp3
8642      25 image/tiff
8643      25 image/gif
8644      22 image/bmp
8645      22 audio/x-wav
8646      20 audio/x-flac
8647      19 audio/x-mpegurl
8648      18 video/x-ms-asf
8649      18 audio/x-musepack
8650      18 audio/x-mpeg
8651      18 application/x-ogg
8652      17 video/mpeg
8653      17 audio/x-scpls
8654      17 audio/ogg
8655      16 video/x-ms-wmv
8656 </pre>
8657
8658 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
8659
8660 <pre>
8661   count MIME type
8662   ----- -----------------------
8663      33 text/plain
8664      32 image/png
8665      32 image/jpeg
8666      29 audio/mpeg
8667      27 image/gif
8668      26 image/tiff
8669      26 application/ogg
8670      25 audio/x-mp3
8671      22 image/bmp
8672      21 audio/x-wav
8673      19 audio/x-mpegurl
8674      19 audio/x-mpeg
8675      18 video/mpeg
8676      18 audio/x-scpls
8677      18 audio/x-flac
8678      18 application/x-ogg
8679      17 video/x-ms-asf
8680      17 text/html
8681      17 audio/x-musepack
8682      16 image/x-xbitmap
8683 </pre>
8684
8685 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
8686
8687 <pre>
8688   count MIME type
8689   ----- -----------------------
8690      31 text/plain
8691      31 image/png
8692      31 image/jpeg
8693      29 audio/mpeg
8694      28 application/ogg
8695      27 image/gif
8696      26 image/tiff
8697      26 audio/x-mp3
8698      23 audio/x-wav
8699      22 image/bmp
8700      21 audio/x-flac
8701      20 audio/x-mpegurl
8702      19 audio/x-mpeg
8703      18 video/x-ms-asf
8704      18 video/mpeg
8705      18 audio/x-scpls
8706      18 application/x-ogg
8707      17 audio/x-musepack
8708      16 video/x-ms-wmv
8709      16 video/x-msvideo
8710 </pre>
8711
8712 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
8713 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
8714 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
8715 issues.</p>
8716
8717 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
8718 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
8719
8720       </div>
8721       <div class="tags">
8722
8723
8724         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8725
8726
8727       </div>
8728     </div>
8729     <div class="padding"></div>
8730
8731     <div class="entry">
8732       <div class="title">
8733         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
8734       </div>
8735       <div class="date">
8736         15th January 2013
8737       </div>
8738       <div class="body">
8739         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
8740 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
8741 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
8742 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
8743 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
8744 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
8745 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
8746 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
8747 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
8748 packages.</p>
8749
8750 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
8751 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
8752 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
8753 modalias.</p>
8754
8755 <p><blockquote>
8756 Package: package-name
8757 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
8758 </blockquote></p>
8759
8760 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
8761 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
8762
8763 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
8764 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
8765
8766 <p><blockquote>
8767 Package: cheese
8768 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
8769 </blockquote></p>
8770
8771 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
8772 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
8773
8774 <p><blockquote>
8775 Package: pcmciautils
8776 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
8777 </blockquote></p>
8778
8779 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
8780 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
8781
8782 <p><blockquote>
8783 Package: colorhug-client
8784 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
8785 </blockquote></p>
8786
8787 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
8788 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
8789 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
8790
8791 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
8792 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
8793 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
8794 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
8795 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
8796 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
8797 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
8798 Raring.</p>
8799
8800 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
8801 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
8802 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
8803 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
8804 try the
8805 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
8806 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
8807 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
8808 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
8809
8810 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
8811 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
8812
8813 <p><blockquote>
8814 % ./hw-support-lookup
8815 <br>yubikey-personalization
8816 <br>%
8817 </blockquote></p>
8818
8819 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
8820 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
8821
8822 <p><blockquote>
8823 % ./hw-support-lookup
8824 <br>pcmciautils
8825 <br>%
8826 </blockquote></p>
8827
8828 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
8829 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
8830 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
8831
8832 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
8833 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
8834 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
8835 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
8836 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
8837 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
8838 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
8839 see if it work.</p>
8840
8841 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
8842 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
8843 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
8844 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
8845
8846       </div>
8847       <div class="tags">
8848
8849
8850         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
8851
8852
8853       </div>
8854     </div>
8855     <div class="padding"></div>
8856
8857     <div class="entry">
8858       <div class="title">
8859         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
8860       </div>
8861       <div class="date">
8862         14th January 2013
8863       </div>
8864       <div class="body">
8865         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
8866 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
8867 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
8868 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
8869 in
8870 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
8871 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
8872
8873 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
8874
8875 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
8876 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
8877 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
8878 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
8879 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
8880 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
8881
8882 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
8883 this shell script:</p>
8884
8885 <pre>
8886 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
8887 </pre>
8888
8889 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
8890 using modinfo:</p>
8891
8892 <pre>
8893 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
8894 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
8895 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
8896 %
8897 </pre>
8898
8899 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
8900
8901 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
8902 Bridge memory controller:</p>
8903
8904 <p><blockquote>
8905 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
8906 </blockquote></p>
8907
8908 <p>This represent these values:</p>
8909
8910 <pre>
8911  v   00008086  (vendor)
8912  d   00002770  (device)
8913  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
8914  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
8915  bc  06        (bus class)
8916  sc  00        (bus subclass)
8917  i   00        (interface)
8918 </pre>
8919
8920 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
8921 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
8922 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
8923 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
8924
8925 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
8926 means.</p>
8927
8928 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
8929
8930 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
8931 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
8932
8933 <p><blockquote>
8934 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
8935 </blockquote></p>
8936
8937 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
8938
8939 <pre>
8940  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
8941  p    0001  (device product)
8942  d    0206  (bcddevice)
8943  dc     09  (device class)
8944  dsc    00  (device subclass)
8945  dp     00  (device protocol)
8946  ic     09  (interface class)
8947  isc    00  (interface subclass)
8948  ip     00  (interface protocol)
8949 </pre>
8950
8951 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
8952 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
8953 these alias entries show up:</p>
8954
8955 <p><blockquote>
8956 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
8957 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
8958 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
8959 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
8960 </blockquote></p>
8961
8962 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
8963 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
8964 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
8965
8966 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
8967
8968 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
8969 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
8970
8971 <p><blockquote>
8972 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
8973 </blockquote></p>
8974
8975 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
8976
8977 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
8978
8979 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
8980 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
8981 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
8982
8983 <p><blockquote>
8984 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
8985 </blockquote></p>
8986
8987 <p>The values present are</p>
8988
8989 <pre>
8990  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
8991  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
8992  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
8993  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
8994  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
8995  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
8996  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
8997  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
8998  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
8999  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
9000  ct   10             (chassis type)
9001  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
9002 </pre>
9003
9004 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
9005 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
9006
9007 <pre>
9008   3 Desktop
9009   4 Low Profile Desktop
9010   5 Pizza Box
9011   6 Mini Tower
9012   7 Tower
9013   8 Portable
9014   9 Laptop
9015  10 Notebook
9016  11 Hand Held
9017  12 Docking Station
9018  13 All In One
9019  14 Sub Notebook
9020  15 Space-saving
9021  16 Lunch Box
9022  17 Main Server Chassis
9023  18 Expansion Chassis
9024  19 Sub Chassis
9025  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
9026  21 Peripheral Chassis
9027  22 RAID Chassis
9028  23 Rack Mount Chassis
9029  24 Sealed-case PC
9030  25 Multi-system
9031  26 CompactPCI
9032  27 AdvancedTCA
9033  28 Blade
9034  29 Blade Enclosing
9035 </pre>
9036
9037 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
9038 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
9039 claim it is a desktop.</p>
9040
9041 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
9042
9043 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
9044 test machine:</p>
9045
9046 <p><blockquote>
9047 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
9048 </blockquote></p>
9049
9050 <p>The values present are</p>
9051
9052 <pre>
9053   ty  01  (type)
9054   pr  00  (prototype)
9055   id  00  (id)
9056   ex  00  (extra)
9057 </pre>
9058
9059 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
9060 the valid values are.</p>
9061
9062 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
9063
9064 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
9065 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
9066 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
9067 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
9068 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
9069 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
9070 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
9071
9072 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
9073
9074 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
9075 one can use the following shell script:</p>
9076
9077 <pre>
9078   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
9079     echo "$id" ; \
9080     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
9081   done
9082 </pre>
9083
9084 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
9085 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
9086
9087 <pre>
9088   acpi:ACPI0003:
9089     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
9090   acpi:device:
9091   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
9092   acpi:IBM0068:
9093     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
9094     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
9095     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
9096     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
9097   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
9098     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
9099     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
9100     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
9101   [...]
9102 </pre>
9103
9104 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
9105 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
9106 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
9107 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
9108
9109 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
9110 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
9111 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
9112
9113       </div>
9114       <div class="tags">
9115
9116
9117         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
9118
9119
9120       </div>
9121     </div>
9122     <div class="padding"></div>
9123
9124     <div class="entry">
9125       <div class="title">
9126         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
9127       </div>
9128       <div class="date">
9129         10th January 2013
9130       </div>
9131       <div class="body">
9132         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
9133 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
9134 Launcher and updated the Debian package
9135 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
9136 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
9137 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
9138 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
9139 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
9140 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
9141 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
9142 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
9143 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
9144 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
9145 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
9146 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
9147 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
9148 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
9149 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
9150
9151       </div>
9152       <div class="tags">
9153
9154
9155         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
9156
9157
9158       </div>
9159     </div>
9160     <div class="padding"></div>
9161
9162     <div class="entry">
9163       <div class="title">
9164         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
9165       </div>
9166       <div class="date">
9167          9th January 2013
9168       </div>
9169       <div class="body">
9170         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
9171 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
9172 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
9173 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
9174 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
9175 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
9176 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
9177 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
9178 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
9179 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
9180 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
9181
9182 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
9183 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
9184 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
9185 simple:
9186
9187 <ul>
9188
9189 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
9190   starting when a user log in.</li>
9191
9192 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
9193   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
9194
9195 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
9196   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
9197   packages.</li>
9198
9199 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
9200   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
9201
9202 </ul>
9203
9204 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
9205 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
9206 discover database to find packages and
9207 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
9208 packages.</p>
9209
9210 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
9211 draft package is now checked into
9212 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
9213 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
9214 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
9215 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
9216 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
9217 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
9218 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
9219 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
9220 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
9221 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
9222 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
9223 because of the freeze).</p>
9224
9225 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
9226 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
9227 inserted):</p>
9228
9229 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
9230
9231 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
9232 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
9233 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
9234
9235 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
9236 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
9237 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
9238 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
9239 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
9240 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
9241 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
9242
9243 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
9244 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
9245 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
9246 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
9247 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
9248 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
9249 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
9250 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
9251 not be installed?</p>
9252
9253 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
9254 please send me an email. :)</p>
9255
9256       </div>
9257       <div class="tags">
9258
9259
9260         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
9261
9262
9263       </div>
9264     </div>
9265     <div class="padding"></div>
9266
9267     <div class="entry">
9268       <div class="title">
9269         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
9270       </div>
9271       <div class="date">
9272          2nd January 2013
9273       </div>
9274       <div class="body">
9275         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
9276 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
9277 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
9278 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
9279 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
9280 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
9281 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
9282 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
9283 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
9284 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
9285
9286 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
9287 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
9288 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
9289
9290       </div>
9291       <div class="tags">
9292
9293
9294         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
9295
9296
9297       </div>
9298     </div>
9299     <div class="padding"></div>
9300
9301     <div class="entry">
9302       <div class="title">
9303         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</a>
9304       </div>
9305       <div class="date">
9306         25th December 2012
9307       </div>
9308       <div class="body">
9309         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
9310 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
9311
9312 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
9313 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
9314 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
9315 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
9316 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
9317 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
9318 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
9319 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
9320 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
9321 name.</p>
9322
9323 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
9324 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
9325 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
9326
9327 <blockquote><pre>
9328 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
9329 cd bitcoin
9330 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
9331 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
9332 </pre></blockquote>
9333
9334 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
9335 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
9336 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
9337 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
9338 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
9339 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
9340 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
9341 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
9342 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
9343
9344 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
9345 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
9346 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
9347
9348       </div>
9349       <div class="tags">
9350
9351
9352         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9353
9354
9355       </div>
9356     </div>
9357     <div class="padding"></div>
9358
9359     <div class="entry">
9360       <div class="title">
9361         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
9362       </div>
9363       <div class="date">
9364         21st December 2012
9365       </div>
9366       <div class="body">
9367         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
9368 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
9369 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
9370 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
9371 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
9372 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
9373 is now maintained by a
9374 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
9375 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
9376 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
9377 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
9378 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
9379 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
9380 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
9381 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
9382 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
9383 Corallo in a
9384 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
9385 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
9386 Debian package.</p>
9387
9388 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
9389 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
9390 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
9391 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
9392 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
9393 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
9394 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
9395 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
9396 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
9397 new version to unstable.
9398
9399 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
9400 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
9401 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
9402 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
9403 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
9404 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
9405 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
9406 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
9407 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
9408 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
9409 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
9410 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
9411 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
9412 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
9413 have not tested them.</p>
9414
9415 <p>My
9416 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
9417 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
9418 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
9419 years ago, as can be
9420 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
9421 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
9422 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
9423 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
9424 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
9425 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
9426 the same address as last time,
9427 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
9428
9429       </div>
9430       <div class="tags">
9431
9432
9433         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9434
9435
9436       </div>
9437     </div>
9438     <div class="padding"></div>
9439
9440     <div class="entry">
9441       <div class="title">
9442         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
9443       </div>
9444       <div class="date">
9445          7th September 2012
9446       </div>
9447       <div class="body">
9448         <p>As I
9449 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
9450 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
9451 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
9452 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
9453 repository for the project</a>.</p>
9454
9455 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
9456 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
9457 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
9458 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
9459
9460 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
9461 PostScript formats at
9462 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
9463 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
9464
9465       </div>
9466       <div class="tags">
9467
9468
9469         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
9470
9471
9472       </div>
9473     </div>
9474     <div class="padding"></div>
9475
9476     <div class="entry">
9477       <div class="title">
9478         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
9479       </div>
9480       <div class="date">
9481         16th August 2012
9482       </div>
9483       <div class="body">
9484         <p>I dag fyller
9485 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
9486 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
9487 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
9488
9489       </div>
9490       <div class="tags">
9491
9492
9493         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
9494
9495
9496       </div>
9497     </div>
9498     <div class="padding"></div>
9499
9500     <div class="entry">
9501       <div class="title">
9502         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
9503       </div>
9504       <div class="date">
9505         24th June 2012
9506       </div>
9507       <div class="body">
9508         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
9509 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
9510 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
9511 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
9512 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
9513 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
9514 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
9515 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
9516 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
9517 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
9518 missing in my book.</p>
9519
9520 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
9521 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
9522 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
9523 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
9524 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
9525 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
9526 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
9527
9528       </div>
9529       <div class="tags">
9530
9531
9532         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
9533
9534
9535       </div>
9536     </div>
9537     <div class="padding"></div>
9538
9539     <div class="entry">
9540       <div class="title">
9541         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
9542       </div>
9543       <div class="date">
9544         21st November 2011
9545       </div>
9546       <div class="body">
9547         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
9548 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
9549 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
9550 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
9551 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
9552 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
9553 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
9554 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
9555 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
9556 the tools to do so.</p>
9557
9558 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
9559 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
9560 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
9561 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
9562
9563 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
9564 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
9565 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
9566 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
9567 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
9568 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
9569 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
9570 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
9571
9572 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
9573 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
9574 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
9575
9576 <p><pre>
9577 #!/usr/bin/perl
9578 use strict;
9579 use warnings;
9580 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
9581 BEGIN {
9582     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
9583     my %rhelmodules = (
9584         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
9585         );
9586     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
9587         eval "use $module;";
9588         if ($@) {
9589             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
9590             system("yum install -y $pkg");
9591             eval "use $module;";
9592         }
9593     }
9594 }
9595 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
9596
9597 upgrade_dell();
9598
9599 exit 0;
9600
9601 sub run_firmware_script {
9602     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
9603     unless ($script) {
9604         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
9605         exit 1
9606     }
9607     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
9608
9609     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
9610         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
9611     } else {
9612         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
9613     }
9614 }
9615
9616 sub run_firmware_scripts {
9617     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
9618     # Run firmware packages
9619     for my $dir (@dirs) {
9620         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
9621         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
9622         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
9623             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
9624             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
9625         }
9626         closedir $dh;
9627     }
9628 }
9629
9630 sub download {
9631     my $url = shift;
9632     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
9633     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
9634 }
9635
9636 sub upgrade_dell {
9637     my @dirs;
9638     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
9639     chomp $product;
9640
9641     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
9642
9643         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
9644         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
9645
9646         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
9647             CLEANUP => 1
9648             );
9649         chdir($tmpdir);
9650         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
9651         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
9652         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
9653         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
9654         my $fwopts = "-q";
9655         if (@paths) {
9656             for my $url (@paths) {
9657                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
9658             }
9659             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
9660         } else {
9661             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
9662             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
9663         }
9664         chdir('/');
9665     } else {
9666         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
9667         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
9668     }
9669 }
9670
9671 sub fetch_dell_fw {
9672     my $path = shift;
9673     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
9674     download($url);
9675 }
9676
9677 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
9678 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
9679 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
9680 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
9681     my $filename = shift;
9682
9683     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
9684     chomp $product;
9685     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
9686
9687     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
9688
9689     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
9690     my @paths;
9691     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
9692         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
9693         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
9694         my $oscode;
9695         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
9696             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
9697         } else {
9698             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
9699         }
9700         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
9701         {
9702             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
9703         }
9704     }
9705     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
9706         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
9707
9708         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
9709         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
9710
9711         my $cpath = $component->{path};
9712         for my $path (@paths) {
9713             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
9714                 push(@paths, $cpath);
9715             }
9716         }
9717     }
9718     return @paths;
9719 }
9720 </pre>
9721
9722 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
9723 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
9724 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
9725 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
9726 outdated.</p>
9727
9728       </div>
9729       <div class="tags">
9730
9731
9732         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9733
9734
9735       </div>
9736     </div>
9737     <div class="padding"></div>
9738
9739     <div class="entry">
9740       <div class="title">
9741         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</a>
9742       </div>
9743       <div class="date">
9744          4th August 2011
9745       </div>
9746       <div class="body">
9747         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
9748 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
9749 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
9750 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
9751 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
9752 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
9753 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
9754 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
9755 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
9756
9757 <p><blockquote>
9758 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
9759 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
9760 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
9761 </blockquote></p>
9762
9763 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
9764 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
9765 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
9766 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
9767 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
9768 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
9769 hard to explain.</p>
9770
9771 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
9772 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
9773 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
9774 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
9775 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
9776 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
9777 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
9778 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
9779 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
9780 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
9781 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
9782 mode).</p>
9783
9784 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
9785 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
9786 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
9787 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
9788 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
9789 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
9790 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
9791 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
9792 after visiting single user mode.</p>
9793
9794 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
9795 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
9796 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
9797 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
9798 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
9799 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
9800 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
9801 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
9802
9803 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
9804 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
9805 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
9806
9807       </div>
9808       <div class="tags">
9809
9810
9811         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9812
9813
9814       </div>
9815     </div>
9816     <div class="padding"></div>
9817
9818     <div class="entry">
9819       <div class="title">
9820         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
9821       </div>
9822       <div class="date">
9823         30th July 2011
9824       </div>
9825       <div class="body">
9826         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
9827 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
9828 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
9829 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
9830 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
9831 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
9832 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
9833 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
9834 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
9835 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
9836 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
9837 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
9838 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
9839
9840 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
9841 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
9842 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
9843 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
9844 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
9845 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
9846 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
9847 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
9848 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
9849
9850 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
9851 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
9852 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
9853 is presented.</p>
9854
9855 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
9856 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
9857 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
9858 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
9859 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
9860 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
9861 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
9862 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
9863 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
9864 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
9865 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
9866 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
9867 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
9868 find time to push this forward.</p>
9869
9870       </div>
9871       <div class="tags">
9872
9873
9874         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9875
9876
9877       </div>
9878     </div>
9879     <div class="padding"></div>
9880
9881     <div class="entry">
9882       <div class="title">
9883         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</a>
9884       </div>
9885       <div class="date">
9886         29th July 2011
9887       </div>
9888       <div class="body">
9889         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
9890 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
9891 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
9892 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
9893 issues.</p>
9894
9895 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
9896 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
9897 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
9898
9899 <ol>
9900
9901 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
9902 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
9903 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
9904 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
9905 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
9906 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
9907 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
9908 Debian.</li>
9909
9910 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
9911 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
9912 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
9913 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
9914 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
9915 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
9916 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
9917 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
9918 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
9919 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
9920 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
9921 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
9922 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
9923
9924 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
9925 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
9926 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
9927 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
9928 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
9929 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
9930 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
9931 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
9932 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
9933 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
9934
9935 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
9936 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
9937 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
9938 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
9939 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
9940 latter behaviour.</li>
9941
9942 </ol>
9943
9944 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
9945 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
9946 it do not matter much.</p>
9947
9948 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
9949 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
9950 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
9951
9952       </div>
9953       <div class="tags">
9954
9955
9956         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9957
9958
9959       </div>
9960     </div>
9961     <div class="padding"></div>
9962
9963     <div class="entry">
9964       <div class="title">
9965         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
9966       </div>
9967       <div class="date">
9968         26th July 2011
9969       </div>
9970       <div class="body">
9971         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
9972 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
9973 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
9974 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
9975 security support for a few years.</p>
9976
9977 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
9978 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
9979 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
9980 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
9981 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
9982 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
9983 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
9984 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
9985 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
9986 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
9987 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
9988 easier in the future.</p>
9989
9990 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
9991 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
9992 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
9993 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
9994 do not have time for.</p>
9995
9996       </div>
9997       <div class="tags">
9998
9999
10000         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>.
10001
10002
10003       </div>
10004     </div>
10005     <div class="padding"></div>
10006
10007     <div class="entry">
10008       <div class="title">
10009         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html">A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</a>
10010       </div>
10011       <div class="date">
10012          3rd April 2011
10013       </div>
10014       <div class="body">
10015         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
10016 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
10017 update in English.</p>
10018
10019 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
10020 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
10021 of the British service
10022 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
10023 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
10024 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
10025 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
10026 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
10027 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
10028 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
10029 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
10030 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
10031 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
10032 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
10033 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
10034 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
10035
10036 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
10037 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
10038 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
10039 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
10040 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
10041 public infrastructure.</p>
10042
10043 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
10044 such service?</p>
10045
10046       </div>
10047       <div class="tags">
10048
10049
10050         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
10051
10052
10053       </div>
10054     </div>
10055     <div class="padding"></div>
10056
10057     <div class="entry">
10058       <div class="title">
10059         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
10060       </div>
10061       <div class="date">
10062         28th January 2011
10063       </div>
10064       <div class="body">
10065         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
10066 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
10067 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
10068 available on the Internet, and check our locally
10069 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
10070 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
10071 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
10072 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
10073 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
10074 out which security holes were present in our free software
10075 collection.</p>
10076
10077 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
10078 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
10079 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
10080 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
10081 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
10082 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
10083 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
10084 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
10085 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
10086 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
10087 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
10088 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
10089 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
10090 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
10091 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
10092 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
10093
10094 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
10095 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
10096 check out, one could look up
10097 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3">cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
10098 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
10099 The most recent one is
10100 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
10101 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
10102 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
10103
10104 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
10105 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
10106 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
10107 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
10108 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
10109 security issues out.</p>
10110
10111 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
10112 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
10113 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
10114 RHEL is providing
10115 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
10116 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
10117 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
10118
10119 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
10120 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
10121 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
10122 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
10123 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
10124 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
10125 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
10126 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
10127 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
10128 established soon.</p>
10129
10130 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
10131 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
10132 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
10133 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
10134 for their packages.</p>
10135
10136       </div>
10137       <div class="tags">
10138
10139
10140         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
10141
10142
10143       </div>
10144     </div>
10145     <div class="padding"></div>
10146
10147     <div class="entry">
10148       <div class="title">
10149         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
10150       </div>
10151       <div class="date">
10152         23rd January 2011
10153       </div>
10154       <div class="body">
10155         <p>In the
10156 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
10157 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
10158 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
10159 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
10160 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
10161 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
10162 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
10163 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
10164 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
10165 one of my machines like this:</p>
10166
10167 <pre>
10168 loaded modules:
10169 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
10170 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
10171 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
10172 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
10173 10de:03ec pata_amd
10174 10de:03f6 sata_nv
10175 1022:1103 k8temp
10176 109e:036e bttv
10177 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
10178 11ab:4364 sky2
10179 </pre>
10180
10181 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
10182 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
10183
10184 <pre>
10185 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
10186     echo loaded pci modules:
10187     (
10188         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
10189         for address in * ; do
10190             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
10191                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
10192                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
10193                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
10194                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
10195                     echo "$id $module"
10196                 fi
10197             fi
10198         done
10199     )
10200     echo
10201 fi
10202 </pre>
10203
10204 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
10205 mappings:</p>
10206
10207 <pre>
10208 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
10209     echo loaded usb modules:
10210     (
10211         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
10212         for address in * ; do
10213             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
10214                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
10215                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
10216                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
10217                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
10218                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
10219                         echo "$id $module"
10220                     fi
10221                 fi
10222             fi
10223         done
10224     )
10225     echo
10226 fi
10227 </pre>
10228
10229 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
10230 well.</p>
10231
10232       </div>
10233       <div class="tags">
10234
10235
10236         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10237
10238
10239       </div>
10240     </div>
10241     <div class="padding"></div>
10242
10243     <div class="entry">
10244       <div class="title">
10245         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html">How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</a>
10246       </div>
10247       <div class="date">
10248         22nd December 2010
10249       </div>
10250       <div class="body">
10251         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
10252 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
10253 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
10254 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
10255 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
10256 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
10257 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
10258 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
10259 university.</p>
10260
10261 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
10262 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
10263 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
10264 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
10265 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
10266 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
10267 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
10268 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
10269
10270 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
10271 I perform on a new model.</p>
10272
10273 <ul>
10274
10275 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
10276 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
10277 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
10278
10279 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
10280 installation, X.org is working.</li>
10281
10282 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
10283 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
10284 reported by the program.</li>
10285
10286 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
10287 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
10288 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
10289 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
10290 normally test this by playing
10291 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
10292 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
10293
10294 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
10295 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
10296
10297 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
10298 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
10299
10300 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
10301 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
10302
10303 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
10304 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
10305 few.</li>
10306
10307 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
10308 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
10309 notice this.</li>
10310
10311 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
10312 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
10313 resume.</li>
10314
10315 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
10316 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
10317 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
10318 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
10319 not.</li>
10320
10321 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
10322 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
10323 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
10324 existence.</li>
10325
10326 </ul>
10327
10328 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
10329 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
10330 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
10331 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
10332 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
10333 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
10334 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
10335 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
10336
10337       </div>
10338       <div class="tags">
10339
10340
10341         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10342
10343
10344       </div>
10345     </div>
10346     <div class="padding"></div>
10347
10348     <div class="entry">
10349       <div class="title">
10350         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
10351       </div>
10352       <div class="date">
10353         11th December 2010
10354       </div>
10355       <div class="body">
10356         <p>As I continue to explore
10357 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
10358 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
10359 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
10360
10361 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
10362 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
10363 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
10364 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
10365 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
10366 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
10367 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
10368 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
10369 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
10370 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
10371 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
10372 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
10373 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
10374 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
10375 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
10376 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
10377 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
10378 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
10379 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
10380 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
10381
10382 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
10383 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
10384 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
10385 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
10386 If the Skolelinux foundation
10387 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
10388 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
10389 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
10390 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
10391 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
10392 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
10393 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
10394 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
10395
10396 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
10397 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
10398 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
10399 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
10400 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
10401 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
10402 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
10403 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
10404 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
10405 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
10406 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
10407 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
10408 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
10409 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
10410 currencies.</p>
10411
10412 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
10413 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
10414 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
10415 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
10416 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
10417 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
10418 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
10419 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
10420 BitCoins.  Check out
10421 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
10422 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
10423 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
10424 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
10425 yet.</p>
10426
10427 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
10428 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
10429 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
10430 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
10431 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
10432
10433       </div>
10434       <div class="tags">
10435
10436
10437         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
10438
10439
10440       </div>
10441     </div>
10442     <div class="padding"></div>
10443
10444     <div class="entry">
10445       <div class="title">
10446         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</a>
10447       </div>
10448       <div class="date">
10449         10th December 2010
10450       </div>
10451       <div class="body">
10452         <p>With this weeks lawless
10453 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
10454 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
10455 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
10456 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
10457 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
10458 A blog post from
10459 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
10460 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
10461 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
10462 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
10463 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
10464 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
10465 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
10466
10467 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
10468 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
10469 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
10470 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
10471 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
10472 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
10473 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
10474 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
10475 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
10476 Debian</a> soon.</p>
10477
10478 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
10479 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
10480 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
10481 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
10482 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
10483 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
10484 you can even get
10485 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
10486 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
10487 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
10488 on the current exchange rates.</p>
10489
10490 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
10491 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
10492 donations to the address
10493 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
10494
10495       </div>
10496       <div class="tags">
10497
10498
10499         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
10500
10501
10502       </div>
10503     </div>
10504     <div class="padding"></div>
10505
10506     <div class="entry">
10507       <div class="title">
10508         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
10509       </div>
10510       <div class="date">
10511         27th November 2010
10512       </div>
10513       <div class="body">
10514         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
10515 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
10516 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
10517 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
10518 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
10519 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
10520 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
10521 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
10522
10523 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
10524 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
10525 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
10526 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
10527 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
10528 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
10529 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
10530 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
10531 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
10532 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
10533 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
10534
10535 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
10536 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
10537 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
10538 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
10539 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
10540 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
10541 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
10542 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
10543 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
10544 what is going on.</p>
10545
10546       </div>
10547       <div class="tags">
10548
10549
10550         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10551
10552
10553       </div>
10554     </div>
10555     <div class="padding"></div>
10556
10557     <div class="entry">
10558       <div class="title">
10559         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</a>
10560       </div>
10561       <div class="date">
10562         22nd November 2010
10563       </div>
10564       <div class="body">
10565         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
10566 upgrade testing of the
10567 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
10568 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
10569 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
10570 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
10571
10572 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
10573
10574 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
10575
10576 <blockquote><p>
10577   apache2.2-bin
10578   aptdaemon
10579   baobab
10580   binfmt-support
10581   browser-plugin-gnash
10582   cheese-common
10583   cli-common
10584   cups-pk-helper
10585   dmz-cursor-theme
10586   empathy
10587   empathy-common
10588   freedesktop-sound-theme
10589   freeglut3
10590   gconf-defaults-service
10591   gdm-themes
10592   gedit-plugins
10593   geoclue
10594   geoclue-hostip
10595   geoclue-localnet
10596   geoclue-manual
10597   geoclue-yahoo
10598   gnash
10599   gnash-common
10600   gnome
10601   gnome-backgrounds
10602   gnome-cards-data
10603   gnome-codec-install
10604   gnome-core
10605   gnome-desktop-environment
10606   gnome-disk-utility
10607   gnome-screenshot
10608   gnome-search-tool
10609   gnome-session-canberra
10610   gnome-system-log
10611   gnome-themes-extras
10612   gnome-themes-more
10613   gnome-user-share
10614   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
10615   gstreamer0.10-tools
10616   gtk2-engines
10617   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
10618   gtk2-engines-smooth
10619   hamster-applet
10620   libapache2-mod-dnssd
10621   libapr1
10622   libaprutil1
10623   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
10624   libaprutil1-ldap
10625   libart2.0-cil
10626   libboost-date-time1.42.0
10627   libboost-python1.42.0
10628   libboost-thread1.42.0
10629   libchamplain-0.4-0
10630   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
10631   libcheese-gtk18
10632   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
10633   libcryptui0
10634   libdiscid0
10635   libelf1
10636   libepc-1.0-2
10637   libepc-common
10638   libepc-ui-1.0-2
10639   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
10640   libfreerdp0
10641   libgconf2.0-cil
10642   libgdata-common
10643   libgdata7
10644   libgdu-gtk0
10645   libgee2
10646   libgeoclue0
10647   libgexiv2-0
10648   libgif4
10649   libglade2.0-cil
10650   libglib2.0-cil
10651   libgmime2.4-cil
10652   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
10653   libgnome2.24-cil
10654   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
10655   libgpod-common
10656   libgpod4
10657   libgtk2.0-cil
10658   libgtkglext1
10659   libgtksourceview2.0-common
10660   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
10661   libmono-addins0.2-cil
10662   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
10663   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
10664   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
10665   libmono-posix2.0-cil
10666   libmono-security2.0-cil
10667   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
10668   libmono-system2.0-cil
10669   libmtp8
10670   libmusicbrainz3-6
10671   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
10672   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
10673   libopal3.6.8
10674   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
10675   libpt2.6.7
10676   libpython2.6
10677   librpm1
10678   librpmio1
10679   libsdl1.2debian
10680   libsrtp0
10681   libssh-4
10682   libtelepathy-farsight0
10683   libtelepathy-glib0
10684   libtidy-0.99-0
10685   media-player-info
10686   mesa-utils
10687   mono-2.0-gac
10688   mono-gac
10689   mono-runtime
10690   nautilus-sendto
10691   nautilus-sendto-empathy
10692   p7zip-full
10693   pkg-config
10694   python-aptdaemon
10695   python-aptdaemon-gtk
10696   python-axiom
10697   python-beautifulsoup
10698   python-bugbuddy
10699   python-clientform
10700   python-coherence
10701   python-configobj
10702   python-crypto
10703   python-cupshelpers
10704   python-elementtree
10705   python-epsilon
10706   python-evolution
10707   python-feedparser
10708   python-gdata
10709   python-gdbm
10710   python-gst0.10
10711   python-gtkglext1
10712   python-gtksourceview2
10713   python-httplib2
10714   python-louie
10715   python-mako
10716   python-markupsafe
10717   python-mechanize
10718   python-nevow
10719   python-notify
10720   python-opengl
10721   python-openssl
10722   python-pam
10723   python-pkg-resources
10724   python-pyasn1
10725   python-pysqlite2
10726   python-rdflib
10727   python-serial
10728   python-tagpy
10729   python-twisted-bin
10730   python-twisted-conch
10731   python-twisted-core
10732   python-twisted-web
10733   python-utidylib
10734   python-webkit
10735   python-xdg
10736   python-zope.interface
10737   remmina
10738   remmina-plugin-data
10739   remmina-plugin-rdp
10740   remmina-plugin-vnc
10741   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
10742   rhythmbox-plugins
10743   rpm-common
10744   rpm2cpio
10745   seahorse-plugins
10746   shotwell
10747   software-center
10748   system-config-printer-udev
10749   telepathy-gabble
10750   telepathy-mission-control-5
10751   telepathy-salut
10752   tomboy
10753   totem
10754   totem-coherence
10755   totem-mozilla
10756   totem-plugins
10757   transmission-common
10758   xdg-user-dirs
10759   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
10760   xserver-xephyr
10761 </p></blockquote>
10762
10763 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
10764
10765 <blockquote><p>
10766   cheese
10767   ekiga
10768   eog
10769   epiphany-extensions
10770   evolution-exchange
10771   fast-user-switch-applet
10772   file-roller
10773   gcalctool
10774   gconf-editor
10775   gdm
10776   gedit
10777   gedit-common
10778   gnome-games
10779   gnome-games-data
10780   gnome-nettool
10781   gnome-system-tools
10782   gnome-themes
10783   gnuchess
10784   gucharmap
10785   guile-1.8-libs
10786   libavahi-ui0
10787   libdmx1
10788   libgalago3
10789   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
10790   libgtksourceview2.0-0
10791   liblircclient0
10792   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
10793   libspeexdsp1
10794   libsvga1
10795   rhythmbox
10796   seahorse
10797   sound-juicer
10798   system-config-printer
10799   totem-common
10800   transmission-gtk
10801   vinagre
10802   vino
10803 </p></blockquote>
10804
10805 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10806
10807 <blockquote><p>
10808   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10809 </p></blockquote>
10810
10811 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10812
10813 <blockquote><p>
10814 [nothing]
10815 </p></blockquote>
10816
10817 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
10818
10819 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
10820
10821 <blockquote><p>
10822   ksmserver
10823 </p></blockquote>
10824
10825 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
10826
10827 <blockquote><p>
10828   kwin
10829   network-manager-kde
10830 </p></blockquote>
10831
10832 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10833
10834 <blockquote><p>
10835   arts
10836   dolphin
10837   freespacenotifier
10838   google-gadgets-gst
10839   google-gadgets-xul
10840   kappfinder
10841   kcalc
10842   kcharselect
10843   kde-core
10844   kde-plasma-desktop
10845   kde-standard
10846   kde-window-manager
10847   kdeartwork
10848   kdeartwork-emoticons
10849   kdeartwork-style
10850   kdeartwork-theme-icon
10851   kdebase
10852   kdebase-apps
10853   kdebase-workspace
10854   kdebase-workspace-bin
10855   kdebase-workspace-data
10856   kdeeject
10857   kdelibs
10858   kdeplasma-addons
10859   kdeutils
10860   kdewallpapers
10861   kdf
10862   kfloppy
10863   kgpg
10864   khelpcenter4
10865   kinfocenter
10866   konq-plugins-l10n
10867   konqueror-nsplugins
10868   kscreensaver
10869   kscreensaver-xsavers
10870   ktimer
10871   kwrite
10872   libgle3
10873   libkde4-ruby1.8
10874   libkonq5
10875   libkonq5-templates
10876   libnetpbm10
10877   libplasma-ruby
10878   libplasma-ruby1.8
10879   libqt4-ruby1.8
10880   marble-data
10881   marble-plugins
10882   netpbm
10883   nuvola-icon-theme
10884   plasma-dataengines-workspace
10885   plasma-desktop
10886   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
10887   plasma-runners-addons
10888   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
10889   plasma-scriptengine-python
10890   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
10891   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
10892   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
10893   plasma-scriptengines
10894   plasma-wallpapers-addons
10895   plasma-widget-folderview
10896   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
10897   ruby
10898   sweeper
10899   update-notifier-kde
10900   xscreensaver-data-extra
10901   xscreensaver-gl
10902   xscreensaver-gl-extra
10903   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
10904 </p></blockquote>
10905
10906 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10907
10908 <blockquote><p>
10909   ark
10910   google-gadgets-common
10911   google-gadgets-qt
10912   htdig
10913   kate
10914   kdebase-bin
10915   kdebase-data
10916   kdepasswd
10917   kfind
10918   klipper
10919   konq-plugins
10920   konqueror
10921   ksysguard
10922   ksysguardd
10923   libarchive1
10924   libcln6
10925   libeet1
10926   libeina-svn-06
10927   libggadget-1.0-0b
10928   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
10929   libgps19
10930   libkdecorations4
10931   libkephal4
10932   libkonq4
10933   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
10934   libkscreensaver5
10935   libksgrd4
10936   libksignalplotter4
10937   libkunitconversion4
10938   libkwineffects1a
10939   libmarblewidget4
10940   libntrack-qt4-1
10941   libntrack0
10942   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
10943   libplasmaclock4a
10944   libplasmagenericshell4
10945   libprocesscore4a
10946   libprocessui4a
10947   libqalculate5
10948   libqedje0a
10949   libqtruby4shared2
10950   libqzion0a
10951   libruby1.8
10952   libscim8c2a
10953   libsmokekdecore4-3
10954   libsmokekdeui4-3
10955   libsmokekfile3
10956   libsmokekhtml3
10957   libsmokekio3
10958   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
10959   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
10960   libsmokekparts3
10961   libsmokektexteditor3
10962   libsmokekutils3
10963   libsmokenepomuk3
10964   libsmokephonon3
10965   libsmokeplasma3
10966   libsmokeqtcore4-3
10967   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
10968   libsmokeqtgui4-3
10969   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
10970   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
10971   libsmokeqtscript4-3
10972   libsmokeqtsql4-3
10973   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
10974   libsmokeqttest4-3
10975   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
10976   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
10977   libsmokeqtxml4-3
10978   libsmokesolid3
10979   libsmokesoprano3
10980   libtaskmanager4a
10981   libtidy-0.99-0
10982   libweather-ion4a
10983   libxklavier16
10984   libxxf86misc1
10985   okteta
10986   oxygencursors
10987   plasma-dataengines-addons
10988   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
10989   plasma-widget-lancelot
10990   plasma-widgets-addons
10991   plasma-widgets-workspace
10992   polkit-kde-1
10993   ruby1.8
10994   systemsettings
10995   update-notifier-common
10996 </p></blockquote>
10997
10998 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
10999 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
11000 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
11001 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
11002
11003       </div>
11004       <div class="tags">
11005
11006
11007         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11008
11009
11010       </div>
11011     </div>
11012     <div class="padding"></div>
11013
11014     <div class="entry">
11015       <div class="title">
11016         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html">Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</a>
11017       </div>
11018       <div class="date">
11019         22nd November 2010
11020       </div>
11021       <div class="body">
11022         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
11023 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
11024 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
11025 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
11026 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
11027 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
11028 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
11029 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
11030 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
11031
11032 <p>I found
11033 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
11034 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
11035 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
11036 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
11037 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
11038 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
11039
11040 <pre>
11041 #!/bin/sh
11042
11043 # Based on
11044 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
11045
11046 set -e
11047 set -x
11048
11049 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
11050     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
11051     exit 1
11052 else
11053     host="$1"
11054 fi
11055
11056 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
11057     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
11058     exit 1
11059 fi
11060
11061 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
11062 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
11063 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
11064 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
11065
11066 img=$host.img
11067 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
11068 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
11069
11070 parted $img mklabel msdos
11071 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
11072 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
11073 parted $img set 1 boot on
11074
11075 modprobe dm-mod
11076 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
11077 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
11078
11079 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
11080 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
11081 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
11082
11083 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
11084 losetup -d /dev/loop0
11085 </pre>
11086
11087 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
11088 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
11089
11090 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
11091 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
11092 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
11093 seem to work just fine.</p>
11094
11095       </div>
11096       <div class="tags">
11097
11098
11099         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11100
11101
11102       </div>
11103     </div>
11104     <div class="padding"></div>
11105
11106     <div class="entry">
11107       <div class="title">
11108         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</a>
11109       </div>
11110       <div class="date">
11111         20th November 2010
11112       </div>
11113       <div class="body">
11114         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
11115 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
11116 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
11117 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
11118
11119 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
11120 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
11121 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
11122
11123 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
11124
11125 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
11126
11127 <blockquote><p>
11128   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
11129   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
11130   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
11131   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
11132   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
11133   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
11134   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
11135   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
11136   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
11137   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
11138   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
11139   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
11140   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
11141   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
11142   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
11143   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
11144   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
11145   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
11146   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
11147   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
11148   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
11149   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
11150   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
11151   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
11152   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
11153   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
11154   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
11155   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
11156   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
11157   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
11158   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
11159   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
11160   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
11161   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
11162   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
11163   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
11164   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
11165   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
11166   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
11167   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
11168   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
11169   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
11170   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
11171   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
11172   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
11173   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
11174   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
11175   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
11176   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
11177   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
11178   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
11179   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
11180   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
11181   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
11182   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
11183   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
11184   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
11185   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
11186   zip
11187 </p></blockquote>
11188
11189 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
11190
11191 <blockquote><p>
11192   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
11193   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
11194   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
11195   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
11196   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
11197   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
11198   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
11199   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
11200   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
11201   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
11202   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
11203   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
11204   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
11205   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
11206   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
11207   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
11208   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
11209   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
11210   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
11211   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
11212   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
11213   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
11214   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
11215   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
11216   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
11217   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
11218   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
11219   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
11220   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
11221 </p></blockquote>
11222
11223 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
11224
11225 <blockquote><p>
11226   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
11227 </p></blockquote>
11228
11229 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
11230
11231 <blockquote><p>
11232 [nothing]
11233 </p></blockquote>
11234
11235 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
11236
11237 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
11238
11239 <blockquote><p>
11240   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
11241   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
11242   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
11243   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
11244   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
11245   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
11246   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
11247   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
11248   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
11249   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
11250   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
11251   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
11252   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
11253   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
11254   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
11255   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
11256   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
11257   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
11258   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
11259   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
11260   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
11261   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
11262   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
11263   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
11264   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
11265   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
11266   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
11267   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
11268   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
11269   ttf-sazanami-gothic
11270 </p></blockquote>
11271
11272 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
11273
11274 <blockquote><p>
11275   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
11276   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
11277   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
11278   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
11279   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
11280   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
11281   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
11282   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
11283   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
11284   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
11285   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
11286   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
11287   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
11288   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
11289   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
11290   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
11291   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
11292   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
11293   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
11294   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
11295   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
11296   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
11297   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
11298   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
11299   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
11300   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
11301   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
11302   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
11303   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
11304   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
11305   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
11306   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
11307   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
11308 </p></blockquote>
11309
11310 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
11311
11312 <blockquote><p>
11313   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
11314   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
11315   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
11316   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
11317   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
11318   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
11319   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
11320 </p></blockquote>
11321
11322 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
11323
11324 <blockquote><p>
11325   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
11326 </p></blockquote>
11327
11328       </div>
11329       <div class="tags">
11330
11331
11332         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11333
11334
11335       </div>
11336     </div>
11337     <div class="padding"></div>
11338
11339     <div class="entry">
11340       <div class="title">
11341         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
11342       </div>
11343       <div class="date">
11344         20th November 2010
11345       </div>
11346       <div class="body">
11347         <p>Answering
11348 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
11349 call from the Gnash project</a> for
11350 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
11351 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
11352 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
11353 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
11354 releases out more often.</p>
11355
11356 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
11357 I have considered setting up a <a
11358 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
11359 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
11360 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
11361 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
11362 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
11363 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
11364 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
11365 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
11366 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
11367 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
11368 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
11369 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
11370
11371       </div>
11372       <div class="tags">
11373
11374
11375         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11376
11377
11378       </div>
11379     </div>
11380     <div class="padding"></div>
11381
11382     <div class="entry">
11383       <div class="title">
11384         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
11385       </div>
11386       <div class="date">
11387          9th November 2010
11388       </div>
11389       <div class="body">
11390         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
11391
11392 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
11393 3D linked in from
11394 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
11395 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
11396
11397       </div>
11398       <div class="tags">
11399
11400
11401         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11402
11403
11404       </div>
11405     </div>
11406     <div class="padding"></div>
11407
11408     <div class="entry">
11409       <div class="title">
11410         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
11411       </div>
11412       <div class="date">
11413         24th October 2010
11414       </div>
11415       <div class="body">
11416         <p>Some updates.</p>
11417
11418 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
11419 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
11420 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
11421 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
11422 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
11423 :)</p>
11424
11425 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
11426 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
11427 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
11428 It is called
11429 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
11430 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
11431 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
11432 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
11433 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
11434 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
11435
11436 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
11437 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
11438 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
11439 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
11440 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
11441 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
11442 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
11443 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
11444 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
11445 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
11446
11447       </div>
11448       <div class="tags">
11449
11450
11451         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
11452
11453
11454       </div>
11455     </div>
11456     <div class="padding"></div>
11457
11458     <div class="entry">
11459       <div class="title">
11460         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html">Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</a>
11461       </div>
11462       <div class="date">
11463          4th September 2010
11464       </div>
11465       <div class="body">
11466         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
11467 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
11468 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
11469 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
11470 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
11471 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
11472 installed.</p>
11473
11474 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
11475 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
11476 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
11477 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
11478 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
11479 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
11480 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
11481 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
11482 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
11483
11484 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
11485 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
11486 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
11487 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
11488 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
11489 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
11490 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
11491 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
11492 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
11493 pages they want to visit.</p>
11494
11495 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
11496 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
11497 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
11498 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
11499 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
11500 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
11501 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
11502 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
11503 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
11504 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
11505 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
11506
11507       </div>
11508       <div class="tags">
11509
11510
11511         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
11512
11513
11514       </div>
11515     </div>
11516     <div class="padding"></div>
11517
11518     <div class="entry">
11519       <div class="title">
11520         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
11521       </div>
11522       <div class="date">
11523         27th July 2010
11524       </div>
11525       <div class="body">
11526         <p>I discovered this while doing
11527 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
11528 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
11529 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
11530 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
11531 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
11532
11533 <p>An example is from todays
11534 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
11535 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
11536 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
11537 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
11538 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
11539 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
11540 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
11541
11542 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
11543
11544 <blockquote><pre>
11545 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
11546  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
11547   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
11548 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
11549  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
11550 </pre></blockquote>
11551
11552 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
11553 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
11554 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
11555 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
11556 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
11557 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
11558 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
11559 of dependency loops.</p>
11560
11561 <p>Thanks to
11562 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
11563 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
11564 dependencies
11565 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
11566 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
11567
11568 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
11569 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
11570 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
11571 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
11572 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
11573 it.</p>
11574
11575       </div>
11576       <div class="tags">
11577
11578
11579         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11580
11581
11582       </div>
11583     </div>
11584     <div class="padding"></div>
11585
11586     <div class="entry">
11587       <div class="title">
11588         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html">What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</a>
11589       </div>
11590       <div class="date">
11591         17th July 2010
11592       </div>
11593       <div class="body">
11594         <p>This is a
11595 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
11596 on my
11597 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">previous
11598 work</a> on
11599 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
11600 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
11601
11602 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
11603 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
11604 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
11605 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
11606
11607 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
11608 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
11609 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
11610
11611 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
11612
11613 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
11614 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
11615 the web.
11616
11617 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
11618 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
11619 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
11620 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
11621 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
11622 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
11623
11624 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
11625 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
11626 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
11627 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
11628 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
11629 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
11630 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
11631 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
11632 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
11633 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
11634 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
11635 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
11636 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
11637 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
11638 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
11639 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
11640
11641 <blockquote><pre>
11642 ldapsearch -h ldap \
11643   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
11644   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
11645   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
11646   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
11647   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
11648   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
11649
11650 ldapsearch -h ldap \
11651   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
11652   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
11653   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
11654   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
11655   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
11656 </pre></blockquote>
11657
11658 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
11659 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
11660 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
11661 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11662 also exist.</p>
11663
11664 <blockquote><pre>
11665 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11666 objectclass: top
11667 objectclass: dnsdomain
11668 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11669 dc: tjener
11670 arecord: 10.0.2.2
11671 associateddomain: tjener.intern
11672
11673 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11674 objectclass: top
11675 objectclass: dnsdomain2
11676 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11677 dc: 2
11678 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
11679 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
11680 </pre></blockquote>
11681
11682 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
11683 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
11684 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
11685 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
11686 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
11687 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
11688 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
11689 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
11690 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
11691 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
11692 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
11693 instead.</p>
11694
11695 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
11696 like this:</p>
11697
11698 <blockquote><pre>
11699 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
11700   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
11701   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
11702   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
11703   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
11704   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
11705
11706 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
11707   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
11708 </pre></blockquote>
11709
11710 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
11711 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
11712 reverse lookups.</p>
11713
11714 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
11715 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
11716 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
11717 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
11718
11719 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
11720 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
11721 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
11722
11723 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
11724 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
11725 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
11726 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
11727 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
11728
11729 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
11730 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
11731 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
11732 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
11733 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
11734
11735 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
11736 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
11737 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
11738 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
11739 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
11740 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
11741
11742 <blockquote><pre>
11743 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
11744     SUP top
11745     AUXILIARY
11746     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
11747           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
11748           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
11749           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
11750           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
11751     ))
11752 </pre></blockquote>
11753
11754 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
11755 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
11756 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
11757 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
11758 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
11759 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
11760
11761 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
11762
11763 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
11764 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
11765 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
11766 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
11767 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
11768
11769 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
11770 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
11771 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
11772 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
11773
11774 <blockquote><pre>
11775 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
11776 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
11777 </pre></blockquote>
11778
11779 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
11780 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
11781 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
11782 search result is this entry:</p>
11783
11784 <blockquote><pre>
11785 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11786 cn: dhcp
11787 objectClass: top
11788 objectClass: dhcpServer
11789 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11790 </pre></blockquote>
11791
11792 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
11793 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
11794 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
11795 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
11796 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
11797 The search result is this entry:</p>
11798
11799 <blockquote><pre>
11800 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11801 cn: DHCP Config
11802 objectClass: top
11803 objectClass: dhcpService
11804 objectClass: dhcpOptions
11805 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11806 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
11807 dhcpStatements: authoritative
11808 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
11809 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
11810 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
11811 </pre></blockquote>
11812
11813 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
11814 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
11815 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
11816 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
11817 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
11818 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
11819 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
11820 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
11821 related computer objects.</p>
11822
11823 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
11824 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
11825 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
11826 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
11827 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
11828 like:</p>
11829
11830 <blockquote><pre>
11831 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11832 cn: hostname
11833 objectClass: top
11834 objectClass: dhcpHost
11835 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
11836 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
11837 </pre></blockquote>
11838
11839 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
11840 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
11841 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
11842 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
11843 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
11844 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
11845 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
11846 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
11847 structural object class.
11848
11849 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
11850
11851 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
11852 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
11853 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
11854 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
11855 in the configuration.</p>
11856
11857 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
11858 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
11859 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
11860 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
11861 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
11862 structure.</p>
11863
11864 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
11865 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
11866
11867 <blockquote><pre>
11868 ou=services
11869   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
11870     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
11871     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
11872       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
11873         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
11874     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
11875       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
11876         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
11877     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
11878       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
11879 </pre></blockquote>
11880
11881 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
11882 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
11883 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
11884 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
11885
11886 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
11887 like this:</p>
11888
11889 <blockquote><pre>
11890 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11891 dc: hostname
11892 objectClass: top
11893 objectClass: dhcpHost
11894 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11895 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
11896 associateddomain: hostname.intern
11897 arecord: 10.11.12.13
11898 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
11899 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
11900 </pre></blockquote>
11901
11902 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
11903 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
11904 auxiliary object class.</p>
11905
11906       </div>
11907       <div class="tags">
11908
11909
11910         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11911
11912
11913       </div>
11914     </div>
11915     <div class="padding"></div>
11916
11917     <div class="entry">
11918       <div class="title">
11919         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
11920       </div>
11921       <div class="date">
11922         14th July 2010
11923       </div>
11924       <div class="body">
11925         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
11926 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
11927 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
11928 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
11929 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
11930
11931 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
11932 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
11933
11934 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
11935 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
11936 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
11937 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
11938 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
11939 to a slave DNS server.</p>
11940
11941 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
11942 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
11943 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
11944 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
11945 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
11946 seem to work.</p>
11947
11948 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
11949 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
11950 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
11951 this:</p>
11952
11953 <blockquote><pre>
11954   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11955   cn: hostname
11956   objectClass: dhcphost
11957   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11958   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
11959   associateddomain: hostname.intern
11960   arecord: 10.11.12.13
11961   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
11962   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
11963   ldapconfigsound: Y
11964 </pre></blockquote>
11965
11966 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
11967 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
11968 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
11969 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
11970
11971 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
11972 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
11973 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
11974 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
11975 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
11976 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
11977 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
11978 might be a good place to put it.</p>
11979
11980 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11981 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11982
11983       </div>
11984       <div class="tags">
11985
11986
11987         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11988
11989
11990       </div>
11991     </div>
11992     <div class="padding"></div>
11993
11994     <div class="entry">
11995       <div class="title">
11996         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
11997       </div>
11998       <div class="date">
11999         11th July 2010
12000       </div>
12001       <div class="body">
12002         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
12003 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
12004 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
12005 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
12006
12007 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
12008 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
12009 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
12010 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
12011 LTSP clients.</p>
12012
12013 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
12014 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
12015 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
12016
12017 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
12018 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
12019 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
12020
12021 <blockquote><pre>
12022 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
12023 #
12024 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
12025 #
12026 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
12027 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
12028 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
12029 #
12030 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
12031 # existence of attribute names.
12032 #
12033 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
12034 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
12035 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
12036 #
12037 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
12038 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
12039 #
12040 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
12041 #     SUP top
12042 #     AUXILIARY
12043 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
12044
12045 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
12046 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
12047     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
12048     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
12049         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
12050         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
12051             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
12052             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
12053             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
12054             # bass value on to clients
12055             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
12056         done
12057     done
12058 fi
12059 </pre></blockquote>
12060
12061 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
12062 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
12063 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
12064 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
12065 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
12066
12067 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12068 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12069
12070 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
12071 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
12072 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
12073 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
12074 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
12075 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
12076
12077       </div>
12078       <div class="tags">
12079
12080
12081         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12082
12083
12084       </div>
12085     </div>
12086     <div class="padding"></div>
12087
12088     <div class="entry">
12089       <div class="title">
12090         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
12091       </div>
12092       <div class="date">
12093          9th July 2010
12094       </div>
12095       <div class="body">
12096         <p>Since
12097 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
12098 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
12099 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
12100 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
12101 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
12102 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
12103 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
12104 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
12105 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
12106 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
12107 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
12108 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
12109 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
12110
12111       </div>
12112       <div class="tags">
12113
12114
12115         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12116
12117
12118       </div>
12119     </div>
12120     <div class="padding"></div>
12121
12122     <div class="entry">
12123       <div class="title">
12124         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</a>
12125       </div>
12126       <div class="date">
12127          3rd July 2010
12128       </div>
12129       <div class="body">
12130         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
12131 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
12132 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
12133 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
12134 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
12135 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
12136 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
12137 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
12138
12139 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
12140 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
12141 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
12142 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
12143 publish the difference.</p>
12144
12145 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
12146
12147 <blockquote><p>
12148   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
12149   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
12150   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
12151   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
12152   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
12153   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
12154   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
12155   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
12156 </p></blockquote>
12157
12158 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
12159
12160 <blockquote><p>
12161   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
12162   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
12163   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
12164   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
12165   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
12166   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
12167   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
12168   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
12169   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
12170   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
12171   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
12172   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
12173   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
12174   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
12175   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
12176   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
12177   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
12178   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
12179   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
12180   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
12181 </p></blockquote>
12182
12183 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
12184
12185 <blockquote><p>
12186   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
12187   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
12188   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
12189   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
12190   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
12191   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
12192   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
12193   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
12194   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
12195   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
12196   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
12197   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
12198   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
12199   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
12200   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
12201   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
12202   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
12203   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
12204   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
12205   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
12206   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
12207 </p></blockquote>
12208
12209 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
12210
12211 <blockquote><p>
12212   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
12213   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
12214   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
12215 </p></blockquote>
12216
12217 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
12218 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
12219 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
12220 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
12221 the difference somewhat.
12222
12223       </div>
12224       <div class="tags">
12225
12226
12227         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12228
12229
12230       </div>
12231     </div>
12232     <div class="padding"></div>
12233
12234     <div class="entry">
12235       <div class="title">
12236         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
12237       </div>
12238       <div class="date">
12239         28th June 2010
12240       </div>
12241       <div class="body">
12242         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
12243 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
12244 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
12245 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
12246 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
12247 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
12248 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
12249 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
12250 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
12251 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
12252
12253 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
12254 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
12255 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
12256 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
12257 released.</p>
12258
12259 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
12260 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
12261 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
12262 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
12263
12264 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
12265 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12266
12267 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
12268 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
12269 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
12270 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
12271 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
12272
12273       </div>
12274       <div class="tags">
12275
12276
12277         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12278
12279
12280       </div>
12281     </div>
12282     <div class="padding"></div>
12283
12284     <div class="entry">
12285       <div class="title">
12286         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</a>
12287       </div>
12288       <div class="date">
12289         24th June 2010
12290       </div>
12291       <div class="body">
12292         <p>A while back, I
12293 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
12294 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
12295 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
12296 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
12297
12298 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
12299 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
12300 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
12301 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
12302
12303 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
12304 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
12305 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
12306 Debian Edu.</p>
12307
12308 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
12309 the
12310 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
12311 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
12312 available today from IETF.</p>
12313
12314 <pre>
12315 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
12316 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
12317 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
12318  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
12319         NAME 'dhcpHost'
12320         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
12321 -       SUP top
12322 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
12323         MUST cn
12324         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
12325         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
12326 </pre>
12327
12328 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
12329 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
12330 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
12331
12332 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12333 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12334
12335       </div>
12336       <div class="tags">
12337
12338
12339         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12340
12341
12342       </div>
12343     </div>
12344     <div class="padding"></div>
12345
12346     <div class="entry">
12347       <div class="title">
12348         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html">Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</a>
12349       </div>
12350       <div class="date">
12351         16th June 2010
12352       </div>
12353       <div class="body">
12354         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
12355 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
12356 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
12357 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
12358 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
12359 this:
12360
12361 <blockquote><pre>
12362 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
12363 tasksel --new-install
12364 </pre></blockquote>
12365
12366 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
12367 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
12368 any output what so ever.
12369
12370 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
12371 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
12372 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
12373 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
12374 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
12375 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
12376 code like this:
12377
12378 <blockquote><pre>
12379 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
12380 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
12381 $cmd
12382 </pre></blockquote>
12383
12384 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
12385 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
12386 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
12387 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
12388 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
12389 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
12390 installation.</p>
12391
12392 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
12393 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
12394 like this.</p>
12395
12396       </div>
12397       <div class="tags">
12398
12399
12400         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12401
12402
12403       </div>
12404     </div>
12405     <div class="padding"></div>
12406
12407     <div class="entry">
12408       <div class="title">
12409         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</a>
12410       </div>
12411       <div class="date">
12412         13th June 2010
12413       </div>
12414       <div class="body">
12415         <p>My
12416 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
12417 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
12418 finally made the upgrade logs available from
12419 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
12420 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
12421 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
12422 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
12423
12424 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
12425 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
12426 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
12427 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
12428 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
12429 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
12430 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
12431 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
12432
12433 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
12434 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
12435 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
12436 too surprising.</p>
12437
12438 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
12439 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
12440 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
12441 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
12442 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
12443 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
12444 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
12445 continue.</p>
12446
12447 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
12448 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
12449   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
12450   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
12451   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
12452   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
12453   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
12454   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
12455   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
12456   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
12457   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
12458   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
12459   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
12460   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
12461   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
12462   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12463   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
12464   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
12465   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
12466   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
12467   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
12468   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
12469   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
12470   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
12471   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
12472   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
12473   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
12474   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
12475   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
12476   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
12477
12478 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
12479
12480 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
12481   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
12482   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
12483   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
12484   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
12485   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
12486   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
12487   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
12488   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
12489   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
12490   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
12491   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
12492   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
12493   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
12494   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
12495   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
12496   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
12497   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
12498   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
12499   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
12500   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
12501   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
12502   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
12503   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
12504   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
12505   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
12506   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
12507   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
12508   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
12509   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12510   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
12511   zip</p>
12512
12513 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
12514
12515 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
12516   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
12517   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
12518   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
12519   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
12520   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
12521   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
12522   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
12523   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
12524   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
12525   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
12526   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
12527   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
12528   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
12529   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12530   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
12531   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
12532   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
12533   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
12534   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
12535   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
12536   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
12537   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
12538   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
12539   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
12540   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
12541   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
12542   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
12543
12544 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
12545 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
12546   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
12547   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
12548   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
12549   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
12550   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
12551   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
12552   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
12553   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
12554   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
12555   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
12556   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
12557   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
12558   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
12559   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
12560   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
12561   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
12562   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
12563   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
12564   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
12565   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
12566   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
12567   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
12568   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
12569   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
12570   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
12571   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
12572   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
12573   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
12574   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
12575   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
12576   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
12577   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
12578   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
12579   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12580   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
12581   xulrunner-1.9</p>
12582
12583
12584       </div>
12585       <div class="tags">
12586
12587
12588         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12589
12590
12591       </div>
12592     </div>
12593     <div class="padding"></div>
12594
12595     <div class="entry">
12596       <div class="title">
12597         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
12598       </div>
12599       <div class="date">
12600         11th June 2010
12601       </div>
12602       <div class="body">
12603         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
12604 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
12605 have been discovered and reported in the process
12606 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
12607 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
12608 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
12609 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
12610 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
12611
12612 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
12613 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
12614 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
12615 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
12616 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
12617 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
12618
12619 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
12620 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
12621 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
12622 is created.  The bug report
12623 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
12624 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
12625 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
12626 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
12627 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
12628 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
12629 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
12630 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
12631 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
12632 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
12633 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
12634 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
12635 Debian Squeeze.</p>
12636
12637 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
12638 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
12639 trick:</p>
12640
12641 <blockquote><pre>
12642 #!/bin/sh
12643 set -ex
12644
12645 if [ "$1" ] ; then
12646     desktop=$1
12647 else
12648     desktop=gnome
12649 fi
12650
12651 from=lenny
12652 to=squeeze
12653
12654 exec &lt; /dev/null
12655 unset LANG
12656 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
12657 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
12658 fuser -mv .
12659 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
12660 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
12661 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
12662 #!/bin/sh
12663 exit 101
12664 EOF
12665 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
12666 exit_cleanup() {
12667     umount $tmpdir/proc
12668 }
12669 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
12670 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
12671 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
12672
12673 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
12674
12675 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
12676 # to return the correct answers.
12677 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
12678     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
12679
12680 # Include the desktop and laptop task
12681 for test in desktop laptop ; do
12682     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
12683 #!/bin/sh
12684 exit 2
12685 EOF
12686     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
12687 done
12688
12689 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
12690 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
12691 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
12692 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
12693
12694 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
12695 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
12696 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
12697 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
12698 fuser -mv
12699 </pre></blockquote>
12700
12701 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
12702 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
12703 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
12704 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
12705 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
12706 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
12707
12708 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
12709 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
12710 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
12711 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
12712 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
12713 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
12714 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
12715
12716 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
12717 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
12718 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
12719 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
12720 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
12721 packages.</p>
12722
12723       </div>
12724       <div class="tags">
12725
12726
12727         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12728
12729
12730       </div>
12731     </div>
12732     <div class="padding"></div>
12733
12734     <div class="entry">
12735       <div class="title">
12736         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html">Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</a>
12737       </div>
12738       <div class="date">
12739          6th June 2010
12740       </div>
12741       <div class="body">
12742         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
12743 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
12744 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
12745 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
12746 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
12747 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
12748 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
12749
12750 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
12751 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
12752 COLUMNS):</p>
12753
12754 <blockquote><pre>
12755 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
12756 previous=N
12757 PREVLEVEL=
12758 RUNLEVEL=
12759 runlevel=S
12760 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
12761 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
12762 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
12763 </pre></blockquote>
12764
12765 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
12766 script.</p>
12767
12768 <blockquote><pre>
12769 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
12770 previous=N
12771 PREVLEVEL=N
12772 RUNLEVEL=S
12773 runlevel=S
12774 </pre></blockquote>
12775
12776 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
12777 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
12778 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
12779
12780 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
12781 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
12782 choice.</p>
12783
12784       </div>
12785       <div class="tags">
12786
12787
12788         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12789
12790
12791       </div>
12792     </div>
12793     <div class="padding"></div>
12794
12795     <div class="entry">
12796       <div class="title">
12797         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
12798       </div>
12799       <div class="date">
12800          6th June 2010
12801       </div>
12802       <div class="body">
12803         <p>Via the
12804 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
12805 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
12806 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
12807 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
12808 following the standards wars of today.</p>
12809
12810       </div>
12811       <div class="tags">
12812
12813
12814         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
12815
12816
12817       </div>
12818     </div>
12819     <div class="padding"></div>
12820
12821     <div class="entry">
12822       <div class="title">
12823         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</a>
12824       </div>
12825       <div class="date">
12826          3rd June 2010
12827       </div>
12828       <div class="body">
12829         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
12830 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
12831 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
12832 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
12833 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
12834
12835 <blockquote><pre>
12836 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
12837   vendor                    count
12838   Dell Computer Corporation     1
12839     PowerEdge 1750              1
12840   IBM                           1
12841     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
12842   Intel                         2
12843   [no-dmi-info]                 3
12844 maintainer:~#
12845 </pre></blockquote>
12846
12847 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
12848 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
12849 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
12850 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
12851 option to list the individual machines.</p>
12852
12853 <p>A larger list is
12854 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
12855 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
12856 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
12857 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
12858 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
12859 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
12860 collector.</p>
12861
12862       </div>
12863       <div class="tags">
12864
12865
12866         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
12867
12868
12869       </div>
12870     </div>
12871     <div class="padding"></div>
12872
12873     <div class="entry">
12874       <div class="title">
12875         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html">KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</a>
12876       </div>
12877       <div class="date">
12878          1st June 2010
12879       </div>
12880       <div class="body">
12881         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
12882 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
12883 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
12884 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
12885 wait.</p>
12886
12887 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
12888 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
12889 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
12890 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
12891 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
12892 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
12893
12894 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
12895 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
12896 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
12897 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
12898 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
12899 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
12900 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
12901 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
12902
12903 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
12904
12905       </div>
12906       <div class="tags">
12907
12908
12909         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12910
12911
12912       </div>
12913     </div>
12914     <div class="padding"></div>
12915
12916     <div class="entry">
12917       <div class="title">
12918         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</a>
12919       </div>
12920       <div class="date">
12921         27th May 2010
12922       </div>
12923       <div class="body">
12924         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
12925 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
12926 issues are known and should be solved:
12927
12928 <p><ul>
12929
12930 <li>The wicd package seen to
12931 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
12932 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
12933 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
12934 seem to be on the case.</li>
12935
12936 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
12937 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
12938 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
12939 maintainer is on the case.</li>
12940
12941 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
12942 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
12943 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
12944 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
12945 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
12946 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
12947 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
12948 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
12949
12950 </ul></p>
12951
12952 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
12953 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
12954 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
12955 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
12956
12957 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12958 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12959 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12960 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
12961
12962 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
12963
12964       </div>
12965       <div class="tags">
12966
12967
12968         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12969
12970
12971       </div>
12972     </div>
12973     <div class="padding"></div>
12974
12975     <div class="entry">
12976       <div class="title">
12977         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
12978       </div>
12979       <div class="date">
12980         22nd May 2010
12981       </div>
12982       <div class="body">
12983         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
12984 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
12985 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
12986 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
12987
12988 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
12989 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
12990 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
12991 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
12992 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
12993 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
12994 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
12995 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
12996 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
12997 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
12998 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
12999 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
13000 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
13001 going to work.</p>
13002
13003 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
13004 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
13005 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
13006 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
13007 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
13008 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
13009 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
13010 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
13011 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
13012 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
13013 Edu.</p>
13014
13015 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
13016 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
13017 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
13018 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
13019 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
13020 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
13021
13022 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
13023 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
13024
13025       </div>
13026       <div class="tags">
13027
13028
13029         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13030
13031
13032       </div>
13033     </div>
13034     <div class="padding"></div>
13035
13036     <div class="entry">
13037       <div class="title">
13038         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html">Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</a>
13039       </div>
13040       <div class="date">
13041         14th May 2010
13042       </div>
13043       <div class="body">
13044         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
13045 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
13046 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
13047 expected, if I am to believe the
13048 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
13049 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
13050 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
13051 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
13052 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
13053 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
13054 version.</p>
13055
13056 More information about
13057 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
13058 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
13059 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
13060 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
13061
13062 <blockquote><pre>
13063 CONCURRENCY=none
13064 </pre></blockquote>
13065
13066 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
13067 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
13068 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
13069 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
13070
13071       </div>
13072       <div class="tags">
13073
13074
13075         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13076
13077
13078       </div>
13079     </div>
13080     <div class="padding"></div>
13081
13082     <div class="entry">
13083       <div class="title">
13084         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</a>
13085       </div>
13086       <div class="date">
13087         14th May 2010
13088       </div>
13089       <div class="body">
13090         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
13091 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
13092 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
13093 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
13094 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
13095 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
13096 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
13097 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
13098
13099 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
13100 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
13101 this on the collector host:</p>
13102
13103 <blockquote><pre>
13104 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
13105 </pre></blockquote>
13106
13107 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
13108 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
13109
13110 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
13111 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
13112 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
13113 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
13114 written yet.</p>
13115
13116       </div>
13117       <div class="tags">
13118
13119
13120         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
13121
13122
13123       </div>
13124     </div>
13125     <div class="padding"></div>
13126
13127     <div class="entry">
13128       <div class="title">
13129         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
13130       </div>
13131       <div class="date">
13132         13th May 2010
13133       </div>
13134       <div class="body">
13135         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
13136 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
13137 has been
13138 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
13139
13140 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
13141 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
13142 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
13143 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
13144 based boot system.  Tollef is
13145 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
13146 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
13147 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
13148 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
13149 at the moment do not.</p>
13150
13151 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
13152 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
13153 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
13154 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
13155 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
13156 way forward.</p>
13157
13158 <p>In the mean time, based on the
13159 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
13160 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
13161 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
13162 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
13163 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
13164 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
13165 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
13166 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
13167
13168       </div>
13169       <div class="tags">
13170
13171
13172         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13173
13174
13175       </div>
13176     </div>
13177     <div class="padding"></div>
13178
13179     <div class="entry">
13180       <div class="title">
13181         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</a>
13182       </div>
13183       <div class="date">
13184          6th May 2010
13185       </div>
13186       <div class="body">
13187         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
13188 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
13189 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
13190 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
13191 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
13192 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
13193 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
13194
13195 <blockquote><pre>
13196 CONCURRENCY=makefile
13197 </pre></blockquote>
13198
13199 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
13200 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
13201 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
13202 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
13203 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
13204 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
13205 make this happen.</p>
13206
13207 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
13208 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
13209 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
13210 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
13211 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
13212
13213 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
13214 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
13215 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
13216 fix the remaining issues.</p>
13217
13218 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
13219 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
13220 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
13221 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
13222
13223       </div>
13224       <div class="tags">
13225
13226
13227         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13228
13229
13230       </div>
13231     </div>
13232     <div class="padding"></div>
13233
13234     <div class="entry">
13235       <div class="title">
13236         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html">Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</a>
13237       </div>
13238       <div class="date">
13239         27th July 2009
13240       </div>
13241       <div class="body">
13242         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
13243 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
13244 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
13245 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
13246 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
13247 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
13248 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
13249
13250 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
13251 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
13252 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
13253
13254       </div>
13255       <div class="tags">
13256
13257
13258         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13259
13260
13261       </div>
13262     </div>
13263     <div class="padding"></div>
13264
13265     <div class="entry">
13266       <div class="title">
13267         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
13268       </div>
13269       <div class="date">
13270         22nd July 2009
13271       </div>
13272       <div class="body">
13273         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
13274 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
13275 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
13276 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
13277 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
13278 the package up to date.</p>
13279
13280 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
13281 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
13282 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
13283 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
13284 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
13285 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
13286 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
13287 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
13288 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
13289 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
13290 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
13291 working on the future release.</p>
13292
13293 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
13294 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
13295
13296       </div>
13297       <div class="tags">
13298
13299
13300         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13301
13302
13303       </div>
13304     </div>
13305     <div class="padding"></div>
13306
13307     <div class="entry">
13308       <div class="title">
13309         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
13310       </div>
13311       <div class="date">
13312         24th June 2009
13313       </div>
13314       <div class="body">
13315         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
13316 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
13317 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
13318 funded
13319 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
13320 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
13321 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
13322 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
13323 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
13324 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
13325
13326 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
13327 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
13328 boot:</p>
13329
13330 <ul>
13331
13332 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
13333
13334 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
13335    clock is in UTC.</li>
13336
13337 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
13338    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
13339    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
13340
13341 </ul>
13342
13343 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
13344 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
13345 Villegas</a>.
13346
13347 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
13348 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
13349 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
13350 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
13351 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
13352 using this.</p>
13353
13354 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
13355 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
13356 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
13357 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
13358 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
13359 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
13360 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
13361
13362       </div>
13363       <div class="tags">
13364
13365
13366         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13367
13368
13369       </div>
13370     </div>
13371     <div class="padding"></div>
13372
13373     <div class="entry">
13374       <div class="title">
13375         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
13376       </div>
13377       <div class="date">
13378         17th May 2009
13379       </div>
13380       <div class="body">
13381         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
13382 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
13383 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
13384 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
13385 dager siden kom
13386 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
13387 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
13388 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
13389 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
13390 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
13391
13392 <blockquote>
13393 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
13394 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
13395 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
13396 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
13397 </blockquote>
13398
13399 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
13400 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
13401 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
13402 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
13403 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
13404
13405 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
13406 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
13407 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
13408
13409       </div>
13410       <div class="tags">
13411
13412
13413         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
13414
13415
13416       </div>
13417     </div>
13418     <div class="padding"></div>
13419
13420     <div class="entry">
13421       <div class="title">
13422         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
13423       </div>
13424       <div class="date">
13425          7th May 2009
13426       </div>
13427       <div class="body">
13428         <p>Kom over
13429 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
13430 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
13431 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
13432 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
13433 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
13434 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
13435 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
13436
13437       </div>
13438       <div class="tags">
13439
13440
13441         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13442
13443
13444       </div>
13445     </div>
13446     <div class="padding"></div>
13447
13448     <div class="entry">
13449       <div class="title">
13450         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
13451       </div>
13452       <div class="date">
13453          2nd May 2009
13454       </div>
13455       <div class="body">
13456         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
13457 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
13458 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
13459 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
13460 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
13461 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
13462 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
13463 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
13464 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
13465 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
13466 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
13467 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
13468 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
13469 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
13470 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
13471 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
13472 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
13473 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
13474 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
13475 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
13476
13477 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
13478 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
13479 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
13480 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
13481 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
13482 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
13483 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
13484 betydelige.</p>
13485
13486       </div>
13487       <div class="tags">
13488
13489
13490         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
13491
13492
13493       </div>
13494     </div>
13495     <div class="padding"></div>
13496
13497     <div class="entry">
13498       <div class="title">
13499         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html">Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</a>
13500       </div>
13501       <div class="date">
13502          2nd May 2009
13503       </div>
13504       <div class="body">
13505         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
13506 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
13507 do not yet know them.</p>
13508
13509 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
13510 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
13511 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
13512 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
13513 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
13514 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
13515 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
13516 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
13517 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
13518 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
13519 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
13520
13521 <p>The second one is
13522 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
13523 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
13524 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
13525 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
13526 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
13527 and the company behind it is running
13528 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
13529 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
13530 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
13531 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
13532 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
13533 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
13534 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
13535 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
13536
13537 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
13538 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
13539 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
13540 surrounded by today.</p>
13541
13542       </div>
13543       <div class="tags">
13544
13545
13546         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13547
13548
13549       </div>
13550     </div>
13551     <div class="padding"></div>
13552
13553     <div class="entry">
13554       <div class="title">
13555         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html">No patch is not better than a useless patch</a>
13556       </div>
13557       <div class="date">
13558         28th April 2009
13559       </div>
13560       <div class="body">
13561         <p>Julien Blache
13562 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
13563 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
13564 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
13565 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
13566 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
13567 properties.</p>
13568
13569       </div>
13570       <div class="tags">
13571
13572
13573         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13574
13575
13576       </div>
13577     </div>
13578     <div class="padding"></div>
13579
13580     <div class="entry">
13581       <div class="title">
13582         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html">Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</a>
13583       </div>
13584       <div class="date">
13585         30th March 2009
13586       </div>
13587       <div class="body">
13588         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
13589 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
13590 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
13591 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
13592 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
13593 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
13594 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
13595 application.</p>
13596
13597 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
13598 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
13599 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
13600 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
13601 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
13602 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
13603 blocked from doing so.</p>
13604
13605 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
13606 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
13607 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
13608 requirements change.</p>
13609
13610 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
13611 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
13612 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
13613
13614       </div>
13615       <div class="tags">
13616
13617
13618         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
13619
13620
13621       </div>
13622     </div>
13623     <div class="padding"></div>
13624
13625     <div class="entry">
13626       <div class="title">
13627         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
13628       </div>
13629       <div class="date">
13630         29th March 2009
13631       </div>
13632       <div class="body">
13633         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
13634 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
13635 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
13636 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
13637 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
13638 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
13639 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
13640 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
13641 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
13642 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
13643 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
13644 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
13645 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
13646 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
13647 now. :)</p>
13648
13649       </div>
13650       <div class="tags">
13651
13652
13653         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13654
13655
13656       </div>
13657     </div>
13658     <div class="padding"></div>
13659
13660     <div class="entry">
13661       <div class="title">
13662         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</a>
13663       </div>
13664       <div class="date">
13665         29th March 2009
13666       </div>
13667       <div class="body">
13668         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
13669 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
13670 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
13671 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
13672 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
13673 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
13674
13675 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
13676 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
13677 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
13678 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
13679 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
13680 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
13681 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
13682 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
13683 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
13684 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
13685 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
13686 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
13687 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
13688
13689 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
13690 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
13691 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
13692 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
13693
13694 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
13695 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
13696
13697 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
13698 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
13699 new IETF work group?</p>
13700
13701       </div>
13702       <div class="tags">
13703
13704
13705         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13706
13707
13708       </div>
13709     </div>
13710     <div class="padding"></div>
13711
13712     <div class="entry">
13713       <div class="title">
13714         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
13715       </div>
13716       <div class="date">
13717         15th February 2009
13718       </div>
13719       <div class="body">
13720         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
13721 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
13722 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
13723 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
13724 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
13725 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
13726 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
13727 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
13728 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
13729 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
13730 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
13731 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
13732
13733       </div>
13734       <div class="tags">
13735
13736
13737         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
13738
13739
13740       </div>
13741     </div>
13742     <div class="padding"></div>
13743
13744     <div class="entry">
13745       <div class="title">
13746         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html">Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</a>
13747       </div>
13748       <div class="date">
13749          7th December 2008
13750       </div>
13751       <div class="body">
13752         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
13753 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
13754 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
13755 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
13756 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
13757 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
13758 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
13759 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
13760
13761 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
13762 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
13763 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
13764 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
13765 of these cards.</p>
13766
13767       </div>
13768       <div class="tags">
13769
13770
13771         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp</a>.
13772
13773
13774       </div>
13775     </div>
13776     <div class="padding"></div>
13777
13778     <div class="entry">
13779       <div class="title">
13780         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html">The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</a>
13781       </div>
13782       <div class="date">
13783         25th November 2008
13784       </div>
13785       <div class="body">
13786         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
13787 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
13788 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
13789 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
13790 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
13791 notes are available on
13792 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
13793 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
13794 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
13795 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
13796 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
13797 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
13798 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
13799 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
13800 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
13801
13802 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
13803 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
13804
13805       </div>
13806       <div class="tags">
13807
13808
13809         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
13810
13811
13812       </div>
13813     </div>
13814     <div class="padding"></div>
13815
13816     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
13817     <div id="sidebar">
13818
13819
13820
13821 <h2>Archive</h2>
13822 <ul>
13823
13824 <li>2019
13825 <ul>
13826
13827 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/01/">January (4)</a></li>
13828
13829 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/02/">February (3)</a></li>
13830
13831 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/03/">March (3)</a></li>
13832
13833 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/05/">May (2)</a></li>
13834
13835 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/06/">June (5)</a></li>
13836
13837 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/07/">July (2)</a></li>
13838
13839 </ul></li>
13840
13841 <li>2018
13842 <ul>
13843
13844 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/01/">January (1)</a></li>
13845
13846 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/02/">February (5)</a></li>
13847
13848 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/03/">March (5)</a></li>
13849
13850 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/04/">April (3)</a></li>
13851
13852 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/06/">June (2)</a></li>
13853
13854 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/07/">July (5)</a></li>
13855
13856 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/08/">August (3)</a></li>
13857
13858 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/09/">September (3)</a></li>
13859
13860 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/10/">October (5)</a></li>
13861
13862 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/11/">November (2)</a></li>
13863
13864 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/12/">December (4)</a></li>
13865
13866 </ul></li>
13867
13868 <li>2017
13869 <ul>
13870
13871 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/01/">January (4)</a></li>
13872
13873 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/02/">February (3)</a></li>
13874
13875 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/03/">March (5)</a></li>
13876
13877 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/04/">April (2)</a></li>
13878
13879 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/06/">June (5)</a></li>
13880
13881 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/07/">July (1)</a></li>
13882
13883 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/08/">August (1)</a></li>
13884
13885 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/09/">September (3)</a></li>
13886
13887 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/10/">October (5)</a></li>
13888
13889 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/11/">November (3)</a></li>
13890
13891 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/12/">December (4)</a></li>
13892
13893 </ul></li>
13894
13895 <li>2016
13896 <ul>
13897
13898 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
13899
13900 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
13901
13902 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (3)</a></li>
13903
13904 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (8)</a></li>
13905
13906 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (8)</a></li>
13907
13908 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/06/">June (2)</a></li>
13909
13910 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/07/">July (2)</a></li>
13911
13912 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/08/">August (5)</a></li>
13913
13914 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/09/">September (2)</a></li>
13915
13916 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/10/">October (3)</a></li>
13917
13918 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/11/">November (8)</a></li>
13919
13920 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/12/">December (5)</a></li>
13921
13922 </ul></li>
13923
13924 <li>2015
13925 <ul>
13926
13927 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
13928
13929 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
13930
13931 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
13932
13933 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
13934
13935 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
13936
13937 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
13938
13939 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
13940
13941 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
13942
13943 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
13944
13945 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
13946
13947 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
13948
13949 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
13950
13951 </ul></li>
13952
13953 <li>2014
13954 <ul>
13955
13956 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
13957
13958 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
13959
13960 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
13961
13962 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
13963
13964 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
13965
13966 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
13967
13968 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
13969
13970 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
13971
13972 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
13973
13974 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
13975
13976 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
13977
13978 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
13979
13980 </ul></li>
13981
13982 <li>2013
13983 <ul>
13984
13985 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
13986
13987 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
13988
13989 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
13990
13991 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
13992
13993 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
13994
13995 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
13996
13997 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
13998
13999 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
14000
14001 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
14002
14003 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
14004
14005 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
14006
14007 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
14008
14009 </ul></li>
14010
14011 <li>2012
14012 <ul>
14013
14014 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
14015
14016 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
14017
14018 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
14019
14020 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
14021
14022 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
14023
14024 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
14025
14026 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
14027
14028 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
14029
14030 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
14031
14032 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
14033
14034 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
14035
14036 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
14037
14038 </ul></li>
14039
14040 <li>2011
14041 <ul>
14042
14043 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
14044
14045 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
14046
14047 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
14048
14049 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
14050
14051 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
14052
14053 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
14054
14055 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
14056
14057 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
14058
14059 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
14060
14061 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
14062
14063 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
14064
14065 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
14066
14067 </ul></li>
14068
14069 <li>2010
14070 <ul>
14071
14072 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
14073
14074 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
14075
14076 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
14077
14078 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
14079
14080 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
14081
14082 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
14083
14084 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
14085
14086 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
14087
14088 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
14089
14090 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
14091
14092 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
14093
14094 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
14095
14096 </ul></li>
14097
14098 <li>2009
14099 <ul>
14100
14101 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
14102
14103 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
14104
14105 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
14106
14107 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
14108
14109 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
14110
14111 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
14112
14113 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
14114
14115 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
14116
14117 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
14118
14119 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
14120
14121 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
14122
14123 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
14124
14125 </ul></li>
14126
14127 <li>2008
14128 <ul>
14129
14130 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
14131
14132 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
14133
14134 </ul></li>
14135
14136 </ul>
14137
14138
14139
14140 <h2>Tags</h2>
14141 <ul>
14142
14143  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (16)</a></li>
14144
14145  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
14146
14147  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
14148
14149  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
14150
14151  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/betalkontant">betalkontant (8)</a></li>
14152
14153  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (11)</a></li>
14154
14155  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (17)</a></li>
14156
14157  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
14158
14159  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
14160
14161  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (168)</a></li>
14162
14163  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (158)</a></li>
14164
14165  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook (4)</a></li>
14166
14167  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (11)</a></li>
14168
14169  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (17)</a></li>
14170
14171  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (26)</a></li>
14172
14173  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
14174
14175  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (407)</a></li>
14176
14177  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
14178
14179  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (14)</a></li>
14180
14181  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (34)</a></li>
14182
14183  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
14184
14185  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (20)</a></li>
14186
14187  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
14188
14189  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
14190
14191  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (16)</a></li>
14192
14193  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (22)</a></li>
14194
14195  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi (4)</a></li>
14196
14197  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
14198
14199  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego (4)</a></li>
14200
14201  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
14202
14203  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
14204
14205  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
14206
14207  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
14208
14209  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (42)</a></li>
14210
14211  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (12)</a></li>
14212
14213  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/noark5">noark5 (17)</a></li>
14214
14215  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (307)</a></li>
14216
14217  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (196)</a></li>
14218
14219  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (37)</a></li>
14220
14221  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
14222
14223  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (73)</a></li>
14224
14225  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (109)</a></li>
14226
14227  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (2)</a></li>
14228
14229  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
14230
14231  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
14232
14233  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
14234
14235  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (12)</a></li>
14236
14237  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
14238
14239  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (7)</a></li>
14240
14241  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
14242
14243  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (56)</a></li>
14244
14245  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
14246
14247  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (5)</a></li>
14248
14249  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (66)</a></li>
14250
14251  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (6)</a></li>
14252
14253  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (12)</a></li>
14254
14255  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (56)</a></li>
14256
14257  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (4)</a></li>
14258
14259  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
14260
14261  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (9)</a></li>
14262
14263  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/verkidetfri">verkidetfri (15)</a></li>
14264
14265  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (73)</a></li>
14266
14267  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
14268
14269  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (42)</a></li>
14270
14271 </ul>
14272
14273
14274     </div>
14275     <p style="text-align: right">
14276  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
14277 </p>
14278
14279   </body>
14280 </html>