blog/archive/2020/05/05.rss

   1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
   2 <rss version='2.0' xmlns:lj='http://www.livejournal.org/rss/lj/1.0/'>
   3         <channel>
   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from May 2020</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from May 2020</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
   7
   8
   9         <item>
  10                 <title>More reliable vlc bittorrent plugin in Debian (version 2.9)</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_reliable_vlc_bittorrent_plugin_in_Debian__version_2_9_.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_reliable_vlc_bittorrent_plugin_in_Debian__version_2_9_.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Sun, 24 May 2020 17:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I am very happy to report that a more reliable
  15 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/vlc-plugin-bittorrent&quot;&gt;VLC
  16 bittorrent plugin&lt;/a&gt; was just uploaded into debian.  This fixes a
  17 couple of crash bugs in the plugin, hopefully making the VLC
  18 experience even better when streaming directly from a bittorrent
  19 source.  The package is currently in Debian unstable, but should be
  20 available in Debian testing in two days.  To test it, simply install
  21 it like this:&lt;/p&gt;
  22
  23 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  24 apt install vlc-plugin-bittorrent
  25 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  26
  27 &lt;p&gt;After it is installed, you can try to use it to play a file
  28 downloaded live via bittorrent like this:
  29
  30 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  31 vlc https://archive.org/download/Glass_201703/Glass_201703_archive.torrent
  32 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  33
  34 &lt;p&gt;It also support magnet links and local .torrent files.&lt;/p&gt;
  35
  36 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  37 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  38 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  39 </description>
  40         </item>
  41
  42         <item>
  43                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Yvan Masson</title>
  44                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Yvan_Masson.html</link>
  45                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Yvan_Masson.html</guid>
  46                 <pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2020 06:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
  47                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been way too long since my last interview, but as the
  48 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
  49 community is still active, and new people keep showing up on the IRC
  50 channel &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu&quot;&gt;#debian-edu&lt;/a&gt; and
  51 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/&quot;&gt;the debian-edu mailing
  52 list&lt;/a&gt;, I decided to give it another go.  I was hoping someone else
  53 might pick up the idea and run with it, but this has not happened as
  54 far as I can tell, so here we are… This time the announcement of a new
  55 free software tool to
  56 &lt;a href=&quot;https://framagit.org/Yvan-Masson/WhosWho&quot;&gt;create a school year
  57 book&lt;/a&gt; triggered my interest, and I decided to learn more about its
  58 author.&lt;/p&gt;
  59
  60 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  61
  62 &lt;p&gt;My name is Yvan MASSON, I live in France. I have my own one person
  63 business in computer services.  The work consist of visiting my
  64 customers (person&#39;s home, local authority, small business) to give
  65 advise, install computers and software, fix issues, and provide
  66 computing usage training.  I spend the rest of my time enjoying my
  67 family and promoting free software.&lt;/p&gt;
  68
  69 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is your approach for promoting free
  70 software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  71
  72 &lt;p&gt;When I think that free software could be suitable for someone, I
  73 explain what it is, with simple words, give a few known examples, and
  74 explain that while there is no fee it is a viable alternative in many
  75 situations. Most people are receptive when you explain how it is
  76 better (I simplify arguments here, I know that it is not so simple):
  77 Linux works on older hardware, there are no viruses, and the software
  78 can be audited to ensure user is not spied upon. I think the most
  79 important is to keep a clear but moderated speech: when you try to
  80 convince too much, people feel attacked and stop listening.&lt;/p&gt;
  81
  82 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
  83 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  84
  85 &lt;p&gt;I can not remember how I first heard of Skolelinux / Debian Edu,
  86 but probably on planet.debian.org. As I have been working for a
  87 school, I have interest in this type of project.
  88
  89 &lt;p&gt;The school I am involved in is a school for &quot;children&quot; between 14
  90 and 18 years old.  The French government has recommended free software
  91 since 2012, but they do not always use free software themselves.  The
  92 school computers are still using the Windows operating system, but all
  93 of them have the classic set of free software: Firefox ESR,
  94 LibreOffice (with the excellent extension Grammalecte that indicates
  95 French grammatical errors), SumatraPDF, Audacity, 7zip, KeePass2, VLC,
  96 GIMP, Inkscape…
  97
  98 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
  99 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 100
 101 &lt;p&gt;It is free software! Built on Debian, I am sure that users are not
 102 spied upon, and that it can run on low end hardware.  This last point
 103 is very important, because we really need to improve &quot;green IT&quot;.  I do
 104 not know enough about Skolelinux / Debian Edu to tell how it is better
 105 than another free software solution, but what I like is the &quot;all in
 106 one&quot; solution: everything has been thought of and prepared to ease
 107 installation and usage.&lt;/p&gt;
 108
 109 &lt;p&gt;I like Free Software because I hate using something that I can not
 110 understand. I do not say that I can understand everything nor that I
 111 want to understand everything, but knowing that someone / some company
 112 intentionally prevents me from understanding how things work is really
 113 unacceptable to me.&lt;/p&gt;
 114
 115 &lt;p&gt;Secondly, and more importantly, free software is a requirement to
 116 prevent abuses regarding human rights and environmental care.
 117 Humanity can not rely on tools that are in the hands of small group of
 118 people.&lt;/p&gt;
 119
 120 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 121 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 122
 123 &lt;p&gt;Again, I don&#39;t know this project enough. Maybe a dedicated website?
 124 Debian wiki works well for documentation, but is not very appealing to
 125 someone discovering the project. Also, as Skolelinux / Debian Edu uses
 126 OpenLDAP, it probably means that Windows workstations cannot use
 127 centralized authentication. Maybe the project could use Samba as an
 128 Active Directory domain controller instead, allowing Windows desktop
 129 usage when necessary.&lt;/p&gt;
 130
 131 &lt;p&gt;(Editors note: In fact Windows workstations can
 132 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Buster/HowTo/Samba&quot;&gt;use
 133 the centralized authentication in a Debian Edu setup&lt;/a&gt;, at least for
 134 some versions of Windows, but the fact that this is not well known can
 135 be seen as an indication of the need for better documentation and
 136 marketing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 137
 138 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 139
 140 &lt;p&gt;Nothing original: Debian testing/sid with Gnome desktop, Firefox,
 141 Thunderbird, LibreOffice…&lt;/p&gt;
 142
 143 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 144 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 145
 146 &lt;p&gt;Every effort to spread free software into schools is important,
 147 whatever it is. But I think, at least where I live, that IT
 148 professionals maintaining schools networks are still very &quot;Microsoft
 149 centric&quot;.  Schools will use any working solution, but they need people
 150 to install and maintain it.  How to make these professionals sensitive
 151 about free software and train them with solutions like Debian Edu /
 152 Skolelinux is a really good question :-)&lt;/p&gt;
 153 </description>
 154         </item>
 155
 156         <item>
 157                 <title>Jami as a Zoom client, a trick for password protected rooms...</title>
 158                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_as_a_Zoom_client__a_trick_for_password_protected_rooms___.html</link>
 159                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_as_a_Zoom_client__a_trick_for_password_protected_rooms___.html</guid>
 160                 <pubDate>Fri, 8 May 2020 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
 161                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago,
 162 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_Ring__finally_functioning_peer_to_peer_communication_client.html&quot;&gt;I
 163 wrote&lt;/a&gt; about &lt;a href=&quot;https://jami.net/&quot;&gt;the Jami communication
 164 client&lt;/a&gt;, capable of peer-to-peer encrypted communication.  It
 165 handle both messages, audio and video.  It uses distributed hash
 166 tables instead of central infrastructure to connect its users to each
 167 other, which in my book is a plus.  I mentioned briefly that it could
 168 also work as a SIP client, which came in handy when the higher
 169 educational sector in Norway started to promote Zoom as its video
 170 conferencing solution.  I am reluctant to use the official Zoom client
 171 software, due to their &lt;a href=&quot;https://zoom.us/terms&quot;&gt;copyright
 172 license clauses&lt;/a&gt; prohibiting users to reverse engineer (for example
 173 to check the security) and benchmark it, and thus prefer to connect to
 174 Zoom meetings with free software clients.&lt;/p&gt;
 175
 176 &lt;p&gt;Jami worked OK as a SIP client to Zoom as long as there was no
 177 password set on the room.  The Jami daemon leak memory like crazy
 178 (approximately 1 GiB a minute) when I am connected to the video
 179 conference, so I had to restart the client every 7-10 minutes, which
 180 is not a great.  I tried to get other SIP Linux clients to work
 181 without success, so I decided I would have to live with this wart
 182 until someone managed to fix the leak in the dring code base.  But
 183 another problem showed up once the rooms were password protected.  I
 184 could not get my dial tone signaling through from Jami to Zoom, and
 185 dial tone signaling is used to enter the password when connecting to
 186 Zoom.  I tried a lot of different permutations with my Jami and
 187 Asterisk setup to try to figure out why the signaling did not get
 188 through, only to finally discover that the fundamental problem seem to
 189 be that Zoom is simply not able to receive dial tone signaling when
 190 connecting via SIP.  There seem to be nothing wrong with the Jami and
 191 Asterisk end, it is simply broken in the Zoom end.  I got help from a
 192 very skilled VoIP engineer figuring out this last part.  And being a
 193 very skilled engineer, he was also able to locate a solution for me.
 194 Or to be exact, a workaround that solve my initial problem of
 195 connecting to password protected Zoom rooms using Jami.&lt;/p&gt;
 196
 197 &lt;p&gt;So, how do you do this, I am sure you are wondering by now.  The
 198 trick is already
 199 &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/202405539-H-323-SIP-Room-Connector-Dial-Strings#sip&quot;&gt;documented
 200 from Zoom&lt;/a&gt;, and it is to modify the SIP address to include the room
 201 password.  What is most surprising about this is that the
 202 automatically generated email from Zoom with instructions on how to
 203 connect via SIP do not mention this.  The SIP address to use normally
 204 consist of the room ID (a number), an @ character and the IP address
 205 of the Zoom SIP gateway.  But Zoom understand a lot more than just the
 206 room ID in front of the at sign.  The format is &quot;&lt;tt&gt;[Meeting
 207 ID].[Password].[Layout].[Host Key]&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;, and you can hear see how you
 208 can both enter password, control the layout (full screen, active
 209 presence and gallery) and specify the host key to start the meeting.
 210 The full SIP address entered into Jami to provide the password will
 211 then look like this (all using made up numbers):&lt;/p&gt;
 212
 213 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
 214 &lt;tt&gt;sip:657837644.522827@192.168.169.170&lt;/tt&gt;
 215 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 216
 217 &lt;p&gt;Now if only jami would reduce its memory usage, I could even
 218 recommend this setup to others. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 219
 220 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 221 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 222 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 223 </description>
 224         </item>
 225
 226         </channel>
 227 </rss>