blog/archive/2020/05/05.rss

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