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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 "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         14th January 2014
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
  32 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
  33 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
  34 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
  35 the source.  The company behind it provide
  36 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
  37 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
  38 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
  39 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
  40 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
  41 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
  42 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
  43 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
  44 check, and decided to <ahref="scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
  45 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
  46 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
  47 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
  48 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
  49 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
  50 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
  51 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
  52 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
  53 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
  54 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
  55
  56 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
  57
  58 <ul>
  59
  60   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
  61   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
  62   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
  63
  64 </ul>
  65
  66 <p>You can
  67 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
  68 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
  69 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
  70 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
  71 include a test suite check.</p>
  72
  73       </div>
  74       <div class="tags">
  75
  76
  77         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>.
  78
  79
  80       </div>
  81     </div>
  82     <div class="padding"></div>
  83
  84     <div class="entry">
  85       <div class="title">
  86         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
  87       </div>
  88       <div class="date">
  89         25th December 2013
  90       </div>
  91       <div class="body">
  92         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
  93 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
  94 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
  95 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
  96 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
  97 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
  98 George</a>.</p>
  99
 100 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
 101
 102 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 103
 104 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
 105 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
 106 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
 107 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
 108 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
 109 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
 110
 111 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
 112 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
 113 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
 114 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
 115 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
 116 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
 117 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
 118 to help building another school's informational education concept from
 119 scratch.</p>
 120
 121 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
 122 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
 123 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
 124
 125 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
 126 and cycling.</p>
 127
 128 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
 129 project?</strong></p>
 130
 131 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
 132 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
 133 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
 134 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
 135 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
 136 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
 137
 138 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
 139 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
 140 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
 141 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
 142 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
 143 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
 144 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
 145 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
 146 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
 147
 148 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
 149 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
 150 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
 151 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
 152
 153 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 154 Edu?</strong></p>
 155
 156 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
 157 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
 158 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
 159 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
 160 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
 161 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
 162 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
 163 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
 164 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
 165 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
 166 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
 167 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
 168 that it rocks!</p>
 169
 170 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
 171 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
 172 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
 173 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
 174 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
 175 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
 176 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
 177
 178 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 179 Edu?</strong></p>
 180
 181 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
 182 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
 183 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
 184 can list a few points about that:</p>
 185
 186 <ul>
 187
 188  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
 189  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
 190  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
 191
 192 </ul>
 193
 194 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
 195
 196 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 197
 198 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
 199 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
 200 year.</p>
 201
 202 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
 203 run text tools. I use
 204 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
 205 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
 206 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
 207 based full-featured student management software with the two),
 208 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
 209 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
 210 coloured world called the WWW, I use
 211 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
 212 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
 213 e-mail.</p>
 214
 215 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
 216 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
 217 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
 218 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
 219 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
 220 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
 221 Facebook now ;).</p>
 222
 223 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 224 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 225
 226 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
 227 side is what I have experienced.</p>
 228
 229 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
 230 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
 231 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
 232 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
 233 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
 234 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
 235 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
 236 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
 237 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
 238 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
 239 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
 240 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
 241 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
 242 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
 243 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
 244 plain criminal.</p>
 245
 246 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
 247 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
 248 founded an association named
 249 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
 250 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
 251 area of free and open source software, for example the
 252 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
 253 Teckids and are the youth programme of
 254 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
 255 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
 256 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
 257 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
 258 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
 259 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
 260
 261 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
 262 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
 263 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
 264 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
 265 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
 266 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
 267 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
 268 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
 269 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
 270 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
 271 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
 272 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
 273
 274 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
 275 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
 276 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
 277 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
 278
 279 <!--
 280
 281 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
 282
 283 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
 284 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
 285
 286  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
 287    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
 288    of the decision makers above;
 289  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
 290    knowledge about free software
 291
 292 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
 293
 294 -->
 295
 296       </div>
 297       <div class="tags">
 298
 299
 300         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
 301
 302
 303       </div>
 304     </div>
 305     <div class="padding"></div>
 306
 307     <div class="entry">
 308       <div class="title">
 309         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
 310       </div>
 311       <div class="date">
 312          6th December 2013
 313       </div>
 314       <div class="body">
 315         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
 316 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
 317 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
 318 had a new school administrator show up on
 319 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
 320 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
 321 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
 322 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
 323 Germany a few years ago.</p>
 324
 325 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 326
 327 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
 328 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
 329 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
 330 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
 331
 332 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
 333 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
 334 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
 335 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
 336 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
 337 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
 338 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
 339 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
 340 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
 341
 342 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
 343 project?</strong></p>
 344
 345 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
 346 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
 347 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
 348 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
 349
 350 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 351 Edu?</strong></p>
 352
 353 <ul>
 354   <li>Quick installation,</li>
 355   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
 356   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
 357   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
 358     single company,</li>
 359   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
 360     experience and problem solutions.</li>
 361 </ul>
 362
 363 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 364 Edu?</strong></p>
 365
 366 <ul>
 367   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
 368   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
 369   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
 370   working again reliably.
 371
 372   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
 373   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
 374   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
 375   as their base.
 376
 377   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
 378   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
 379   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
 380   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
 381   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
 382   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
 383
 384   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
 385   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
 386   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
 387   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
 388   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
 389   schemes.</li>
 390
 391   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
 392   compared to Debian.</li>
 393
 394 </ul>
 395
 396 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
 397 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
 398 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
 399 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
 400
 401 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 402
 403 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
 404 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
 405 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
 406 programming languages for teaching.</p>
 407
 408 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 409 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 410
 411 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
 412
 413 <ul>
 414
 415   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
 416     teaching and learning.</li>
 417
 418   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
 419     home, and at their working place without running into license or
 420     conversion problems.</li>
 421
 422   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
 423     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
 424     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
 425     science, not products.</li>
 426
 427   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
 428     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
 429
 430 </ul>
 431
 432       </div>
 433       <div class="tags">
 434
 435
 436         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
 437
 438
 439       </div>
 440     </div>
 441     <div class="padding"></div>
 442
 443     <div class="entry">
 444       <div class="title">
 445         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
 446       </div>
 447       <div class="date">
 448         30th November 2013
 449       </div>
 450       <div class="body">
 451         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
 452 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
 453 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
 454 experiment with interesting network technology, the
 455 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
 456 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
 457 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
 458 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
 459 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
 460 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
 461 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
 462 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
 463 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
 464 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
 465 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
 466 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
 467 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
 468 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
 469 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
 470 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
 471
 472       </div>
 473       <div class="tags">
 474
 475
 476         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 477
 478
 479       </div>
 480     </div>
 481     <div class="padding"></div>
 482
 483     <div class="entry">
 484       <div class="title">
 485         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
 486       </div>
 487       <div class="date">
 488         24th November 2013
 489       </div>
 490       <div class="body">
 491         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
 492 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
 493 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
 494 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
 495 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
 496 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
 497 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
 498 is working on.  I checked the
 499 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
 500 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
 501 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
 502 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
 503 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
 504 These are the release notes:</p>
 505
 506 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
 507
 508 <ul>
 509
 510   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
 511    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
 512    up.</li>
 513
 514   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
 515
 516   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
 517    Matthias Klose.</li>
 518
 519   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
 520    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
 521
 522   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
 523    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
 524    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
 525
 526 </ul>
 527
 528 <p>You can
 529 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
 530 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
 531 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
 532 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
 533 include a testsuite check.</p>
 534
 535       </div>
 536       <div class="tags">
 537
 538
 539         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>.
 540
 541
 542       </div>
 543     </div>
 544     <div class="padding"></div>
 545
 546     <div class="entry">
 547       <div class="title">
 548         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</a>
 549       </div>
 550       <div class="date">
 551         21st November 2013
 552       </div>
 553       <div class="body">
 554         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
 555 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
 556 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
 557 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
 558 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
 559 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
 560 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
 561 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
 562 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
 563 TED talk
 564 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
 565 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
 566 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
 567
 568 <blockquote>
 569
 570 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
 571 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
 572 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
 573 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
 574 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
 575 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
 576 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
 577 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
 578 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
 579 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
 580 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
 581
 582 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
 583 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
 584 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
 585
 586 </blockquote>
 587
 588 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
 589 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
 590 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
 591 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
 592 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
 593 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
 594 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
 595 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
 596 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
 597
 598       </div>
 599       <div class="tags">
 600
 601
 602         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</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>.
 603
 604
 605       </div>
 606     </div>
 607     <div class="padding"></div>
 608
 609     <div class="entry">
 610       <div class="title">
 611         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
 612       </div>
 613       <div class="date">
 614         13th November 2013
 615       </div>
 616       <div class="body">
 617         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
 618 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
 619 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
 620 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
 621 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
 622 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
 623 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
 624 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
 625 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
 626 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
 627 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
 628 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
 629 right away. :)</p>
 630
 631       </div>
 632       <div class="tags">
 633
 634
 635         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 636
 637
 638       </div>
 639     </div>
 640     <div class="padding"></div>
 641
 642     <div class="entry">
 643       <div class="title">
 644         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
 645       </div>
 646       <div class="date">
 647         10th November 2013
 648       </div>
 649       <div class="body">
 650         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
 651 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
 652 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
 653 MR3040 as a mesh node using
 654 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
 655
 656 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
 657 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
 658 and downloaded
 659 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
 660 recommended firmware image</a>
 661 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
 662 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
 663 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
 664 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
 665 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
 666
 667 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
 668 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
 669 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
 670 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
 671 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
 672 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
 673 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
 674 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
 675 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
 676 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
 677 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
 678 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
 679 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
 680
 681 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
 682 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
 683 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
 684 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
 685 them:</p>
 686
 687 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
 688
 689 <pre>
 690
 691 config interface 'loopback'
 692         option ifname 'lo'
 693         option proto 'static'
 694         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
 695         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
 696
 697 config globals 'globals'
 698         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
 699
 700 config interface 'lan'
 701         option ifname 'eth0'
 702         option type 'bridge'
 703         option proto 'dhcp'
 704         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
 705         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
 706         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
 707         option ip6assign '60'
 708
 709 config interface 'mesh'
 710         option ifname 'adhoc0'
 711         option mtu '1528'
 712         option proto 'batadv'
 713         option mesh 'bat0'
 714 </pre>
 715
 716 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
 717 <pre>
 718
 719 config wifi-device 'radio0'
 720         option type 'mac80211'
 721         option channel '11'
 722         option hwmode '11ng'
 723         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
 724         option htmode 'HT20'
 725         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
 726         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
 727         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
 728         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
 729         option disabled '0'
 730
 731 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
 732         option device 'radio0'
 733         option ifname 'adhoc0'
 734         option network 'mesh'
 735         option encryption 'none'
 736         option mode 'adhoc'
 737         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
 738         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
 739 </pre>
 740 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
 741 <pre>
 742
 743 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
 744         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
 745         option 'aggregated_ogms'
 746         option 'ap_isolation'
 747         option 'bonding'
 748         option 'fragmentation'
 749         option 'gw_bandwidth'
 750         option 'gw_mode'
 751         option 'gw_sel_class'
 752         option 'log_level'
 753         option 'orig_interval'
 754         option 'vis_mode'
 755         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
 756         option 'distributed_arp_table'
 757         option 'network_coding'
 758         option 'hop_penalty'
 759
 760 # yet another batX instance
 761 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
 762 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
 763 </pre>
 764
 765 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
 766 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
 767 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
 768
 769       </div>
 770       <div class="tags">
 771
 772
 773         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 774
 775
 776       </div>
 777     </div>
 778     <div class="padding"></div>
 779
 780     <div class="entry">
 781       <div class="title">
 782         <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>
 783       </div>
 784       <div class="date">
 785          2nd November 2013
 786       </div>
 787       <div class="body">
 788         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
 789 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
 790 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
 791 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
 792 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
 793
 794 <p><pre>
 795 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
 796 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
 797 # Provides:          rsyslog
 798 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
 799 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
 800 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
 801 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
 802 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
 803 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
 804 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
 805 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
 806 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
 807 ### END INIT INFO
 808 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
 809 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
 810 </pre></p>
 811
 812 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
 813 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
 814 info/comments.</p>
 815
 816 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
 817 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
 818
 819 <p><pre>
 820 #!/bin/sh
 821
 822 # Define LSB log_* functions.
 823 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
 824 # and status_of_proc is working.
 825 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
 826
 827 #
 828 # Function that starts the daemon/service
 829
 830 #
 831 do_start()
 832 {
 833         # Return
 834         #   0 if daemon has been started
 835         #   1 if daemon was already running
 836         #   2 if daemon could not be started
 837         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
 838                 || return 1
 839         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
 840                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
 841                 || return 2
 842         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
 843         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
 844         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
 845 }
 846
 847 #
 848 # Function that stops the daemon/service
 849 #
 850 do_stop()
 851 {
 852         # Return
 853         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
 854         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
 855         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
 856         #   other if a failure occurred
 857         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
 858         RETVAL="$?"
 859         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
 860         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
 861         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
 862         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
 863         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
 864         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
 865         # sleep for some time.
 866         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
 867         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
 868         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
 869         rm -f $PIDFILE
 870         return "$RETVAL"
 871 }
 872
 873 #
 874 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
 875 #
 876 do_reload() {
 877         #
 878         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
 879         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
 880         # then implement that here.
 881         #
 882         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
 883         return 0
 884 }
 885
 886 SCRIPTNAME=$1
 887 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
 888 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
 889 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
 890     script="$1"
 891     shift
 892     . $script
 893 else
 894     exit 0
 895 fi
 896
 897 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
 898 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
 899
 900 # Exit if the package is not installed
 901 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
 902
 903 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
 904 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
 905
 906 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
 907 . /lib/init/vars.sh
 908
 909 case "$1" in
 910   start)
 911         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
 912         do_start
 913         case "$?" in
 914                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
 915                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
 916         esac
 917         ;;
 918   stop)
 919         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
 920         do_stop
 921         case "$?" in
 922                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
 923                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
 924         esac
 925         ;;
 926   status)
 927         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
 928         ;;
 929   #reload|force-reload)
 930         #
 931         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
 932         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
 933         #
 934         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
 935         #do_reload
 936         #log_end_msg $?
 937         #;;
 938   restart|force-reload)
 939         #
 940         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
 941         # 'force-reload' alias
 942         #
 943         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
 944         do_stop
 945         case "$?" in
 946           0|1)
 947                 do_start
 948                 case "$?" in
 949                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
 950                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
 951                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
 952                 esac
 953                 ;;
 954           *)
 955                 # Failed to stop
 956                 log_end_msg 1
 957                 ;;
 958         esac
 959         ;;
 960   *)
 961         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
 962         exit 3
 963         ;;
 964 esac
 965
 966 :
 967 </pre></p>
 968
 969 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
 970 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
 971 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
 972 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
 973
 974 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
 975 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
 976 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
 977 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
 978 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
 979
 980       </div>
 981       <div class="tags">
 982
 983
 984         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>.
 985
 986
 987       </div>
 988     </div>
 989     <div class="padding"></div>
 990
 991     <div class="entry">
 992       <div class="title">
 993         <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>
 994       </div>
 995       <div class="date">
 996          1st November 2013
 997       </div>
 998       <div class="body">
 999         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
1000 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
1001 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
1002 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
1003 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
1004 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
1005 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
1006 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
1007 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
1008 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
1009 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
1010 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
1011
1012 <p>The source is now available from
1013 <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>
1014
1015       </div>
1016       <div class="tags">
1017
1018
1019         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>.
1020
1021
1022       </div>
1023     </div>
1024     <div class="padding"></div>
1025
1026     <div class="entry">
1027       <div class="title">
1028         <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>
1029       </div>
1030       <div class="date">
1031         27th October 2013
1032       </div>
1033       <div class="body">
1034         <p>The
1035 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
1036 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
1037 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
1038 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
1039 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
1040 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
1041 of a plan to simplify the build system for
1042 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
1043 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
1044 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
1045 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
1046 Raspberry Pi.</p>
1047
1048 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
1049 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
1050 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
1051 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
1052 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
1053 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
1054 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
1055 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
1056 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
1057 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
1058 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
1059 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
1060 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
1061 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
1062 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
1063 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
1064 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
1065 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
1066 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
1067 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
1068 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
1069 available from
1070 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
1071 upstream project page</a>.</p>
1072
1073 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
1074 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
1075 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
1076 list:</p>
1077
1078 <p><pre>
1079 #!/bin/sh
1080 set -e # Exit on first error
1081 rootdir="$1"
1082 cd "$rootdir"
1083 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
1084 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
1085 EOF
1086 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
1087 # install a kernel somewhere too.
1088 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
1089     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
1090 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
1091 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
1092 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
1093 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
1094 </pre></p>
1095
1096 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
1097 to build the image:</p>
1098
1099 <pre>
1100 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
1101     --variant minbase \
1102     --arch armel \
1103     --distribution jessie \
1104     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
1105     --image test.img \
1106     --size 600M \
1107     --bootsize 64M \
1108     --boottype vfat \
1109     --log-level debug \
1110     --verbose \
1111     --no-kernel \
1112     --no-extlinux \
1113     --root-password raspberry \
1114     --hostname raspberrypi \
1115     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
1116     --customize `pwd`/customize \
1117     --package netbase \
1118     --package git-core \
1119     --package binutils \
1120     --package ca-certificates \
1121     --package wget \
1122     --package kmod
1123 </pre></p>
1124
1125 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
1126 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
1127 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
1128 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
1129 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
1130 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
1131 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
1132
1133 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
1134 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
1135 build dependency list.</p>
1136
1137 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
1138 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
1139 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
1140 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
1141
1142       </div>
1143       <div class="tags">
1144
1145
1146         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>.
1147
1148
1149       </div>
1150     </div>
1151     <div class="padding"></div>
1152
1153     <div class="entry">
1154       <div class="title">
1155         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
1156       </div>
1157       <div class="date">
1158         21st October 2013
1159       </div>
1160       <div class="body">
1161         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
1162 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
1163 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
1164 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
1165 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
1166 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
1167 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
1168 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
1169
1170 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
1171 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
1172 instead, I started playing with a
1173 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
1174 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
1175 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
1176 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
1177 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
1178 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
1179 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
1180 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
1181 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
1182 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
1183 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
1184 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
1185 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
1186 every client on the local network.</p>
1187
1188 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
1189 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
1190 and a script
1191 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
1192 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
1193 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
1194 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
1195 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
1196 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
1197 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
1198 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
1199 support.</p>
1200
1201 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
1202 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
1203
1204 <p><pre>
1205 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
1206     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
1207 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
1208 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
1209 %
1210 </pre></p>
1211
1212 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
1213 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
1214 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
1215 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
1216 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
1217 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
1218
1219 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
1220 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
1221 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
1222
1223 <p><table>
1224
1225 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
1226 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
1227 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
1228 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
1229 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
1230 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
1231
1232 </table></p>
1233
1234 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
1235 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
1236 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
1237 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
1238 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
1239 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
1240 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
1241
1242       </div>
1243       <div class="tags">
1244
1245
1246         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1247
1248
1249       </div>
1250     </div>
1251     <div class="padding"></div>
1252
1253     <div class="entry">
1254       <div class="title">
1255         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
1256       </div>
1257       <div class="date">
1258         19th October 2013
1259       </div>
1260       <div class="body">
1261         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
1262 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
1263 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
1264 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
1265 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
1266 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
1267 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
1268 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
1269
1270       </div>
1271       <div class="tags">
1272
1273
1274         Tags: <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/robot">robot</a>.
1275
1276
1277       </div>
1278     </div>
1279     <div class="padding"></div>
1280
1281     <div class="entry">
1282       <div class="title">
1283         <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>
1284       </div>
1285       <div class="date">
1286         15th October 2013
1287       </div>
1288       <div class="body">
1289         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
1290 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
1291 these. :)</p>
1292
1293 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
1294 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
1295 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
1296 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
1297 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
1298 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
1299 hope you will to. :)</p>
1300
1301 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
1302 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
1303 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
1304 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
1305 donated.  Are you next?</p>
1306
1307 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
1308 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
1309 statement under the heading
1310 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
1311 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
1312 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
1313 too.</p>
1314
1315       </div>
1316       <div class="tags">
1317
1318
1319         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>.
1320
1321
1322       </div>
1323     </div>
1324     <div class="padding"></div>
1325
1326     <div class="entry">
1327       <div class="title">
1328         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
1329       </div>
1330       <div class="date">
1331         11th October 2013
1332       </div>
1333       <div class="body">
1334         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
1335 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
1336 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
1337 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
1338 successful examples like
1339 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
1340 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
1341 (see
1342 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
1343 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
1344 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
1345 can be seen from their
1346 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
1347 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
1348 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
1349 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
1350 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
1351
1352 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
1353 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
1354 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
1355 my recent involvement in
1356 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
1357 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
1358 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
1359 when possible, given that most communication between people are
1360 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
1361 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
1362 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
1363 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
1364 important over the years.</p>
1365
1366 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
1367 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
1368 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
1369 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
1370 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
1371 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
1372 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
1373 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
1374 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
1375 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
1376 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
1377 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
1378 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
1379 speakers about this talk (from
1380 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
1381
1382 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
1383
1384 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
1385 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
1386 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
1387 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
1388 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
1389 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
1390 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
1391 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
1392 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
1393 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
1394 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
1395 that project (from
1396 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
1397
1398 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
1399
1400 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
1401 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
1402 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
1403 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
1404 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
1405 based community mesh networks.</p>
1406
1407 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
1408 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
1409 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
1410 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
1411 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
1412 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
1413 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
1414 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
1415 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
1416
1417 <p><table>
1418 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
1419 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
1420 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
1421 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
1422 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
1423 </table></p>
1424
1425 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
1426 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
1427 VillageTelco about
1428 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
1429 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
1430 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
1431 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
1432 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
1433 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
1434
1435 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
1436 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
1437 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
1438 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
1439
1440 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
1441 us on IRC, either channel
1442 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
1443 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
1444 irc.freenode.net.</p>
1445
1446 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
1447 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
1448 and Innovation called
1449 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
1450 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
1451 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
1452 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
1453 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
1454 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
1455 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
1456 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
1457
1458 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
1459 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
1460 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
1461 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
1462 mesh system.</p>
1463
1464       </div>
1465       <div class="tags">
1466
1467
1468         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1469
1470
1471       </div>
1472     </div>
1473     <div class="padding"></div>
1474
1475     <div class="entry">
1476       <div class="title">
1477         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
1478       </div>
1479       <div class="date">
1480          8th October 2013
1481       </div>
1482       <div class="body">
1483         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
1484 Salvador had published a
1485 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
1486 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
1487 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
1488 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
1489 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
1490 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
1491 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
1492 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
1493 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
1494 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
1495 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
1496 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
1497 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
1498 computers without hard drives by installing one central
1499 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
1500
1501 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
1502
1503 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
1504
1505 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
1506 me know. :)</p>
1507
1508       </div>
1509       <div class="tags">
1510
1511
1512         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
1513
1514
1515       </div>
1516     </div>
1517     <div class="padding"></div>
1518
1519     <div class="entry">
1520       <div class="title">
1521         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
1522       </div>
1523       <div class="date">
1524         29th September 2013
1525       </div>
1526       <div class="body">
1527         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
1528 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
1529 complete announcement text can be found at
1530 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
1531 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
1532
1533 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
1534 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
1535 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
1536 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
1537
1538       </div>
1539       <div class="tags">
1540
1541
1542         Tags: <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>.
1543
1544
1545       </div>
1546     </div>
1547     <div class="padding"></div>
1548
1549     <div class="entry">
1550       <div class="title">
1551         <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>
1552       </div>
1553       <div class="date">
1554         27th September 2013
1555       </div>
1556       <div class="body">
1557         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
1558 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
1559 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
1560 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
1561
1562 <ul>
1563
1564 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
1565 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
1566
1567 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
1568 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
1569
1570 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
1571 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
1572 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
1573 (Youtube)</li>
1574
1575 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
1576 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
1577
1578 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
1579 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
1580
1581 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
1582 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
1583 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
1584
1585 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
1586 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
1587 (Youtube)</li>
1588
1589 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
1590 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
1591
1592 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
1593 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
1594
1595 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
1596 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
1597 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
1598
1599 </ul>
1600
1601 <p>A larger list is available from
1602 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
1603 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
1604
1605 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
1606 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
1607 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
1608 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
1609 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
1610 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
1611 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
1612 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
1613 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
1614 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
1615 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
1616
1617       </div>
1618       <div class="tags">
1619
1620
1621         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>.
1622
1623
1624       </div>
1625     </div>
1626     <div class="padding"></div>
1627
1628     <div class="entry">
1629       <div class="title">
1630         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
1631       </div>
1632       <div class="date">
1633         16th September 2013
1634       </div>
1635       <div class="body">
1636         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
1637 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
1638
1639 <blockquote>
1640 <p>Hi,</p>
1641
1642 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
1643 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1644 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
1645
1646 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
1647 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
1648 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
1649 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
1650
1651 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
1652 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
1653
1654 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
1655 compared to beta1:</p>
1656
1657 <ul>
1658
1659 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
1660 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
1661 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
1662 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
1663 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
1664 main server.</li>
1665 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
1666 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
1667 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
1668 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
1669 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
1670
1671 </ul>
1672
1673 <p>Where to get it:</p>
1674
1675 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
1676
1677 <ul>
1678 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
1679 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
1680 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
1681 </ul>
1682
1683 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
1684
1685 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
1686 <ul>
1687 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
1688 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
1689 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
1690 </ul>
1691
1692 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
1693
1694 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
1695 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
1696 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
1697 as the other isos.</p>
1698
1699 <p>How to report bugs</p>
1700
1701 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
1702 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
1703
1704
1705 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
1706
1707 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
1708 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
1709 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
1710 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
1711 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
1712 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
1713 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
1714 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
1715 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
1716 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
1717 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
1718 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
1719 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
1720
1721 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
1722 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
1723 Squeeze release.</p>
1724
1725 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
1726
1727 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
1728 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
1729 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
1730 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
1731 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
1732 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
1733 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
1734 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
1735 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
1736 directory.</p>
1737
1738
1739 <p>cheers,
1740 <br>        Holger</p>
1741 </blockquote>
1742
1743       </div>
1744       <div class="tags">
1745
1746
1747         Tags: <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>.
1748
1749
1750       </div>
1751     </div>
1752     <div class="padding"></div>
1753
1754     <div class="entry">
1755       <div class="title">
1756         <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>
1757       </div>
1758       <div class="date">
1759         10th September 2013
1760       </div>
1761       <div class="body">
1762         <p>I was introduced to the
1763 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
1764 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
1765 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
1766 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
1767 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
1768 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
1769 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
1770 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
1771
1772 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
1773 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
1774 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
1775 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
1776 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
1777
1778 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
1779 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
1780 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
1781 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
1782 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
1783 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
1784 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
1785 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
1786 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
1787 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
1788 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
1789 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
1790 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
1791 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
1792 missing in Debian).</p>
1793
1794 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
1795 scripts
1796 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
1797 and a administrative web interface
1798 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
1799 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
1800 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
1801 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
1802 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
1803 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
1804 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
1805 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
1806 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
1807 this is really working yet, see
1808 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
1809 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
1810 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
1811 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
1812 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
1813 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
1814 with lots of half baked features.</p>
1815
1816 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
1817 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
1818 at.</p>
1819
1820 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
1821
1822 <ol>
1823
1824 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
1825 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
1826 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
1827 to the Debian installer:<p>
1828 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
1829
1830 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
1831 install on.</li>
1832
1833 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
1834 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
1835
1836 </ol>
1837
1838 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
1839
1840 <ol>
1841
1842 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
1843 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
1844 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
1845 <pre>
1846 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
1847 </pre></li>
1848 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
1849 <pre>
1850 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
1851    apt-key add -
1852 apt-get update
1853 apt-get install freedombox-setup
1854 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
1855 </pre></li>
1856 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
1857
1858 </ol>
1859
1860 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
1861 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
1862 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
1863 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
1864 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
1865
1866 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
1867 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
1868 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
1869 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
1870
1871 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
1872 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
1873 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
1874 irc.debian.org and the
1875 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
1876 mailing list</a>.</p>
1877
1878 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
1879 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
1880 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
1881 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
1882 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
1883 default password is 'secret'.</p>
1884
1885       </div>
1886       <div class="tags">
1887
1888
1889         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>.
1890
1891
1892       </div>
1893     </div>
1894     <div class="padding"></div>
1895
1896     <div class="entry">
1897       <div class="title">
1898         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
1899       </div>
1900       <div class="date">
1901         22nd August 2013
1902       </div>
1903       <div class="body">
1904         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
1905 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
1906 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
1907
1908 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
1909
1910 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1911 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
1912
1913 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
1914
1915 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
1916 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
1917 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
1918 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
1919 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
1920 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
1921 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
1922 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
1923 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
1924 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
1925 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
1926 desktop contains
1927 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
1928 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
1929 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
1930 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
1931
1932 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
1933 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
1934 release.</p>
1935
1936 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
1937 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
1938 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
1939 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
1940 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
1941 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
1942 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
1943 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
1944 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
1945 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
1946 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
1947
1948 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
1949
1950 <ul>
1951
1952 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
1953     work also without a attached tty.</li>
1954 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
1955     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
1956     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
1957     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
1958     required).</li>
1959
1960 </ul>
1961
1962 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
1963
1964 <ul>
1965
1966 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
1967 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
1968 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
1969 stick ISO image.</li>
1970 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
1971 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
1972 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
1973     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
1974     cope with this.</li>
1975 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
1976 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
1977     empty password hashes.</li>
1978 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
1979     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
1980     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
1981
1982 </ul>
1983
1984 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
1985
1986 <ul>
1987
1988 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
1989     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
1990 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
1991     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
1992
1993 </ul>
1994
1995 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
1996
1997 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
1998
1999 <ul>
2000
2001 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
2002
2003 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
2004
2005 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
2006
2007 </ul>
2008
2009 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
2010 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
2011
2012 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
2013
2014 <ul>
2015
2016 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
2017 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
2018 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
2019
2020 </ul>
2021
2022 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
2023 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
2024
2025
2026 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
2027
2028 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
2029
2030       </div>
2031       <div class="tags">
2032
2033
2034         Tags: <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>.
2035
2036
2037       </div>
2038     </div>
2039     <div class="padding"></div>
2040
2041     <div class="entry">
2042       <div class="title">
2043         <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>
2044       </div>
2045       <div class="date">
2046         18th August 2013
2047       </div>
2048       <div class="body">
2049         <p>Earlier, I reported about
2050 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
2051 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
2052 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
2053 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
2054 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
2055 currently on the disk.</p>
2056
2057 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
2058 <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>
2059 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
2060 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
2061 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
2062 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
2063 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
2064 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
2065 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
2066 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
2067 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
2068 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
2069 the broken disks.</p>
2070
2071       </div>
2072       <div class="tags">
2073
2074
2075         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>.
2076
2077
2078       </div>
2079     </div>
2080     <div class="padding"></div>
2081
2082     <div class="entry">
2083       <div class="title">
2084         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
2085       </div>
2086       <div class="date">
2087          2nd August 2013
2088       </div>
2089       <div class="body">
2090         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
2091 have worked on a Norwegian
2092 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
2093 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
2094 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
2095 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
2096 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
2097 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
2098 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
2099 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
2100 progress of the translation:</p>
2101
2102 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
2103
2104 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
2105 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
2106 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
2107 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
2108 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
2109 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
2110 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
2111 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
2112 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
2113 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
2114 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
2115
2116 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
2117 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
2118 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
2119 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
2120 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
2121 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
2122 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
2123 project files currently available from
2124 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
2125
2126 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
2127 the updated
2128 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
2129 and
2130 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
2131 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
2132 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
2133 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
2134
2135       </div>
2136       <div class="tags">
2137
2138
2139         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
2140
2141
2142       </div>
2143     </div>
2144     <div class="padding"></div>
2145
2146     <div class="entry">
2147       <div class="title">
2148         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
2149       </div>
2150       <div class="date">
2151         27th July 2013
2152       </div>
2153       <div class="body">
2154         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2155 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
2156
2157 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
2158 2013-07-27</strong></p>
2159
2160 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2161 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
2162
2163 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
2164
2165 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2166 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2167 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2168 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2169 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2170 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2171 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2172 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
2173 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2174 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2175 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2176 desktop contains
2177 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2178 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
2179 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2180 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2181
2182 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2183 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2184 Squeeze release.</p>
2185
2186 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
2187 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
2188 release.</p>
2189
2190 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
2191
2192 <ul>
2193
2194 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
2195    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
2196 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
2197    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
2198    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
2199    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
2200    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
2201 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
2202 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
2203 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
2204    crash bugs.</li>
2205
2206 </ul>
2207
2208 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
2209
2210 <ul>
2211
2212 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
2213    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
2214 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
2215    netinst CD.</li>
2216 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
2217    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
2218 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
2219    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
2220    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
2221 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
2222    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
2223    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
2224 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
2225    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
2226    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
2227 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
2228    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
2229 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
2230
2231 </ul>
2232
2233 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
2234
2235 <ul>
2236
2237 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
2238 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
2239     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
2240 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
2241
2242 </ul>
2243
2244 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
2245
2246 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2247
2248 <ul>
2249
2250 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
2251
2252 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
2253
2254 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
2255
2256 </ul>
2257
2258 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
2259 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
2260
2261 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
2262
2263 <ul>
2264
2265 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
2266 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
2267 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
2268
2269 </ul>
2270
2271 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
2272 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
2273
2274
2275 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
2276
2277 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
2278
2279       </div>
2280       <div class="tags">
2281
2282
2283         Tags: <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>.
2284
2285
2286       </div>
2287     </div>
2288     <div class="padding"></div>
2289
2290     <div class="entry">
2291       <div class="title">
2292         <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>
2293       </div>
2294       <div class="date">
2295         17th July 2013
2296       </div>
2297       <div class="body">
2298         <p>Today I switched to
2299 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
2300 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
2301 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
2302 <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
2303 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
2304 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
2305 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
2306 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
2307 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
2308 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
2309 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
2310 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
2311 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
2312 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
2313 station from now on.</p>
2314
2315 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
2316 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
2317 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
2318 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
2319 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
2320 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
2321 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
2322 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
2323 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
2324 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
2325 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
2326 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
2327
2328 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
2329 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
2330 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
2331 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
2332 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
2333 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
2334 parameters are tuned:</p>
2335
2336 <ul>
2337
2338 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
2339     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
2340
2341 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
2342     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
2343     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
2344
2345 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
2346     systems.</li>
2347
2348 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
2349     /etc/fstab.</li>
2350
2351 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
2352
2353 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
2354     cron.daily).</li>
2355
2356 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
2357     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
2358
2359 </ul>
2360
2361 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
2362 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
2363 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
2364 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
2365 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
2366 from getting the data on the disk (see
2367 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
2368 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
2369 right thing to do.</p>
2370
2371 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
2372 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
2373 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
2374
2375 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
2376 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
2377 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
2378 instead of during my work.</p>
2379
2380 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
2381 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
2382
2383 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
2384 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
2385 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
2386
2387 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
2388 there.</p>
2389
2390 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
2391 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
2392 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
2393 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
2394 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
2395 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
2396 back.</p>
2397
2398       </div>
2399       <div class="tags">
2400
2401
2402         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>.
2403
2404
2405       </div>
2406     </div>
2407     <div class="padding"></div>
2408
2409     <div class="entry">
2410       <div class="title">
2411         <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>
2412       </div>
2413       <div class="date">
2414         10th July 2013
2415       </div>
2416       <div class="body">
2417         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
2418 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
2419 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
2420 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
2421 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
2422 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
2423 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
2424 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
2425
2426 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
2427 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
2428 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
2429 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
2430 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
2431 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
2432 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
2433 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
2434 lock up when I download a new
2435 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
2436 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
2437 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
2438
2439 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
2440 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
2441 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
2442 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
2443 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
2444 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
2445
2446 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
2447 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
2448 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
2449 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
2450 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
2451 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
2452
2453 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
2454 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
2455 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
2456 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
2457 exist).</p>
2458
2459       </div>
2460       <div class="tags">
2461
2462
2463         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>.
2464
2465
2466       </div>
2467     </div>
2468     <div class="padding"></div>
2469
2470     <div class="entry">
2471       <div class="title">
2472         <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>
2473       </div>
2474       <div class="date">
2475          9th July 2013
2476       </div>
2477       <div class="body">
2478         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
2479 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
2480 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
2481 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
2482 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2483 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
2484 Bitraf</a>.</p>
2485
2486 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
2487 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
2488 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
2489 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
2490 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
2491
2492       </div>
2493       <div class="tags">
2494
2495
2496         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>.
2497
2498
2499       </div>
2500     </div>
2501     <div class="padding"></div>
2502
2503     <div class="entry">
2504       <div class="title">
2505         <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>
2506       </div>
2507       <div class="date">
2508          5th July 2013
2509       </div>
2510       <div class="body">
2511         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
2512 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
2513 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
2514 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
2515 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
2516 ended up picking a
2517 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
2518 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
2519 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
2520 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
2521 on that below.</p>
2522
2523 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
2524 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
2525 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
2526 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
2527 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
2528 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
2529 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
2530 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
2531 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
2532
2533 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
2534 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
2535 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
2536 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
2537 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
2538 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
2539 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
2540
2541 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
2542 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
2543
2544 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
2545 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
2546 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
2547 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
2548 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
2549 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
2550 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
2551 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
2552 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
2553 kernel developers as
2554 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
2555 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
2556 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
2557 Lenovo forums, both for
2558 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
2559 2012-11-10</a> and for
2560 <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
2561 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
2562 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
2563 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
2564 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
2565 There is even a
2566 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
2567 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
2568 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
2569
2570 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
2571 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
2572 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
2573 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
2574 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
2575 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
2576 fixed. :)</p>
2577
2578       </div>
2579       <div class="tags">
2580
2581
2582         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>.
2583
2584
2585       </div>
2586     </div>
2587     <div class="padding"></div>
2588
2589     <div class="entry">
2590       <div class="title">
2591         <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>
2592       </div>
2593       <div class="date">
2594          4th July 2013
2595       </div>
2596       <div class="body">
2597         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
2598 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
2599 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
2600 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
2601 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
2602 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
2603 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
2604 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
2605 with an expencive door stop.</p>
2606
2607 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
2608 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
2609 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
2610 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
2611 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
2612 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
2613 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
2614
2615 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
2616 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
2617 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
2618 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
2619 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
2620 new laptop now. :)</p>
2621
2622 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
2623
2624       </div>
2625       <div class="tags">
2626
2627
2628         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>.
2629
2630
2631       </div>
2632     </div>
2633     <div class="padding"></div>
2634
2635     <div class="entry">
2636       <div class="title">
2637         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
2638       </div>
2639       <div class="date">
2640          3rd July 2013
2641       </div>
2642       <div class="body">
2643         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2644 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
2645
2646 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
2647 2013-07-03</strong></p>
2648
2649 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2650 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
2651
2652 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
2653
2654 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2655 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2656 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2657 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2658 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2659 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2660 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2661 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
2662 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2663 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2664 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2665 desktop contains
2666 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2667 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
2668 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2669 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2670
2671 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2672 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2673 Squeeze release.</p>
2674
2675 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
2676 <ul>
2677   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
2678   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
2679     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
2680     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
2681   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
2682     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
2683     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
2684   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
2685     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
2686     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
2687     too.</li>
2688   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
2689     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
2690 </ul>
2691 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
2692 <ul>
2693   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
2694   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
2695   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
2696     up for some language options.</li>
2697   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
2698   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
2699   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
2700     d-i is doing it.</li>
2701   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
2702     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
2703   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
2704     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
2705     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
2706   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
2707     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
2708   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
2709   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
2710     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
2711   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
2712     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
2713 </ul>
2714 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
2715 <ul>
2716   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
2717     available yet (698840).</li>
2718   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
2719 </ul>
2720 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
2721
2722 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2723 <ul>
2724   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
2725   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
2726   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
2727 </ul>
2728
2729 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
2730 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
2731
2732 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
2733 <ul>
2734   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
2735   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
2736   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
2737 </ul>
2738
2739 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
2740 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
2741
2742 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
2743
2744 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
2745
2746       </div>
2747       <div class="tags">
2748
2749
2750         Tags: <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>.
2751
2752
2753       </div>
2754     </div>
2755     <div class="padding"></div>
2756
2757     <div class="entry">
2758       <div class="title">
2759         <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>
2760       </div>
2761       <div class="date">
2762         25th June 2013
2763       </div>
2764       <div class="body">
2765         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
2766 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
2767 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
2768 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
2769 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
2770 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
2771 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
2772 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
2773 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
2774 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
2775 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
2776
2777 <p><pre>
2778 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
2779 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
2780 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
2781 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
2782 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
2783 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
2784 firmware-ipw2x00
2785 firmware-ipw2x00
2786 Preconfiguring packages ...
2787 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
2788 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
2789 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
2790 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
2791 #
2792 </pre></p>
2793
2794 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
2795 printed instead:</p>
2796
2797 <p><pre>
2798 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
2799 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
2800 #
2801 </pre></p>
2802
2803 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
2804 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
2805
2806 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
2807 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
2808 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
2809 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
2810 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
2811 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
2812 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
2813 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
2814 machine.</p>
2815
2816 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
2817 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
2818 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
2819 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
2820 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
2821 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
2822
2823       </div>
2824       <div class="tags">
2825
2826
2827         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>.
2828
2829
2830       </div>
2831     </div>
2832     <div class="padding"></div>
2833
2834     <div class="entry">
2835       <div class="title">
2836         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
2837       </div>
2838       <div class="date">
2839         22nd June 2013
2840       </div>
2841       <div class="body">
2842         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2843 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
2844 which check that services are running, working, and return the
2845 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
2846 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
2847 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
2848 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
2849 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
2850 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
2851
2852 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
2853 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
2854 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
2855 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
2856 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
2857 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
2858 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
2859 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
2860 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
2861 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
2862 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
2863 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
2864 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
2865 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
2866
2867 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
2868 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
2869 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
2870 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
2871 the problem.</p>
2872
2873 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
2874 please join us on
2875 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
2876 irc.debian.org</a> and the
2877 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
2878 list.</p>
2879
2880       </div>
2881       <div class="tags">
2882
2883
2884         Tags: <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>.
2885
2886
2887       </div>
2888     </div>
2889     <div class="padding"></div>
2890
2891     <div class="entry">
2892       <div class="title">
2893         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
2894       </div>
2895       <div class="date">
2896         17th June 2013
2897       </div>
2898       <div class="body">
2899         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
2900 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
2901 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
2902 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
2903 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
2904 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
2905 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
2906 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
2907
2908 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2909
2910 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
2911 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
2912 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
2913 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
2914 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
2915 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
2916 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
2917 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
2918 field.</p>
2919
2920 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
2921 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
2922 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
2923 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
2924 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
2925 the only one we have in our country.</p>
2926
2927 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2928 project?</strong></p>
2929
2930 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
2931 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
2932 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
2933 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
2934 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
2935 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
2936 ways to contribute.</p>
2937
2938 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
2939 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
2940 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
2941 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
2942 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
2943 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
2944 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
2945 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
2946 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
2947 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
2948
2949 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2950 Edu?</strong></p>
2951
2952 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
2953 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
2954 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
2955 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
2956 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
2957 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
2958 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
2959 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
2960
2961 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
2962 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
2963 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
2964 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
2965 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
2966 project.</p>
2967
2968 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2969 Edu?</strong></p>
2970
2971 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
2972 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
2973 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
2974 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
2975 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
2976 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
2977 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
2978 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
2979 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
2980
2981 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
2982 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
2983 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
2984 on.</p>
2985
2986 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2987
2988 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
2989 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
2990 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
2991 Enlightenment project a lot!),
2992 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
2993 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
2994 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
2995 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
2996 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
2997
2998 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2999 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3000
3001 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
3002 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
3003 that:</p>
3004
3005 <ul>
3006
3007 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
3008
3009 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
3010     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
3011     of teenagers more?</li>
3012
3013 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
3014     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
3015     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
3016     them!)</li>
3017
3018 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
3019     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
3020     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
3021
3022 </ul>
3023
3024 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
3025 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
3026 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
3027 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
3028 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
3029
3030       </div>
3031       <div class="tags">
3032
3033
3034         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
3035
3036
3037       </div>
3038     </div>
3039     <div class="padding"></div>
3040
3041     <div class="entry">
3042       <div class="title">
3043         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
3044       </div>
3045       <div class="date">
3046         12th June 2013
3047       </div>
3048       <div class="body">
3049         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
3050 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3051 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
3052 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
3053 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
3054 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
3055
3056 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3057
3058 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
3059 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
3060 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
3061
3062 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
3063 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
3064 each other.</p>
3065
3066 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3067 project?</strong></p>
3068
3069 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
3070 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
3071 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
3072 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
3073 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
3074 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
3075 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
3076 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
3077 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
3078 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
3079 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
3080 we'll get there one day.</p>
3081
3082 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3083 Edu?</strong></p>
3084
3085 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
3086 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
3087 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
3088 very high quality work.</p>
3089
3090 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
3091 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
3092 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
3093 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
3094 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
3095
3096 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3097 Edu?</strong></p>
3098
3099 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
3100 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
3101 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
3102
3103 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
3104 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
3105 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
3106 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
3107 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
3108 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
3109 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
3110 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
3111 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
3112 currently.</p>
3113
3114 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
3115 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
3116 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
3117 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
3118 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
3119 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
3120 autonomous.</p>
3121
3122 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3123
3124 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
3125 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
3126 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
3127 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
3128 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
3129
3130 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
3131 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
3132 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
3133 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
3134 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
3135 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
3136 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
3137 X.</p>
3138
3139 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
3140 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
3141 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
3142 it :p)
3143
3144 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3145 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3146
3147 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
3148 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
3149 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
3150 that.</p>
3151
3152 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
3153 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
3154 advantage of that.</p>
3155
3156 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
3157 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
3158 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
3159 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
3160 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
3161 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
3162 best solution for them.</p>
3163
3164 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
3165 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
3166 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
3167
3168       </div>
3169       <div class="tags">
3170
3171
3172         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
3173
3174
3175       </div>
3176     </div>
3177     <div class="padding"></div>
3178
3179     <div class="entry">
3180       <div class="title">
3181         <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>
3182       </div>
3183       <div class="date">
3184         11th June 2013
3185       </div>
3186       <div class="body">
3187         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
3188 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
3189 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
3190 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
3191 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
3192 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
3193 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
3194 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
3195 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
3196 i915 driver used by the
3197 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
3198 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
3199
3200 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
3201 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
3202 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
3203 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
3204 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
3205
3206 <pre>
3207 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
3208 update-initramfs -u -k all
3209 </pre>
3210
3211 <p>Since March 2012 there is
3212 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
3213 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
3214 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
3215 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
3216 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
3217 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
3218 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
3219 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
3220 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
3221 number.</p>
3222
3223 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
3224 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
3225
3226 <p><pre>
3227 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
3228     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
3229     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
3230  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
3231  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
3232     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
3233  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
3234     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
3235  Latency: 0
3236  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
3237  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
3238  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
3239  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
3240  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
3241  Capabilities: <access denied>
3242  Kernel driver in use: i915
3243 </pre></p>
3244
3245 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
3246
3247 <p><pre>
3248 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
3249        ...
3250         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
3251         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
3252        ...
3253 }
3254 </pre></p>
3255
3256 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
3257 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
3258 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
3259 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
3260 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
3261 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
3262 yet shown up in
3263 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
3264 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
3265 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
3266 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
3267 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
3268 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
3269
3270 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
3271 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
3272 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
3273 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
3274 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
3275 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
3276 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
3277 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
3278 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
3279 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
3280 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
3281 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
3282
3283 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
3284 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
3285 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
3286 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
3287 backlight.</p>
3288
3289       </div>
3290       <div class="tags">
3291
3292
3293         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>.
3294
3295
3296       </div>
3297     </div>
3298     <div class="padding"></div>
3299
3300     <div class="entry">
3301       <div class="title">
3302         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
3303       </div>
3304       <div class="date">
3305         10th June 2013
3306       </div>
3307       <div class="body">
3308         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
3309 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
3310
3311 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
3312 2013-06-10</strong></p>
3313
3314 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
3315 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
3316
3317 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3318
3319 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
3320 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
3321 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
3322 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
3323 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
3324 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
3325 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
3326 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
3327 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
3328 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
3329 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
3330 desktop contains
3331 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
3332 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
3333 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
3334 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
3335
3336 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
3337 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
3338 Squeeze release.</p>
3339
3340 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3341
3342 <ul>
3343
3344 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
3345 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
3346 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
3347 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
3348 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
3349
3350 </ul>
3351
3352 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3353
3354 <ul>
3355
3356 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
3357 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
3358 <li>New Romanian translation.
3359 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
3360 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
3361 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
3362 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
3363 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
3364 <li>More testsuite tests.
3365 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
3366 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
3367
3368 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
3369 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
3370
3371 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
3372 them up with GOsa².</li>
3373
3374 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
3375
3376 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
3377 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
3378 entered password). </li>
3379
3380 </ul>
3381
3382 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
3383
3384 <ul>
3385
3386 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
3387
3388 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
3389 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
3390 missing import feature).</li>
3391
3392 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
3393
3394 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
3395 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
3396 unfixed.</li>
3397
3398 </ul>
3399
3400 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3401
3402 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
3403
3404 <ul>
3405
3406 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
3407
3408 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
3409
3410 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
3411
3412 </ul>
3413
3414 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
3415 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
3416
3417 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3418
3419 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
3420
3421       </div>
3422       <div class="tags">
3423
3424
3425         Tags: <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>.
3426
3427
3428       </div>
3429     </div>
3430     <div class="padding"></div>
3431
3432     <div class="entry">
3433       <div class="title">
3434         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
3435       </div>
3436       <div class="date">
3437          5th June 2013
3438       </div>
3439       <div class="body">
3440         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
3441 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
3442 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
3443 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
3444 the project:
3445
3446 <ol>
3447
3448 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
3449   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
3450   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
3451   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
3452   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
3453
3454 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
3455   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
3456   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
3457   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
3458   #698840</a>.</li>
3459
3460 </ol>
3461
3462 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
3463 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
3464 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
3465
3466       </div>
3467       <div class="tags">
3468
3469
3470         Tags: <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>.
3471
3472
3473       </div>
3474     </div>
3475     <div class="padding"></div>
3476
3477     <div class="entry">
3478       <div class="title">
3479         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
3480       </div>
3481       <div class="date">
3482          4th June 2013
3483       </div>
3484       <div class="body">
3485         <p>It has been a while since my last English
3486 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
3487 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
3488 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
3489 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
3490 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
3491
3492 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3493
3494 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
3495 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
3496 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
3497 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
3498
3499 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
3500 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
3501 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
3502
3503 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3504 project?</strong></p>
3505
3506 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
3507 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
3508 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
3509 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
3510 manual.
3511
3512 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
3513 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
3514 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
3515 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
3516
3517 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
3518 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
3519 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
3520 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
3521 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
3522 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
3523 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
3524 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
3525 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
3526 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
3527
3528 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
3529 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
3530 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
3531 beautiful project.</p>
3532
3533 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3534 Edu?</strong></p>
3535
3536 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
3537 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
3538 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
3539
3540 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
3541 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
3542 of educational free software.</p>
3543
3544 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3545 Edu?</strong></p>
3546
3547 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
3548 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
3549 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
3550 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
3551 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
3552
3553 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
3554 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
3555 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
3556 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
3557 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
3558 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
3559 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
3560 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
3561
3562 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3563
3564 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
3565 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
3566 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
3567 also using the mathematical software
3568 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
3569 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
3570 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
3571
3572 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
3573 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
3574 statistics?</strong></p>
3575
3576 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
3577 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
3578 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
3579 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
3580
3581 <ul>
3582
3583 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
3584 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
3585 constructions in planar geometry
3586
3587 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
3588 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
3589 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
3590
3591 </ul>
3592
3593 <p>I like also
3594 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
3595 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
3596 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
3597
3598 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3599 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3600
3601 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
3602
3603 <ul>
3604
3605 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
3606
3607 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
3608     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
3609     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
3610
3611 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
3612
3613 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
3614     system.</li>
3615
3616 </ul>
3617
3618       </div>
3619       <div class="tags">
3620
3621
3622         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
3623
3624
3625       </div>
3626     </div>
3627     <div class="padding"></div>
3628
3629     <div class="entry">
3630       <div class="title">
3631         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
3632       </div>
3633       <div class="date">
3634          1st June 2013
3635       </div>
3636       <div class="body">
3637         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3638 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
3639 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
3640 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
3641 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
3642 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
3643 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
3644 program.</p>
3645
3646 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
3647
3648 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
3649 <p>
3650 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
3651 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
3652 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
3653 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
3654 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
3655 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
3656 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
3657 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
3658 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
3659 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
3660 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
3661 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
3662 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
3663 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
3664 </p>
3665
3666 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
3667 <p>
3668 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
3669 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
3670 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
3671 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
3672 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
3673 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
3674 </p>
3675
3676 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
3677 <p>
3678 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
3679 </p>
3680
3681 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
3682 <p>
3683 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
3684 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
3685 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
3686 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
3687 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
3688 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
3689 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
3690 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
3691 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
3692 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
3693 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
3694 </p>
3695
3696 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
3697 <p>
3698 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
3699 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
3700 </p>
3701
3702 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
3703 <p>
3704 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
3705 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
3706 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
3707 </p>
3708
3709 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
3710 <p>
3711 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
3712 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
3713 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
3714 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
3715 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
3716 </p>
3717
3718 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
3719 <p>
3720 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
3721 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
3722 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
3723 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
3724 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
3725 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
3726 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
3727 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
3728 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
3729 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
3730 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
3731 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
3732 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
3733 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
3734 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
3735 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
3736 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
3737 </p>
3738
3739 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
3740 <p>
3741 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
3742 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
3743 </p>
3744
3745 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
3746 <p>
3747 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
3748 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
3749 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
3750 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
3751 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
3752 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
3753 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
3754 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
3755 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
3756 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
3757 </p>
3758
3759 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
3760 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
3761 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
3762 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
3763 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
3764 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
3765 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
3766
3767       </div>
3768       <div class="tags">
3769
3770
3771         Tags: <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>.
3772
3773
3774       </div>
3775     </div>
3776     <div class="padding"></div>
3777
3778     <div class="entry">
3779       <div class="title">
3780         <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>
3781       </div>
3782       <div class="date">
3783         27th May 2013
3784       </div>
3785       <div class="body">
3786         <p>Two days ago, I asked
3787 <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
3788 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
3789 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
3790 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
3791 and Windows 8.</p>
3792
3793 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
3794 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
3795 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
3796 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
3797 enough to tell.</p>
3798
3799 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
3800 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
3801 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
3802 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
3803 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
3804 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
3805 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
3806 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
3807 to follow.</p>
3808
3809 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
3810 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
3811 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
3812 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
3813 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
3814 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
3815 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
3816 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
3817
3818 <p>I've updated the
3819 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
3820 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
3821 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
3822 machine.</p>
3823
3824 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
3825 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
3826
3827       </div>
3828       <div class="tags">
3829
3830
3831         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>.
3832
3833
3834       </div>
3835     </div>
3836     <div class="padding"></div>
3837
3838     <div class="entry">
3839       <div class="title">
3840         <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>
3841       </div>
3842       <div class="date">
3843         25th May 2013
3844       </div>
3845       <div class="body">
3846         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
3847 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
3848 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
3849 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
3850 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
3851 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
3852
3853 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
3854 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
3855 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
3856 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
3857 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
3858 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
3859 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
3860 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
3861 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
3862 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
3863
3864 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
3865 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
3866 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
3867 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
3868 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
3869 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
3870
3871 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
3872 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
3873 on new Laptops?</p>
3874
3875       </div>
3876       <div class="tags">
3877
3878
3879         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>.
3880
3881
3882       </div>
3883     </div>
3884     <div class="padding"></div>
3885
3886     <div class="entry">
3887       <div class="title">
3888         <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>
3889       </div>
3890       <div class="date">
3891         17th May 2013
3892       </div>
3893       <div class="body">
3894         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
3895 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
3896 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
3897 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
3898 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
3899 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
3900 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
3901 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
3902 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
3903 donate some money</a>.
3904
3905 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
3906 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
3907 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
3908 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
3909 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
3910
3911 <p>The script,
3912 <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/>
3913 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
3914 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
3915 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
3916
3917 <ol>
3918
3919 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
3920 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
3921 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
3922     our configuration.</li>
3923 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
3924     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
3925     according to the profile specified in the config above,
3926     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
3927 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
3928     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
3929 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
3930
3931 </ol>
3932
3933 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
3934 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
3935 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
3936 the needed packages.</p>
3937
3938 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
3939 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
3940 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
3941 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
3942 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
3943 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
3944
3945 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
3946 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
3947 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
3948
3949 <p><pre>
3950 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
3951 DESKTOP="lxde"
3952 </pre></p>
3953
3954 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
3955 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
3956 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
3957 boot.</p>
3958
3959       </div>
3960       <div class="tags">
3961
3962
3963         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>.
3964
3965
3966       </div>
3967     </div>
3968     <div class="padding"></div>
3969
3970     <div class="entry">
3971       <div class="title">
3972         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
3973       </div>
3974       <div class="date">
3975         14th May 2013
3976       </div>
3977       <div class="body">
3978         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3979 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
3980 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
3981
3982 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
3983 2013-05-14</strong></p>
3984
3985 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
3986 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
3987 codename "Wheezy".</p>
3988
3989 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3990
3991 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
3992 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
3993 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
3994 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
3995 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
3996 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
3997 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
3998 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
3999
4000 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
4001 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
4002 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
4003
4004 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
4005 <ul>
4006   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
4007     default.</li>
4008   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
4009   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
4010   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
4011     ibus-anthy.</li>
4012 </ul>
4013
4014 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
4015 <ul>
4016
4017   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
4018     reliability improvements.</li>
4019   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
4020     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
4021   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
4022     problems.</li>
4023   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
4024     direct:// URL.</li>
4025   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
4026   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
4027   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
4028   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
4029     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
4030   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
4031     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
4032 </ul>
4033
4034 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
4035 <ul>
4036
4037   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
4038     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
4039     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
4040   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
4041   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
4042     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
4043   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
4044   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
4045   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
4046     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
4047   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
4048     password submission problem
4049     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
4050
4051 </ul>
4052
4053 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
4054
4055 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
4056 <ul>
4057
4058   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
4059   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
4060   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
4061
4062 </ul>
4063
4064 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
4065
4066 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
4067
4068 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
4069
4070 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
4071
4072       </div>
4073       <div class="tags">
4074
4075
4076         Tags: <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>.
4077
4078
4079       </div>
4080     </div>
4081     <div class="padding"></div>
4082
4083     <div class="entry">
4084       <div class="title">
4085         <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>
4086       </div>
4087       <div class="date">
4088         11th May 2013
4089       </div>
4090       <div class="body">
4091         <P>In January,
4092 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
4093 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
4094 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
4095 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
4096 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
4097 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
4098 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
4099 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
4100 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
4101 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
4102 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
4103 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
4104
4105 <p><table>
4106 <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>
4107 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
4108 <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>
4109 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
4110 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
4111 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
4112 <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>
4113 <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>
4114 <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>
4115 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
4116 </table></p>
4117
4118 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
4119 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
4120 available in experimental.</p>
4121
4122 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
4123 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
4124 for LEGO designers.</p>
4125
4126       </div>
4127       <div class="tags">
4128
4129
4130         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>.
4131
4132
4133       </div>
4134     </div>
4135     <div class="padding"></div>
4136
4137     <div class="entry">
4138       <div class="title">
4139         <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>
4140       </div>
4141       <div class="date">
4142          5th May 2013
4143       </div>
4144       <div class="body">
4145         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
4146 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
4147 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
4148 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
4149 soon.</p>
4150
4151 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
4152 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
4153 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
4154 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
4155 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
4156 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
4157 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
4158 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
4159 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
4160 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
4161 Edu.</a>
4162
4163 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
4164 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
4165 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
4166 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
4167 follow.<p>
4168
4169       </div>
4170       <div class="tags">
4171
4172
4173         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>.
4174
4175
4176       </div>
4177     </div>
4178     <div class="padding"></div>
4179
4180     <div class="entry">
4181       <div class="title">
4182         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
4183       </div>
4184       <div class="date">
4185         26th April 2013
4186       </div>
4187       <div class="body">
4188         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
4189 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
4190 announcement:</p>
4191
4192 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
4193 2013-04-26</strong></p>
4194
4195 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
4196 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
4197
4198 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
4199
4200 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
4201 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
4202 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
4203 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
4204 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
4205 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
4206 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
4207 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
4208 installed via the network.</p>
4209
4210 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
4211 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
4212 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
4213
4214 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
4215
4216 <ul>
4217 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
4218   <ul>
4219      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
4220      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
4221          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
4222          manual.)</li>
4223      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
4224      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
4225      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
4226      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
4227      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
4228      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
4229      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
4230      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
4231      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
4232      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
4233      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
4234      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
4235          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
4236          manual</a> for more details.</li>
4237      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
4238          installation.</li>
4239      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
4240          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
4241   </ul></li>
4242 </ul>
4243
4244 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
4245 <ul>
4246 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
4247     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
4248     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
4249 </ul>
4250
4251 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
4252 <ul>
4253 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
4254     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
4255     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
4256 </ul>
4257
4258 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
4259 <ul>
4260 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
4261     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
4262     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
4263 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
4264     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
4265     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
4266 </ul>
4267
4268 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
4269 <ul>
4270 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
4271     yet.</li>
4272 </ul>
4273
4274 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
4275
4276 <ul>
4277 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
4278     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
4279     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
4280 </ul>
4281
4282 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
4283
4284 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
4285 <ul>
4286 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
4287 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
4288 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
4289 </ul>
4290
4291 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
4292
4293 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
4294
4295 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
4296
4297 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
4298
4299       </div>
4300       <div class="tags">
4301
4302
4303         Tags: <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>.
4304
4305
4306       </div>
4307     </div>
4308     <div class="padding"></div>
4309
4310     <div class="entry">
4311       <div class="title">
4312         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
4313       </div>
4314       <div class="date">
4315         16th April 2013
4316       </div>
4317       <div class="body">
4318         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
4319 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
4320 Details about the gathering can be found
4321 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
4322 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
4323 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
4324 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
4325 weekend.</p>
4326
4327 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
4328 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
4329 Edu release.</p>
4330
4331 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
4332
4333       </div>
4334       <div class="tags">
4335
4336
4337         Tags: <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>.
4338
4339
4340       </div>
4341     </div>
4342     <div class="padding"></div>
4343
4344     <div class="entry">
4345       <div class="title">
4346         <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>
4347       </div>
4348       <div class="date">
4349          3rd April 2013
4350       </div>
4351       <div class="body">
4352         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
4353 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
4354 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
4355 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
4356
4357 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
4358 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
4359 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
4360 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
4361 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
4362 BTS. :)</p>
4363
4364       </div>
4365       <div class="tags">
4366
4367
4368         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>.
4369
4370
4371       </div>
4372     </div>
4373     <div class="padding"></div>
4374
4375     <div class="entry">
4376       <div class="title">
4377         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
4378       </div>
4379       <div class="date">
4380         26th March 2013
4381       </div>
4382       <div class="body">
4383         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
4384 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
4385 font you use when printing.</p>
4386
4387 <p>Three years ago,
4388 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
4389 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
4390 changed their default front from
4391 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
4392 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
4393 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
4394 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
4395 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
4396 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
4397 prints.</p>
4398
4399 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
4400 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
4401 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
4402 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
4403 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
4404 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
4405 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
4406 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
4407 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
4408 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
4409 depend on the documents printed.</p>
4410
4411 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
4412 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
4413 and save some money in the process.</p>
4414
4415 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
4416 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
4417 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
4418 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
4419 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
4420 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
4421 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
4422 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
4423 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
4424
4425       </div>
4426       <div class="tags">
4427
4428
4429         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4430
4431
4432       </div>
4433     </div>
4434     <div class="padding"></div>
4435
4436     <div class="entry">
4437       <div class="title">
4438         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
4439       </div>
4440       <div class="date">
4441         24th March 2013
4442       </div>
4443       <div class="body">
4444         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
4445 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
4446 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
4447 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
4448 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
4449 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
4450 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
4451 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
4452 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
4453 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
4454 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
4455 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
4456
4457 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
4458 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
4459 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
4460 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
4461 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
4462 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
4463 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
4464 all I had to do was to use the
4465 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
4466 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
4467 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
4468 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
4469 xsltproc/fop (aka
4470 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
4471 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
4472 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
4473 technical detail.</p>
4474
4475 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
4476 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
4477 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
4478 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
4479 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
4480 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
4481
4482 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
4483 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
4484 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
4485 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
4486 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
4487 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
4488 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
4489 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
4490 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
4491
4492 <p><blockquote><pre>
4493 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
4494 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
4495   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
4496     &lt;hr/&gt;
4497   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
4498 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
4499 </pre></blockquote></p>
4500
4501 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
4502
4503 <p><blockquote><pre>
4504 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
4505 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
4506   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
4507     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
4508       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
4509     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
4510   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
4511 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
4512 </pre></blockquote></p>
4513
4514 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
4515 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
4516 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
4517 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
4518 enough.</p>
4519
4520 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
4521 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
4522 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
4523 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
4524 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
4525 look like this:</p>
4526
4527 <p><blockquote><pre>
4528 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
4529 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
4530   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
4531     &lt;br/&gt;
4532   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
4533 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
4534 </pre></blockquote></p>
4535
4536 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
4537
4538 <p><blockquote><pre>
4539 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
4540 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
4541   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
4542   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
4543     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
4544   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
4545 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
4546 </pre></blockquote></p>
4547
4548 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
4549 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
4550 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
4551 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
4552 page.</p>
4553
4554 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
4555 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
4556 github</a>
4557 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
4558 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
4559 days.</p>
4560
4561       </div>
4562       <div class="tags">
4563
4564
4565         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
4566
4567
4568       </div>
4569     </div>
4570     <div class="padding"></div>
4571
4572     <div class="entry">
4573       <div class="title">
4574         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
4575       </div>
4576       <div class="date">
4577         17th March 2013
4578       </div>
4579       <div class="body">
4580         <p>Via
4581 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
4582 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
4583 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
4584 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
4585 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
4586 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
4587 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
4588
4589 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
4590 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
4591
4592 <blockquote>
4593 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
4594 </blockquote>
4595
4596 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
4597
4598 <blockquote>
4599 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
4600 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
4601 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
4602 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
4603 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
4604 </blockquote>
4605
4606 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
4607 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
4608 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
4609 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
4610
4611 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
4612 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
4613
4614 <blockquote>
4615 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
4616 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
4617 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
4618 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
4619 </blockquote>
4620
4621 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
4622 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
4623 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
4624 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
4625 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
4626
4627 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
4628 embedding:</p>
4629
4630 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
4631
4632       </div>
4633       <div class="tags">
4634
4635
4636         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
4637
4638
4639       </div>
4640     </div>
4641     <div class="padding"></div>
4642
4643     <div class="entry">
4644       <div class="title">
4645         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
4646       </div>
4647       <div class="date">
4648          8th March 2013
4649       </div>
4650       <div class="body">
4651         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
4652 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
4653 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
4654 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
4655 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
4656 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
4657 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
4658
4659 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
4660
4661 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
4662 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
4663
4664 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
4665 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
4666 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
4667 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
4668 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
4669 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
4670
4671 <p>Images are available for download at
4672 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
4673
4674 <p>md5sums:
4675 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
4676 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
4677 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
4678
4679 <p>sha1sums:
4680 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
4681 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
4682 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
4683
4684 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
4685
4686 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
4687 2013-03-03:</p>
4688
4689 <ul>
4690   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
4691   <ul>
4692         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
4693         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
4694   </ul></li>
4695   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
4696   <ul>
4697         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
4698         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
4699   </ul></li>
4700   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
4701      <ul>
4702         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
4703         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
4704         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
4705                 Closes: #664596</li>
4706         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
4707                 Closes: #664976</li>
4708         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
4709            <ul>
4710                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
4711                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
4712            </ul></li>
4713         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
4714            <ul>
4715                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
4716                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
4717                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
4718                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
4719                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
4720            </ul></li>
4721         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
4722     </ul>
4723   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
4724     <ul>
4725         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
4726     </ul></li>
4727 </ul>
4728
4729 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
4730 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
4731 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
4732 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
4733
4734 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
4735 mailinglist
4736 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
4737 </p></blockquote>
4738
4739 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
4740
4741       </div>
4742       <div class="tags">
4743
4744
4745         Tags: <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>.
4746
4747
4748       </div>
4749     </div>
4750     <div class="padding"></div>
4751
4752     <div class="entry">
4753       <div class="title">
4754         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
4755       </div>
4756       <div class="date">
4757          3rd March 2013
4758       </div>
4759       <div class="body">
4760         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
4761 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
4762 support using
4763 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
4764 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
4765 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
4766 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
4767 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
4768 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
4769 using the GNU LGPL, and
4770 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
4771
4772 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
4773 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
4774 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
4775 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
4776 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
4777 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
4778
4779 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
4780 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
4781 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
4782 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
4783 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
4784 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
4785 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
4786 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
4787 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
4788 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
4789 signal distribution is handled using
4790 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
4791 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
4792 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
4793 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
4794 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
4795 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
4796 them up a bit more first.</p>
4797
4798 <p>The development is coordinated on the
4799 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
4800 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
4801 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
4802 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
4803 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
4804 development.</p>
4805
4806       </div>
4807       <div class="tags">
4808
4809
4810         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
4811
4812
4813       </div>
4814     </div>
4815     <div class="padding"></div>
4816
4817     <div class="entry">
4818       <div class="title">
4819         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
4820       </div>
4821       <div class="date">
4822         27th February 2013
4823       </div>
4824       <div class="body">
4825         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
4826 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
4827 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
4828 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
4829 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
4830 (where I am the chair of the board) and
4831 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
4832 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
4833 GNU», with this description:
4834
4835 <p><blockquote>
4836 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
4837 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
4838 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
4839 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
4840 </blockquote></p>
4841
4842 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
4843 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
4844 am really curious how many will show up.  See
4845 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
4846 page</a> for the location details.</p>
4847
4848       </div>
4849       <div class="tags">
4850
4851
4852         Tags: <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/personvern">personvern</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>.
4853
4854
4855       </div>
4856     </div>
4857     <div class="padding"></div>
4858
4859     <div class="entry">
4860       <div class="title">
4861         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
4862       </div>
4863       <div class="date">
4864         15th February 2013
4865       </div>
4866       <div class="body">
4867         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
4868 now a great source of free maps available from
4869 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
4870 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
4871 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
4872 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
4873 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
4874 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
4875 page for descriptions).</p>
4876
4877 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
4878 map you can just edit the
4879 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
4880 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
4881
4882       </div>
4883       <div class="tags">
4884
4885
4886         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
4887
4888
4889       </div>
4890     </div>
4891     <div class="padding"></div>
4892
4893     <div class="entry">
4894       <div class="title">
4895         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
4896       </div>
4897       <div class="date">
4898         12th February 2013
4899       </div>
4900       <div class="body">
4901         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
4902 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
4903 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
4904 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
4905 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
4906 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
4907 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
4908 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
4909 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
4910 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
4911 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
4912 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
4913 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
4914 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
4915 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
4916 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
4917
4918 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
4919 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
4920 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
4921 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
4922 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
4923 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
4924 fields:</p>
4925
4926 <p><pre>
4927 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
4928 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
4929 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
4930 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
4931 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
4932 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
4933 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
4934 </pre></p>
4935
4936 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
4937 answer regarding
4938 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
4939 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
4940 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
4941 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
4942
4943 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
4944
4945 <p><pre>
4946 BEGIN:VCARD
4947 VERSION:2.1
4948 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
4949 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
4950 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
4951 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
4952 REV:20130212T095000Z
4953 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
4954 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
4955 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
4956 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
4957 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
4958 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
4959 END:VCARD
4960 </pre></p>
4961
4962 <p>The resulting QR code created using
4963 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
4964 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
4965 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
4966 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
4967 system.</p>
4968
4969 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
4970
4971 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
4972 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
4973 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
4974 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
4975
4976 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
4977 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
4978
4979       </div>
4980       <div class="tags">
4981
4982
4983         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
4984
4985
4986       </div>
4987     </div>
4988     <div class="padding"></div>
4989
4990     <div class="entry">
4991       <div class="title">
4992         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
4993       </div>
4994       <div class="date">
4995         10th February 2013
4996       </div>
4997       <div class="body">
4998         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
4999
5000 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
5001 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
5002 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
5003 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
5004 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
5005 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
5006 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
5007 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
5008 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
5009 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
5010 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
5011
5012 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
5013 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
5014 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
5015 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
5016 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
5017 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
5018 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
5019 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
5020 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
5021 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
5022 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
5023 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
5024 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
5025 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
5026 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
5027 ones own
5028 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
5029 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
5030 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
5031 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
5032 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
5033 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
5034 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
5035 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
5036 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
5037 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
5038 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
5039
5040 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
5041 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
5042 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
5043 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
5044 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
5045 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
5046
5047 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
5048 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
5049 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
5050
5051       </div>
5052       <div class="tags">
5053
5054
5055         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5056
5057
5058       </div>
5059     </div>
5060     <div class="padding"></div>
5061
5062     <div class="entry">
5063       <div class="title">
5064         <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>
5065       </div>
5066       <div class="date">
5067          2nd February 2013
5068       </div>
5069       <div class="body">
5070         <p>My
5071 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
5072 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
5073 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
5074 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
5075 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
5076 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
5077 version too.</p>
5078
5079 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
5080 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
5081 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
5082 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
5083 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
5084 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
5085 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
5086 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
5087
5088 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
5089 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
5090 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
5091 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
5092 it. :)</p>
5093
5094 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5095 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5096 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5097
5098       </div>
5099       <div class="tags">
5100
5101
5102         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>.
5103
5104
5105       </div>
5106     </div>
5107     <div class="padding"></div>
5108
5109     <div class="entry">
5110       <div class="title">
5111         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
5112       </div>
5113       <div class="date">
5114         22nd January 2013
5115       </div>
5116       <div class="body">
5117         <p>Yesterday, I
5118 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
5119 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
5120 pluggable hardware devices, which I
5121 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
5122 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
5123 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
5124 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
5125 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
5126 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
5127 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
5128 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
5129 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
5130 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
5131
5132 <pre>
5133 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
5134 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
5135 </pre>
5136
5137 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
5138 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
5139 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
5140 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
5141
5142 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
5143 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
5144 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
5145 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
5146 word.</p>
5147
5148 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
5149 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
5150 process.</p>
5151
5152 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
5153 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
5154
5155       </div>
5156       <div class="tags">
5157
5158
5159         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>.
5160
5161
5162       </div>
5163     </div>
5164     <div class="padding"></div>
5165
5166     <div class="entry">
5167       <div class="title">
5168         <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>
5169       </div>
5170       <div class="date">
5171         21st January 2013
5172       </div>
5173       <div class="body">
5174         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
5175 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
5176 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
5177 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
5178 it, fetch the
5179 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
5180 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
5181 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
5182 autostart script.</p>
5183
5184 <p>The design is simple:</p>
5185
5186 <ul>
5187
5188 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
5189 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
5190
5191 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
5192 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
5193 initially did.</li>
5194
5195 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
5196 the APT database, a database
5197 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
5198 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
5199
5200 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
5201 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
5202 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
5203 package or packages.</li>
5204
5205 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
5206 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
5207
5208 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
5209 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
5210
5211 </ul>
5212
5213 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
5214 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
5215 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
5216 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
5217
5218 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
5219 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
5220 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
5221 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
5222 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
5223
5224 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
5225 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
5226 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
5227 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
5228 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
5229 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
5230 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
5231 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
5232
5233 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
5234 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
5235 '<tt>svn checkout
5236 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
5237 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
5238 devscripts package.</p>
5239
5240 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
5241 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
5242 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
5243 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
5244 instructions</a> for details.</p>
5245
5246       </div>
5247       <div class="tags">
5248
5249
5250         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>.
5251
5252
5253       </div>
5254     </div>
5255     <div class="padding"></div>
5256
5257     <div class="entry">
5258       <div class="title">
5259         <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>
5260       </div>
5261       <div class="date">
5262         19th January 2013
5263       </div>
5264       <div class="body">
5265         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
5266 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
5267 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
5268 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
5269 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
5270 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
5271 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
5272 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
5273 not a durable solution.
5274
5275 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
5276 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
5277
5278 <ul>
5279
5280 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
5281   than A4).</li>
5282 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
5283 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
5284 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
5285 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
5286 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
5287 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
5288 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
5289 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
5290 size).</li>
5291 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
5292   X.org packages.</li>
5293 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
5294   the time).
5295
5296 </ul>
5297
5298 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
5299 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
5300 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
5301 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
5302 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
5303 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
5304 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
5305 still be useful.</p>
5306
5307 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
5308 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
5309 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
5310 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
5311 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
5312 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
5313
5314       </div>
5315       <div class="tags">
5316
5317
5318         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>.
5319
5320
5321       </div>
5322     </div>
5323     <div class="padding"></div>
5324
5325     <div class="entry">
5326       <div class="title">
5327         <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>
5328       </div>
5329       <div class="date">
5330         18th January 2013
5331       </div>
5332       <div class="body">
5333         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
5334 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
5335 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
5336 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
5337 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
5338 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
5339 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
5340
5341 <pre>
5342 #!/usr/bin/python
5343 import sys
5344 import apt
5345 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
5346     cache = apt.Cache()
5347     cache.open(None)
5348     thepkgs = []
5349     for pkg in cache:
5350         version = pkg.candidate
5351         if version is None:
5352             version = pkg.installed
5353         if version is None:
5354             continue
5355         record = version.record
5356         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
5357             continue
5358         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
5359         for t in mime_types:
5360             t = t.rstrip().strip()
5361             if t == mimetype:
5362                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
5363     return thepkgs
5364 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
5365 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
5366     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
5367 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
5368 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
5369     print "  %s" %pkg
5370 </pre>
5371
5372 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
5373
5374 <pre>
5375 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
5376 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
5377   gecko-mediaplayer
5378 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
5379 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
5380   browser-plugin-gnash
5381 %
5382 </pre>
5383
5384 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
5385 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
5386 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
5387 anyone working on adding it?</p>
5388
5389 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
5390 request for icweasel support for this feature is
5391 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
5392 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
5393 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
5394 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
5395
5396       </div>
5397       <div class="tags">
5398
5399
5400         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>.
5401
5402
5403       </div>
5404     </div>
5405     <div class="padding"></div>
5406
5407     <div class="entry">
5408       <div class="title">
5409         <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>
5410       </div>
5411       <div class="date">
5412         16th January 2013
5413       </div>
5414       <div class="body">
5415         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
5416 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
5417 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
5418 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
5419 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
5420 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
5421 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
5422 downloaded by the browser.</p>
5423
5424 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
5425 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
5426 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
5427 can be found on the
5428 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
5429 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
5430 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
5431 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
5432 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
5433
5434 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
5435
5436 <pre>
5437   count MIME type
5438   ----- -----------------------
5439      32 text/plain
5440      30 audio/mpeg
5441      29 image/png
5442      28 image/jpeg
5443      27 application/ogg
5444      26 audio/x-mp3
5445      25 image/tiff
5446      25 image/gif
5447      22 image/bmp
5448      22 audio/x-wav
5449      20 audio/x-flac
5450      19 audio/x-mpegurl
5451      18 video/x-ms-asf
5452      18 audio/x-musepack
5453      18 audio/x-mpeg
5454      18 application/x-ogg
5455      17 video/mpeg
5456      17 audio/x-scpls
5457      17 audio/ogg
5458      16 video/x-ms-wmv
5459 </pre>
5460
5461 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
5462
5463 <pre>
5464   count MIME type
5465   ----- -----------------------
5466      33 text/plain
5467      32 image/png
5468      32 image/jpeg
5469      29 audio/mpeg
5470      27 image/gif
5471      26 image/tiff
5472      26 application/ogg
5473      25 audio/x-mp3
5474      22 image/bmp
5475      21 audio/x-wav
5476      19 audio/x-mpegurl
5477      19 audio/x-mpeg
5478      18 video/mpeg
5479      18 audio/x-scpls
5480      18 audio/x-flac
5481      18 application/x-ogg
5482      17 video/x-ms-asf
5483      17 text/html
5484      17 audio/x-musepack
5485      16 image/x-xbitmap
5486 </pre>
5487
5488 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
5489
5490 <pre>
5491   count MIME type
5492   ----- -----------------------
5493      31 text/plain
5494      31 image/png
5495      31 image/jpeg
5496      29 audio/mpeg
5497      28 application/ogg
5498      27 image/gif
5499      26 image/tiff
5500      26 audio/x-mp3
5501      23 audio/x-wav
5502      22 image/bmp
5503      21 audio/x-flac
5504      20 audio/x-mpegurl
5505      19 audio/x-mpeg
5506      18 video/x-ms-asf
5507      18 video/mpeg
5508      18 audio/x-scpls
5509      18 application/x-ogg
5510      17 audio/x-musepack
5511      16 video/x-ms-wmv
5512      16 video/x-msvideo
5513 </pre>
5514
5515 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
5516 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
5517 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
5518 issues.</p>
5519
5520 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
5521 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
5522
5523       </div>
5524       <div class="tags">
5525
5526
5527         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>.
5528
5529
5530       </div>
5531     </div>
5532     <div class="padding"></div>
5533
5534     <div class="entry">
5535       <div class="title">
5536         <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>
5537       </div>
5538       <div class="date">
5539         15th January 2013
5540       </div>
5541       <div class="body">
5542         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
5543 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
5544 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
5545 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
5546 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
5547 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
5548 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
5549 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
5550 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
5551 packages.</p>
5552
5553 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
5554 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
5555 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
5556 modalias.</p>
5557
5558 <p><blockquote>
5559 Package: package-name
5560 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
5561 </blockquote></p>
5562
5563 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
5564 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
5565
5566 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
5567 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
5568
5569 <p><blockquote>
5570 Package: cheese
5571 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
5572 </blockquote></p>
5573
5574 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
5575 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
5576
5577 <p><blockquote>
5578 Package: pcmciautils
5579 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
5580 </blockquote></p>
5581
5582 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
5583 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
5584
5585 <p><blockquote>
5586 Package: colorhug-client
5587 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
5588 </blockquote></p>
5589
5590 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
5591 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
5592 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
5593
5594 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
5595 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
5596 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
5597 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
5598 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
5599 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
5600 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
5601 Raring.</p>
5602
5603 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
5604 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
5605 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
5606 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
5607 try the
5608 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
5609 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
5610 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
5611 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
5612
5613 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
5614 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
5615
5616 <p><blockquote>
5617 % ./hw-support-lookup
5618 <br>yubikey-personalization
5619 <br>%
5620 </blockquote></p>
5621
5622 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
5623 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
5624
5625 <p><blockquote>
5626 % ./hw-support-lookup
5627 <br>pcmciautils
5628 <br>%
5629 </blockquote></p>
5630
5631 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
5632 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
5633 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
5634
5635 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
5636 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
5637 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
5638 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
5639 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
5640 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
5641 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
5642 see if it work.</p>
5643
5644 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
5645 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
5646 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
5647 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
5648
5649       </div>
5650       <div class="tags">
5651
5652
5653         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>.
5654
5655
5656       </div>
5657     </div>
5658     <div class="padding"></div>
5659
5660     <div class="entry">
5661       <div class="title">
5662         <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>
5663       </div>
5664       <div class="date">
5665         14th January 2013
5666       </div>
5667       <div class="body">
5668         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
5669 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
5670 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
5671 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
5672 in
5673 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
5674 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
5675
5676 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
5677
5678 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
5679 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
5680 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
5681 &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;,
5682 &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
5683 &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;.
5684
5685 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
5686 this shell script:</p>
5687
5688 <pre>
5689 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
5690 </pre>
5691
5692 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
5693 using modinfo:</p>
5694
5695 <pre>
5696 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
5697 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
5698 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
5699 %
5700 </pre>
5701
5702 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
5703
5704 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
5705 Bridge memory controller:</p>
5706
5707 <p><blockquote>
5708 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
5709 </blockquote></p>
5710
5711 <p>This represent these values:</p>
5712
5713 <pre>
5714  v   00008086  (vendor)
5715  d   00002770  (device)
5716  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
5717  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
5718  bc  06        (bus class)
5719  sc  00        (bus subclass)
5720  i   00        (interface)
5721 </pre>
5722
5723 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
5724 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
5725 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
5726 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
5727
5728 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
5729 means.</p>
5730
5731 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
5732
5733 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
5734 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
5735
5736 <p><blockquote>
5737 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
5738 </blockquote></p>
5739
5740 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
5741
5742 <pre>
5743  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
5744  p    0001  (device product)
5745  d    0206  (bcddevice)
5746  dc     09  (device class)
5747  dsc    00  (device subclass)
5748  dp     00  (device protocol)
5749  ic     09  (interface class)
5750  isc    00  (interface subclass)
5751  ip     00  (interface protocol)
5752 </pre>
5753
5754 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
5755 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
5756 these alias entries show up:</p>
5757
5758 <p><blockquote>
5759 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
5760 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
5761 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
5762 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
5763 </blockquote></p>
5764
5765 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
5766 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
5767 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
5768
5769 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
5770
5771 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
5772 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
5773
5774 <p><blockquote>
5775 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
5776 </blockquote></p>
5777
5778 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
5779
5780 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
5781
5782 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
5783 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
5784 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
5785
5786 <p><blockquote>
5787 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
5788 </blockquote></p>
5789
5790 <p>The values present are</p>
5791
5792 <pre>
5793  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
5794  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
5795  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
5796  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
5797  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
5798  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
5799  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
5800  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
5801  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
5802  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
5803  ct   10             (chassis type)
5804  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
5805 </pre>
5806
5807 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
5808 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
5809
5810 <pre>
5811   3 Desktop
5812   4 Low Profile Desktop
5813   5 Pizza Box
5814   6 Mini Tower
5815   7 Tower
5816   8 Portable
5817   9 Laptop
5818  10 Notebook
5819  11 Hand Held
5820  12 Docking Station
5821  13 All In One
5822  14 Sub Notebook
5823  15 Space-saving
5824  16 Lunch Box
5825  17 Main Server Chassis
5826  18 Expansion Chassis
5827  19 Sub Chassis
5828  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
5829  21 Peripheral Chassis
5830  22 RAID Chassis
5831  23 Rack Mount Chassis
5832  24 Sealed-case PC
5833  25 Multi-system
5834  26 CompactPCI
5835  27 AdvancedTCA
5836  28 Blade
5837  29 Blade Enclosing
5838 </pre>
5839
5840 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
5841 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
5842 claim it is a desktop.</p>
5843
5844 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
5845
5846 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
5847 test machine:</p>
5848
5849 <p><blockquote>
5850 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
5851 </blockquote></p>
5852
5853 <p>The values present are</p>
5854
5855 <pre>
5856   ty  01  (type)
5857   pr  00  (prototype)
5858   id  00  (id)
5859   ex  00  (extra)
5860 </pre>
5861
5862 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
5863 the valid values are.</p>
5864
5865 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
5866
5867 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
5868 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
5869 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
5870 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
5871 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
5872 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
5873 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
5874
5875 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
5876
5877 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
5878 one can use the following shell script:</p>
5879
5880 <pre>
5881   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
5882     echo "$id" ; \
5883     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
5884   done
5885 </pre>
5886
5887 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
5888 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
5889
5890 <pre>
5891   acpi:ACPI0003:
5892     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
5893   acpi:device:
5894   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
5895   acpi:IBM0068:
5896     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
5897     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
5898     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
5899     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
5900   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
5901     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
5902     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
5903     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
5904   [...]
5905 </pre>
5906
5907 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
5908 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
5909 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
5910 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
5911
5912 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
5913 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
5914 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
5915
5916       </div>
5917       <div class="tags">
5918
5919
5920         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>.
5921
5922
5923       </div>
5924     </div>
5925     <div class="padding"></div>
5926
5927     <div class="entry">
5928       <div class="title">
5929         <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>
5930       </div>
5931       <div class="date">
5932         10th January 2013
5933       </div>
5934       <div class="body">
5935         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
5936 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
5937 Launcher and updated the Debian package
5938 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
5939 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
5940 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
5941 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
5942 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
5943 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
5944 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
5945 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
5946 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
5947 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
5948 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
5949 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
5950 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
5951 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
5952 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
5953
5954       </div>
5955       <div class="tags">
5956
5957
5958         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>.
5959
5960
5961       </div>
5962     </div>
5963     <div class="padding"></div>
5964
5965     <div class="entry">
5966       <div class="title">
5967         <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>
5968       </div>
5969       <div class="date">
5970          9th January 2013
5971       </div>
5972       <div class="body">
5973         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
5974 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
5975 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
5976 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
5977 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
5978 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
5979 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
5980 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
5981 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
5982 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
5983 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
5984
5985 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
5986 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
5987 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
5988 simple:
5989
5990 <ul>
5991
5992 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
5993   starting when a user log in.</li>
5994
5995 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
5996   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
5997
5998 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
5999   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
6000   packages.</li>
6001
6002 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
6003   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
6004
6005 </ul>
6006
6007 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
6008 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
6009 discover database to find packages and
6010 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
6011 packages.</p>
6012
6013 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
6014 draft package is now checked into
6015 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
6016 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
6017 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
6018 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
6019 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
6020 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
6021 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
6022 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
6023 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
6024 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
6025 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
6026 because of the freeze).</p>
6027
6028 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
6029 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
6030 inserted):</p>
6031
6032 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
6033
6034 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
6035 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
6036 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
6037
6038 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
6039 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
6040 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
6041 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
6042 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
6043 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
6044 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
6045
6046 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
6047 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
6048 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
6049 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
6050 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
6051 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
6052 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
6053 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
6054 not be installed?</p>
6055
6056 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
6057 please send me an email. :)</p>
6058
6059       </div>
6060       <div class="tags">
6061
6062
6063         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>.
6064
6065
6066       </div>
6067     </div>
6068     <div class="padding"></div>
6069
6070     <div class="entry">
6071       <div class="title">
6072         <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>
6073       </div>
6074       <div class="date">
6075          2nd January 2013
6076       </div>
6077       <div class="body">
6078         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
6079 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
6080 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
6081 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
6082 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
6083 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
6084 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
6085 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
6086 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
6087 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
6088
6089 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
6090 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
6091 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
6092
6093       </div>
6094       <div class="tags">
6095
6096
6097         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>.
6098
6099
6100       </div>
6101     </div>
6102     <div class="padding"></div>
6103
6104     <div class="entry">
6105       <div class="title">
6106         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
6107       </div>
6108       <div class="date">
6109         28th December 2012
6110       </div>
6111       <div class="body">
6112         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
6113 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
6114 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
6115 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
6116 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
6117 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
6118 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
6119 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
6120 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
6121 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
6122 followed by many others. :)</p>
6123
6124 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
6125 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
6126 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
6127 you want to donate to the project.</p>
6128
6129       </div>
6130       <div class="tags">
6131
6132
6133         Tags: <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>.
6134
6135
6136       </div>
6137     </div>
6138     <div class="padding"></div>
6139
6140     <div class="entry">
6141       <div class="title">
6142         <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>
6143       </div>
6144       <div class="date">
6145         25th December 2012
6146       </div>
6147       <div class="body">
6148         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
6149 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
6150
6151 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
6152 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
6153 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
6154 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
6155 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
6156 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
6157 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
6158 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
6159 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
6160 name.</p>
6161
6162 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
6163 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
6164 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
6165
6166 <blockquote><pre>
6167 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
6168 cd bitcoin
6169 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
6170 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
6171 </pre></blockquote>
6172
6173 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
6174 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
6175 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
6176 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
6177 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
6178 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
6179 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
6180 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
6181 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
6182
6183 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6184 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6185 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6186
6187       </div>
6188       <div class="tags">
6189
6190
6191         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>.
6192
6193
6194       </div>
6195     </div>
6196     <div class="padding"></div>
6197
6198     <div class="entry">
6199       <div class="title">
6200         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
6201       </div>
6202       <div class="date">
6203         21st December 2012
6204       </div>
6205       <div class="body">
6206         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
6207 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
6208 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
6209 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
6210 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
6211 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
6212 is now maintained by a
6213 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
6214 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
6215 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
6216 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
6217 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
6218 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
6219 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
6220 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
6221 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
6222 Corallo in a
6223 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
6224 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
6225 Debian package.</p>
6226
6227 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
6228 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
6229 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
6230 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
6231 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
6232 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
6233 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
6234 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
6235 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
6236 new version to unstable.
6237
6238 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
6239 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
6240 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
6241 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
6242 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
6243 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
6244 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
6245 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
6246 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
6247 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
6248 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
6249 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
6250 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
6251 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
6252 have not tested them.</p>
6253
6254 <p>My
6255 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
6256 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
6257 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
6258 years ago, as can be
6259 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
6260 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
6261 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
6262 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
6263 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
6264 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
6265 the same address as last time,
6266 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6267
6268       </div>
6269       <div class="tags">
6270
6271
6272         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>.
6273
6274
6275       </div>
6276     </div>
6277     <div class="padding"></div>
6278
6279     <div class="entry">
6280       <div class="title">
6281         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
6282       </div>
6283       <div class="date">
6284         18th December 2012
6285       </div>
6286       <div class="body">
6287         <p>A few days ago I came across
6288 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
6289 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
6290 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
6291 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
6292 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
6293 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
6294 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
6295 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
6296 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
6297
6298 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
6299 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
6300 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
6301 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
6302
6303 <blockquote><pre>
6304 2004-05-27 Book Store
6305       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
6306       Liabilities:Visa
6307 </pre></blockquote>
6308
6309 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
6310 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
6311 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
6312 Spang</a>,
6313 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
6314 Keen</a>,
6315 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
6316 Cantino</a> and
6317 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
6318 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
6319 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
6320 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
6321 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
6322
6323 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
6324 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
6325 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
6326 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
6327 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
6328
6329 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
6330 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
6331 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
6332 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
6333 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
6334 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
6335 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
6336 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
6337 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
6338
6339       </div>
6340       <div class="tags">
6341
6342
6343         Tags: <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>.
6344
6345
6346       </div>
6347     </div>
6348     <div class="padding"></div>
6349
6350     <div class="entry">
6351       <div class="title">
6352         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
6353       </div>
6354       <div class="date">
6355          6th December 2012
6356       </div>
6357       <div class="body">
6358         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
6359 Oslo</a>, we use the
6360 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
6361 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
6362 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
6363 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
6364 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
6365 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
6366 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
6367 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
6368 Python.</p>
6369
6370 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
6371 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
6372 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
6373 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
6374 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
6375 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
6376
6377 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
6378 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
6379 user currently logged in:</p>
6380
6381 <blockquote><pre>
6382 #!/usr/bin/env python
6383 import getpass
6384 import xmlrpclib
6385 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
6386 username = getpass.getuser()
6387 password = getpass.getpass()
6388 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
6389 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
6390 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
6391 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
6392 result = server.logout(sessionid)
6393 print result
6394 </pre></blockquote>
6395
6396 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
6397 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
6398
6399       </div>
6400       <div class="tags">
6401
6402
6403         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
6404
6405
6406       </div>
6407     </div>
6408     <div class="padding"></div>
6409
6410     <div class="entry">
6411       <div class="title">
6412         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
6413       </div>
6414       <div class="date">
6415         17th November 2012
6416       </div>
6417       <div class="body">
6418         <p>While working on a
6419 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
6420 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
6421 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
6422 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
6423 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
6424 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
6425
6426 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
6427 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
6428 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
6429 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
6430 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
6431 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
6432 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
6433 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
6434 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
6435 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
6436 arguments.</p>
6437
6438 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
6439 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
6440 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
6441 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
6442 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
6443 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
6444 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
6445 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
6446
6447 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
6448 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
6449 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
6450 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
6451 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
6452 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
6453 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
6454 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
6455 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
6456 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
6457 correct right holder.</p>
6458
6459 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
6460 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
6461 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
6462 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
6463 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
6464 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
6465 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
6466 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
6467 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
6468 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
6469 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
6470 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
6471 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
6472 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
6473
6474 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
6475 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
6476 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
6477
6478 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
6479 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
6480
6481       </div>
6482       <div class="tags">
6483
6484
6485         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
6486
6487
6488       </div>
6489     </div>
6490     <div class="padding"></div>
6491
6492     <div class="entry">
6493       <div class="title">
6494         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
6495       </div>
6496       <div class="date">
6497         14th November 2012
6498       </div>
6499       <div class="body">
6500         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
6501 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
6502 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
6503 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
6504 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
6505 the people behind the German
6506 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
6507 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
6508 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
6509
6510 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6511
6512 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
6513 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
6514 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
6515
6516 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
6517 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
6518 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
6519 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
6520 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
6521 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
6522
6523 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
6524 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
6525 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
6526 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
6527 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
6528 relationship management and the communication processes in the
6529 project.</p>
6530
6531 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
6532 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
6533 and a yoga teacher.</p>
6534
6535 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6536 project?</strong></p>
6537
6538 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
6539
6540 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
6541 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
6542 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
6543 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
6544 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
6545 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
6546 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
6547 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
6548 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
6549 parents.</p>
6550
6551 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
6552 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
6553 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
6554 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
6555 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
6556 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
6557 Germany.</p>
6558
6559 <p>For information about our school project you can read
6560 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
6561 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
6562
6563 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6564 Edu?</strong></p>
6565
6566 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
6567 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
6568
6569 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
6570 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
6571 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
6572 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
6573 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
6574 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
6575 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
6576 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
6577 teachers, parents...</p>
6578
6579 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6580 Edu?</strong></p>
6581
6582 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
6583 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
6584
6585 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
6586 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
6587 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
6588 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
6589 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
6590
6591 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
6592 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
6593 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
6594 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
6595 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
6596 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
6597 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
6598
6599 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6600
6601 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
6602 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
6603 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
6604 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
6605
6606 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6607 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6608
6609 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
6610 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
6611 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
6612 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
6613 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
6614
6615 <ul>
6616
6617 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
6618 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
6619 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
6620
6621 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
6622 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
6623 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
6624 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
6625 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
6626 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
6627 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
6628
6629 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
6630 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
6631 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
6632 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
6633
6634 </ul>
6635
6636       </div>
6637       <div class="tags">
6638
6639
6640         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
6641
6642
6643       </div>
6644     </div>
6645     <div class="padding"></div>
6646
6647     <div class="entry">
6648       <div class="title">
6649         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
6650       </div>
6651       <div class="date">
6652          4th November 2012
6653       </div>
6654       <div class="body">
6655         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
6656 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
6657 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
6658 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
6659 see how a member of the bitcoin community
6660 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
6661 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
6662 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
6663 competition.  My thoughts go to the
6664 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
6665 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
6666 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
6667 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
6668 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
6669
6670 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
6671 that the community already seem to have
6672 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
6673 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
6674 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
6675 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
6676 wealth is available.</p>
6677
6678       </div>
6679       <div class="tags">
6680
6681
6682         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</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>.
6683
6684
6685       </div>
6686     </div>
6687     <div class="padding"></div>
6688
6689     <div class="entry">
6690       <div class="title">
6691         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
6692       </div>
6693       <div class="date">
6694         26th October 2012
6695       </div>
6696       <div class="body">
6697         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
6698 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
6699 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
6700 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
6701 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
6702 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
6703 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
6704 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
6705 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
6706 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
6707 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
6708 it every time.</p>
6709
6710 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
6711 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
6712 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
6713 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
6714 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
6715 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
6716 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
6717 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
6718 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
6719 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
6720 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
6721 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
6722
6723 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
6724 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
6725 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
6726 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
6727 article: First the unplanned outage:
6728
6729 <blockquote><pre>
6730 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
6731 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
6732 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
6733 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
6734 Duration:    40 minutes
6735 Scope:       Exchange 2003
6736 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
6737              a cluster failover.
6738
6739 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
6740              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
6741 Technician:  [xxx]
6742 </pre></blockquote>
6743
6744 Next the planned outage:
6745
6746 <blockquote><pre>
6747 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
6748 Severity:    Major (Planned)
6749 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
6750 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
6751 Duration:    10 hours
6752 Scope:       H2 Transport
6753 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
6754              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
6755              4510s.
6756 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
6757              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
6758              connectivity.
6759 Technician:  [xxx]
6760 </pre></blockquote>
6761
6762 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
6763 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
6764 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
6765 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
6766 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
6767 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
6768 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
6769
6770 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
6771 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
6772 university too.  We do register
6773 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
6774 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
6775 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
6776 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
6777 for other sites to consider too?</p>
6778
6779       </div>
6780       <div class="tags">
6781
6782
6783         Tags: <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>.
6784
6785
6786       </div>
6787     </div>
6788     <div class="padding"></div>
6789
6790     <div class="entry">
6791       <div class="title">
6792         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
6793       </div>
6794       <div class="date">
6795         22nd October 2012
6796       </div>
6797       <div class="body">
6798         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
6799 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
6800 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
6801 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
6802 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
6803 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
6804 background information is available in Norwegian from
6805 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
6806 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
6807 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
6808 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
6809 willing to
6810 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
6811 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
6812 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
6813 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
6814 sounded like
6815 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
6816 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
6817 later.</p>
6818
6819 <p>And thought this action is
6820 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
6821 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
6822 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
6823 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
6824 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
6825 rights.</p>
6826
6827 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
6828 unacceptable terms.  For example
6829 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
6830 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
6831 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
6832 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
6833 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
6834
6835 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
6836 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
6837 restored the account of the user, as reported by
6838 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
6839 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
6840 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
6841 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
6842 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
6843 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
6844 reading two opinions from
6845 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
6846 Phipps</a> and
6847 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
6848 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
6849 details about the original story.</p>
6850
6851       </div>
6852       <div class="tags">
6853
6854
6855         Tags: <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/personvern">personvern</a>.
6856
6857
6858       </div>
6859     </div>
6860     <div class="padding"></div>
6861
6862     <div class="entry">
6863       <div class="title">
6864         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
6865       </div>
6866       <div class="date">
6867         18th October 2012
6868       </div>
6869       <div class="body">
6870         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
6871 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
6872 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
6873 across a marvellous drawing by
6874 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
6875 visualising some of what is going on.
6876
6877 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
6878 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
6879
6880 <blockquote>
6881 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
6882 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
6883 </blockquote>
6884
6885 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
6886 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
6887 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
6888 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
6889 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
6890 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
6891
6892       </div>
6893       <div class="tags">
6894
6895
6896         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
6897
6898
6899       </div>
6900     </div>
6901     <div class="padding"></div>
6902
6903     <div class="entry">
6904       <div class="title">
6905         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
6906       </div>
6907       <div class="date">
6908         12th October 2012
6909       </div>
6910       <div class="body">
6911         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
6912 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
6913 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
6914 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
6915 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
6916 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
6917 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
6918 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
6919 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
6920 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
6921 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
6922 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
6923 matter".</p>
6924
6925 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
6926 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
6927 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
6928 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
6929 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
6930 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
6931 to argue its side.</p>
6932
6933 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
6934 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
6935 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
6936 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
6937
6938 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
6939 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
6940 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
6941
6942       </div>
6943       <div class="tags">
6944
6945
6946         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
6947
6948
6949       </div>
6950     </div>
6951     <div class="padding"></div>
6952
6953     <div class="entry">
6954       <div class="title">
6955         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
6956       </div>
6957       <div class="date">
6958          3rd October 2012
6959       </div>
6960       <div class="body">
6961         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
6962 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
6963 the computer science book collection available in his local
6964 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
6965 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
6966 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
6967 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
6968 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
6969 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
6970 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
6971 recently published books.</p>
6972
6973 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
6974 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
6975 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
6976 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
6977 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
6978 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
6979 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
6980 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
6981 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
6982 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
6983 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
6984 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
6985 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
6986 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
6987 for the library that evening.</p>
6988
6989 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
6990 going to know that for example
6991 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
6992 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
6993 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
6994 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
6995 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
6996 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
6997 book right away.</p>
6998
6999       </div>
7000       <div class="tags">
7001
7002
7003         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7004
7005
7006       </div>
7007     </div>
7008     <div class="padding"></div>
7009
7010     <div class="entry">
7011       <div class="title">
7012         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
7013       </div>
7014       <div class="date">
7015         23rd September 2012
7016       </div>
7017       <div class="body">
7018         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
7019 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
7020 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
7021 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
7022 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
7023 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
7024
7025 When I started, I
7026 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
7027 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
7028 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
7029 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
7030 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
7031 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
7032 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
7033
7034 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
7035
7036 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
7037 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
7038 the project files currently available from
7039 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7040
7041 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
7042 the updated
7043 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
7044 and
7045 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
7046 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
7047 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
7048 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
7049
7050       </div>
7051       <div class="tags">
7052
7053
7054         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
7055
7056
7057       </div>
7058     </div>
7059     <div class="padding"></div>
7060
7061     <div class="entry">
7062       <div class="title">
7063         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
7064       </div>
7065       <div class="date">
7066         17th September 2012
7067       </div>
7068       <div class="body">
7069         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
7070 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
7071 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
7072 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
7073 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
7074 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
7075 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
7076
7077 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7078
7079 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
7080 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
7081 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
7082 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
7083 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
7084 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
7085 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
7086 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
7087 training is anyway very important</p>
7088
7089 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
7090 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
7091 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
7092 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
7093 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
7094
7095 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7096 project?</strong></p>
7097
7098 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
7099 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
7100 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
7101 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
7102 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
7103 hole.</p>
7104
7105 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7106 Edu?</strong></p>
7107
7108 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
7109 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
7110 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
7111 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
7112 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
7113 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
7114 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
7115 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
7116 hassle.</p>
7117
7118 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7119 Edu?</strong></p>
7120
7121 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
7122 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
7123 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
7124 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
7125 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
7126 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
7127 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
7128 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
7129
7130 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7131
7132 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
7133 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
7134 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
7135 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
7136 has the same...</p>
7137
7138 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
7139 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
7140 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
7141 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
7142
7143 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7144 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7145
7146 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
7147 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
7148 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
7149
7150 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
7151 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
7152 don't.</p>
7153
7154 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
7155 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
7156 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
7157 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
7158 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
7159 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
7160 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
7161
7162       </div>
7163       <div class="tags">
7164
7165
7166         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
7167
7168
7169       </div>
7170     </div>
7171     <div class="padding"></div>
7172
7173     <div class="entry">
7174       <div class="title">
7175         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
7176       </div>
7177       <div class="date">
7178         15th September 2012
7179       </div>
7180       <div class="body">
7181         <p>After the
7182 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
7183 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
7184 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
7185 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
7186 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
7187 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
7188 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
7189 was
7190 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
7191 formal working group should be formed.</p>
7192
7193 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
7194 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
7195 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
7196 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
7197 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
7198 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
7199 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
7200 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
7201
7202 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
7203 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
7204 IETF.</p>
7205
7206       </div>
7207       <div class="tags">
7208
7209
7210         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</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>.
7211
7212
7213       </div>
7214     </div>
7215     <div class="padding"></div>
7216
7217     <div class="entry">
7218       <div class="title">
7219         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
7220       </div>
7221       <div class="date">
7222         12th September 2012
7223       </div>
7224       <div class="body">
7225         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
7226 publication of of
7227 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
7228 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
7229 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
7230 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
7231 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
7232 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
7233 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
7234 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
7235 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
7236 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
7237
7238 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
7239 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
7240 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
7241 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
7242
7243 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
7244 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
7245
7246       </div>
7247       <div class="tags">
7248
7249
7250         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</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>.
7251
7252
7253       </div>
7254     </div>
7255     <div class="padding"></div>
7256
7257     <div class="entry">
7258       <div class="title">
7259         <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>
7260       </div>
7261       <div class="date">
7262          7th September 2012
7263       </div>
7264       <div class="body">
7265         <p>As I
7266 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
7267 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
7268 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
7269 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
7270 repository for the project</a>.</p>
7271
7272 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
7273 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
7274 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
7275 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
7276
7277 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
7278 PostScript formats at
7279 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
7280 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
7281
7282       </div>
7283       <div class="tags">
7284
7285
7286         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>.
7287
7288
7289       </div>
7290     </div>
7291     <div class="padding"></div>
7292
7293     <div class="entry">
7294       <div class="title">
7295         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
7296       </div>
7297       <div class="date">
7298         23rd August 2012
7299       </div>
7300       <div class="body">
7301         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
7302 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
7303 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
7304 revisit the great site
7305 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
7306 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
7307 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
7308
7309       </div>
7310       <div class="tags">
7311
7312
7313         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
7314
7315
7316       </div>
7317     </div>
7318     <div class="padding"></div>
7319
7320     <div class="entry">
7321       <div class="title">
7322         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
7323       </div>
7324       <div class="date">
7325         17th August 2012
7326       </div>
7327       <div class="body">
7328         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
7329 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
7330 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
7331 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
7332 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
7333 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
7334 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
7335 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
7336 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
7337 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
7338 summer I
7339 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
7340 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
7341 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
7342
7343 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
7344 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
7345 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
7346 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
7347 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
7348 progress:</p>
7349
7350 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
7351
7352 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
7353 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
7354 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
7355 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
7356 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
7357 english version of the docbook source.</p>
7358
7359 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
7360 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
7361 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
7362 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
7363 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
7364 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
7365 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
7366 project files currently available from <a
7367 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7368
7369 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
7370 the updated
7371 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
7372 and
7373 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
7374 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
7375 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
7376 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
7377
7378       </div>
7379       <div class="tags">
7380
7381
7382         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
7383
7384
7385       </div>
7386     </div>
7387     <div class="padding"></div>
7388
7389     <div class="entry">
7390       <div class="title">
7391         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
7392       </div>
7393       <div class="date">
7394         10th August 2012
7395       </div>
7396       <div class="body">
7397         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
7398 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
7399 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
7400 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
7401 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
7402 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
7403 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
7404 case for the language
7405 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
7406 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
7407
7408 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
7409 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
7410 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
7411 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
7412 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
7413
7414 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
7415 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
7416 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
7417 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
7418 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
7419 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
7420 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
7421 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
7422 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
7423 alias for 'nb'.</p>
7424
7425 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
7426 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
7427 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
7428 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
7429 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
7430 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
7431 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
7432 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
7433 at the same time. :(</p>
7434
7435 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
7436 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
7437 processors. :(</p>
7438
7439 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
7440
7441       </div>
7442       <div class="tags">
7443
7444
7445         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
7446
7447
7448       </div>
7449     </div>
7450     <div class="padding"></div>
7451
7452     <div class="entry">
7453       <div class="title">
7454         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
7455       </div>
7456       <div class="date">
7457         31st July 2012
7458       </div>
7459       <div class="body">
7460         <p>I tried to send this text to the
7461 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
7462 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
7463 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
7464 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
7465 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
7466 out.</p>
7467
7468 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
7469 learning curve at the moment.</p>
7470
7471 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
7472 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
7473 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
7474 available from
7475 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
7476 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
7477 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
7478 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
7479 Squeeze.</p>
7480
7481 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
7482 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
7483 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
7484 problems.</p>
7485
7486 <ul>
7487
7488 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
7489    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
7490    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
7491    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
7492    index references spanning several pages (See
7493    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
7494    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
7495    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
7496
7497 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
7498    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
7499    #683163</a>).</li>
7500
7501 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
7502    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
7503    footnote and text body, see
7504    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
7505    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
7506    refs listed are not right).</li>
7507
7508 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
7509
7510 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
7511    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
7512
7513 </ul>
7514
7515 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
7516 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
7517 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
7518
7519 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
7520
7521       </div>
7522       <div class="tags">
7523
7524
7525         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
7526
7527
7528       </div>
7529     </div>
7530     <div class="padding"></div>
7531
7532     <div class="entry">
7533       <div class="title">
7534         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
7535       </div>
7536       <div class="date">
7537         21st July 2012
7538       </div>
7539       <div class="body">
7540         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
7541 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
7542 norwegian version</a> of the book
7543 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
7544 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
7545 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
7546 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
7547 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7548
7549 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
7550 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
7551 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
7552 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
7553 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
7554 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
7555 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
7556 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
7557 print. :)</p>
7558
7559 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
7560 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
7561 language.</p>
7562
7563       </div>
7564       <div class="tags">
7565
7566
7567         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</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>.
7568
7569
7570       </div>
7571     </div>
7572     <div class="padding"></div>
7573
7574     <div class="entry">
7575       <div class="title">
7576         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
7577       </div>
7578       <div class="date">
7579         16th July 2012
7580       </div>
7581       <div class="body">
7582         <p>I am currently working on a
7583 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
7584 to translate</a> the book
7585 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
7586 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
7587 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
7588 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
7589 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
7590 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
7591 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7592
7593 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
7594 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
7595 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
7596 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
7597 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
7598 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
7599 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
7600 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
7601 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
7602
7603       </div>
7604       <div class="tags">
7605
7606
7607         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</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>.
7608
7609
7610       </div>
7611     </div>
7612     <div class="padding"></div>
7613
7614     <div class="entry">
7615       <div class="title">
7616         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
7617       </div>
7618       <div class="date">
7619          9th July 2012
7620       </div>
7621       <div class="body">
7622         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7623 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
7624 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
7625 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
7626 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
7627 to adjust and scale the just released
7628 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
7629 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
7630 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
7631
7632 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7633
7634 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
7635 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
7636 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
7637 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
7638 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
7639 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
7640 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
7641 perspective when working with IT.</p>
7642
7643 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7644 project?</strong></p>
7645
7646 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
7647 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
7648 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
7649 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
7650 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
7651 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
7652
7653 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7654 Edu?</strong></p>
7655
7656 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
7657 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
7658 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
7659 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
7660 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
7661 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
7662 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
7663 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
7664 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
7665 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
7666 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
7667 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
7668 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
7669 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
7670 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
7671 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
7672 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
7673 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
7674 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
7675 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
7676 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
7677 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
7678 quicker to update.
7679
7680 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7681 Edu?</strong></p>
7682
7683 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
7684 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
7685 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
7686 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
7687 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
7688 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
7689
7690 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
7691 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
7692 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
7693 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
7694 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
7695 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
7696 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
7697 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
7698 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
7699 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
7700 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
7701 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
7702 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
7703 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
7704 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
7705
7706 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
7707 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
7708 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
7709 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
7710 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
7711 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
7712 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
7713 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
7714
7715 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
7716 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
7717 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
7718 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
7719 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
7720 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
7721 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
7722 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
7723 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
7724 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
7725 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
7726 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
7727 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
7728 sound file.</p>
7729
7730 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
7731 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
7732 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
7733 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
7734 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
7735 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
7736 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
7737 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
7738 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
7739
7740 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7741
7742 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
7743 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
7744 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
7745 )</p>
7746
7747 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7748 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7749
7750 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
7751 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
7752 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
7753 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
7754 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
7755 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
7756 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
7757 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
7758 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
7759 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
7760 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
7761 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
7762 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
7763 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
7764 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
7765
7766 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
7767 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
7768 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
7769 management with Airtime</a>,
7770 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
7771 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
7772 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
7773 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
7774 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
7775
7776       </div>
7777       <div class="tags">
7778
7779
7780         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
7781
7782
7783       </div>
7784     </div>
7785     <div class="padding"></div>
7786
7787     <div class="entry">
7788       <div class="title">
7789         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
7790       </div>
7791       <div class="date">
7792          8th July 2012
7793       </div>
7794       <div class="body">
7795         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
7796 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
7797 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
7798 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
7799 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
7800 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
7801 Steinberg in his blog post
7802 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
7803 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
7804 spending of your tax money.</p>
7805
7806 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
7807 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
7808 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
7809 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
7810 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
7811 purchases.</p>
7812
7813       </div>
7814       <div class="tags">
7815
7816
7817         Tags: <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>.
7818
7819
7820       </div>
7821     </div>
7822     <div class="padding"></div>
7823
7824     <div class="entry">
7825       <div class="title">
7826         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
7827       </div>
7828       <div class="date">
7829          7th July 2012
7830       </div>
7831       <div class="body">
7832         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7833 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
7834 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
7835 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
7836 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
7837 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
7838 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
7839 receive.  The software is
7840
7841 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
7842 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
7843 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
7844 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
7845 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
7846 Windows</a>.</p>
7847
7848 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
7849 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
7850
7851 <p><ul>
7852
7853   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
7854     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
7855
7856   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
7857     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
7858     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
7859     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
7860     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
7861     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
7862     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
7863     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
7864     </li>
7865
7866   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
7867     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
7868
7869   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
7870     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
7871
7872   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
7873     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
7874
7875   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
7876
7877   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
7878     formats </li>
7879
7880   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
7881     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
7882     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
7883     (as separate sets)</li>
7884
7885   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
7886     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
7887     percentage)</li>
7888
7889   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
7890     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
7891     memory):
7892     <ul>
7893       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
7894       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
7895       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
7896       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
7897       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
7898       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
7899       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
7900       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
7901       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
7902       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
7903           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
7904           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
7905           activity)</li>
7906       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
7907       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
7908     </ul></li>
7909
7910   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
7911     <ul>
7912       <li>Break periods</li>
7913       <li>For teacher(s):
7914         <ul>
7915           <li>Not available periods</li>
7916           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
7917           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
7918           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
7919           <li>Min hours daily</li>
7920           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
7921
7922           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
7923             days per week</li>
7924         </ul></li>
7925       <li>For students (sets):
7926         <ul>
7927           <li>Not available periods</li>
7928           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
7929           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
7930           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
7931           <li>Min hours daily</li>
7932           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
7933
7934           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
7935             days per week</li>
7936         </ul></li>
7937       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
7938         <ul>
7939           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
7940           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
7941           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
7942           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
7943           <li>End(s) students day</li>
7944           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
7945           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
7946             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
7947           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
7948           <li>Not overlapping</li>
7949           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
7950           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
7951         </ul></li>
7952     </ul></li>
7953
7954   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
7955     <ul>
7956       <li>Room not available periods</li>
7957       <li>For teacher(s):
7958         <ul>
7959           <li>Home room(s)</li>
7960           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
7961           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
7962         </ul>
7963       </li>
7964
7965       <li>For students (sets):
7966         <ul>
7967           <li>Home room(s)</li>
7968           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
7969           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
7970         </ul>
7971       </li>
7972       <li>Preferred room(s):
7973         <ul>
7974           <li>For a subject</li>
7975           <li>For an activity tag</li>
7976           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
7977           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
7978         </ul>
7979       </li>
7980
7981       <li>For a set of activities:
7982         <ul>
7983           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
7984         </ul>
7985       </li>
7986     </ul>
7987   </li>
7988 </ul></p>
7989
7990 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
7991 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
7992 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
7993 manually, check it out.
7994
7995 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
7996 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
7997 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
7998 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
7999 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
8000 section</a>.</p>
8001
8002       </div>
8003       <div class="tags">
8004
8005
8006         Tags: <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>.
8007
8008
8009       </div>
8010     </div>
8011     <div class="padding"></div>
8012
8013     <div class="entry">
8014       <div class="title">
8015         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
8016       </div>
8017       <div class="date">
8018          3rd July 2012
8019       </div>
8020       <div class="body">
8021         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
8022 project (Norwegian version of
8023 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
8024 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
8025 a problem with the municipalities using
8026 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
8027 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
8028 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
8029 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
8030 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
8031 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
8032 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
8033 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
8034 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
8035 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
8036 the From: header.</p>
8037
8038 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
8039 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
8040 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
8041 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
8042 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
8043 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
8044 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
8045 behaviour.</p>
8046
8047 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
8048 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
8049 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
8050 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
8051 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
8052 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
8053 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
8054
8055       </div>
8056       <div class="tags">
8057
8058
8059         Tags: <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/nuug">nuug</a>.
8060
8061
8062       </div>
8063     </div>
8064     <div class="padding"></div>
8065
8066     <div class="entry">
8067       <div class="title">
8068         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
8069       </div>
8070       <div class="date">
8071         26th June 2012
8072       </div>
8073       <div class="body">
8074         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
8075 another interview with the people behind
8076 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
8077 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
8078 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
8079 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
8080 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
8081 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
8082 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
8083
8084 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8085
8086 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
8087 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
8088 ICT in schools</p>
8089
8090 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8091 project?</strong></p>
8092
8093 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
8094 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
8095 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
8096 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
8097
8098 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8099 Edu?</strong></p>
8100
8101 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
8102 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
8103 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
8104 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
8105
8106 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8107 Edu?</strong></p>
8108
8109 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
8110 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
8111 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
8112 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
8113 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
8114 technologies in school.</p>
8115
8116 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8117
8118 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
8119 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
8120 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
8121
8122 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8123 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8124
8125 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
8126 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
8127 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
8128 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
8129
8130 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
8131 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
8132 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
8133
8134 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
8135 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
8136 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
8137 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
8138 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
8139 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
8140 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
8141 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
8142 working there.</p>
8143
8144       </div>
8145       <div class="tags">
8146
8147
8148         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
8149
8150
8151       </div>
8152     </div>
8153     <div class="padding"></div>
8154
8155     <div class="entry">
8156       <div class="title">
8157         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
8158       </div>
8159       <div class="date">
8160         24th June 2012
8161       </div>
8162       <div class="body">
8163         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
8164 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
8165 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
8166 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
8167 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
8168 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
8169 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
8170 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
8171 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
8172 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
8173 missing in my book.</p>
8174
8175 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
8176 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
8177 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
8178 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
8179 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
8180 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
8181 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
8182
8183       </div>
8184       <div class="tags">
8185
8186
8187         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>.
8188
8189
8190       </div>
8191     </div>
8192     <div class="padding"></div>
8193
8194     <div class="entry">
8195       <div class="title">
8196         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
8197       </div>
8198       <div class="date">
8199         11th June 2012
8200       </div>
8201       <div class="body">
8202         <p>During my work on
8203 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
8204 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
8205 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
8206 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
8207 explanation.</p>
8208
8209 <p><ul>
8210
8211 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
8212 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
8213 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
8214 system depend on tasksel tasks in
8215 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
8216 installation.</li>
8217
8218 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
8219 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
8220 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
8221 at least try to enable it for these services:
8222 <ul>
8223
8224   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
8225     quotas.</li>
8226   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
8227   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
8228   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
8229   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
8230   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
8231
8232 </ul></li>
8233
8234 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
8235 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
8236 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
8237 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
8238
8239 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
8240 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
8241 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
8242
8243 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
8244 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
8245 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
8246 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
8247 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
8248 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
8249
8250 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
8251 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
8252 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
8253 in Wheezy.
8254
8255 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
8256 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
8257 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
8258
8259 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
8260 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
8261 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
8262 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
8263
8264 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
8265 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
8266 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
8267 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
8268
8269 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
8270 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
8271 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
8272
8273 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
8274 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
8275 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
8276
8277 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
8278 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
8279 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
8280 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
8281 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
8282
8283 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
8284 <ul>
8285
8286 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
8287 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
8288 <li>and probably more?</li>
8289 </ul></li>
8290
8291 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
8292 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
8293 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
8294 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
8295 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
8296 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
8297 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
8298 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
8299
8300
8301 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
8302 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
8303 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
8304 use.</li>
8305
8306 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
8307 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
8308 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
8309 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
8310 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
8311
8312 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
8313 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
8314 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
8315 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
8316 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
8317 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
8318
8319 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
8320 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
8321 There are at least three implementations,
8322 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
8323 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
8324 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
8325 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
8326 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
8327 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
8328 given room.</li>
8329
8330 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
8331 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
8332 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
8333 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
8334 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
8335 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
8336 investigated.</li>
8337
8338 </ul></p>
8339
8340 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
8341 version.</p>
8342
8343       </div>
8344       <div class="tags">
8345
8346
8347         Tags: <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>.
8348
8349
8350       </div>
8351     </div>
8352     <div class="padding"></div>
8353
8354     <div class="entry">
8355       <div class="title">
8356         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
8357       </div>
8358       <div class="date">
8359          9th June 2012
8360       </div>
8361       <div class="body">
8362         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
8363 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
8364 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
8365 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
8366 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
8367 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
8368 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
8369 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
8370 be willing to pay for.</p>
8371
8372 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
8373 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
8374 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
8375 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
8376 Orwell</a>.</p>
8377
8378       </div>
8379       <div class="tags">
8380
8381
8382         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
8383
8384
8385       </div>
8386     </div>
8387     <div class="padding"></div>
8388
8389     <div class="entry">
8390       <div class="title">
8391         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
8392       </div>
8393       <div class="date">
8394          6th June 2012
8395       </div>
8396       <div class="body">
8397         <p>A few days ago
8398 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
8399 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
8400 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
8401 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
8402 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
8403 code for HP, Dell and IBM
8404 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
8405 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
8406 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
8407 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
8408 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
8409
8410 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
8411 output:
8412
8413 <blockquote><pre>
8414 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
8415 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
8416 %
8417 </pre></blockquote>
8418
8419 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
8420 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
8421 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
8422
8423       </div>
8424       <div class="tags">
8425
8426
8427         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8428
8429
8430       </div>
8431     </div>
8432     <div class="padding"></div>
8433
8434     <div class="entry">
8435       <div class="title">
8436         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
8437       </div>
8438       <div class="date">
8439          2nd June 2012
8440       </div>
8441       <div class="body">
8442         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
8443 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
8444 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
8445 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
8446 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
8447 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
8448
8449 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8450
8451 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
8452 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
8453 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
8454 by Angela).</p>
8455
8456 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
8457 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
8458 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
8459 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
8460 becoming an osteopath.</p>
8461
8462 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
8463 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
8464 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
8465 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
8466 skills with communication skills.</p>
8467
8468 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8469 project?</strong></p>
8470
8471 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
8472 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
8473 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
8474 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
8475 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
8476
8477 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
8478 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
8479 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
8480 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
8481 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
8482 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
8483 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
8484 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
8485 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
8486
8487 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
8488 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
8489 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
8490
8491 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
8492
8493 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
8494 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
8495 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
8496 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
8497 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
8498 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
8499 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
8500 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
8501 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
8502 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
8503 point.</p>
8504
8505 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
8506 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
8507 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
8508 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
8509 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
8510 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
8511
8512 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
8513 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
8514 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
8515 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
8516 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
8517 spare time.</p>
8518
8519 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
8520 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
8521 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
8522 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
8523 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
8524
8525 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
8526 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
8527 avoidance do exist.</p>
8528
8529 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
8530 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
8531 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
8532 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
8533 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
8534 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
8535 and probably a gain for all.</p>
8536
8537 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8538 Edu?</strong></p>
8539
8540 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
8541 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
8542 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
8543 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
8544 project communication, honest communication within the group of
8545 developers, etc.</p>
8546
8547 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8548 Edu?</strong></p>
8549
8550 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
8551
8552 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
8553 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
8554 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
8555 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
8556 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
8557 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
8558 contribute).</p>
8559
8560 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
8561 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
8562 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
8563 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
8564 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
8565 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
8566 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
8567 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
8568 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
8569 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
8570
8571 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8572
8573 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
8574
8575 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
8576 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
8577 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
8578
8579 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
8580 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
8581 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
8582 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
8583
8584 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
8585 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
8586 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
8587 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
8588 whiteboard.</p>
8589
8590 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
8591
8592 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8593 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8594
8595 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
8596 enrol people.</p>
8597
8598       </div>
8599       <div class="tags">
8600
8601
8602         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
8603
8604
8605       </div>
8606     </div>
8607     <div class="padding"></div>
8608
8609     <div class="entry">
8610       <div class="title">
8611         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
8612       </div>
8613       <div class="date">
8614          1st June 2012
8615       </div>
8616       <div class="body">
8617         <p>A few years ago I wrote
8618 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
8619 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
8620 I have learned from colleges here at the
8621 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
8622 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
8623 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
8624 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
8625 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
8626
8627 <p><pre>
8628 use strict;
8629 use warnings;
8630 use SOAP::Lite;
8631 use Data::Dumper;
8632 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
8633 my $App = 'test';
8634 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
8635 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
8636 my $s = SOAP::Lite
8637     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
8638     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
8639     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
8640     ;
8641 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
8642     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
8643     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
8644     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
8645 );
8646 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
8647 </pre></p>
8648
8649 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
8650
8651 <p><pre>
8652 $VAR1 = {
8653           'Asset' => {
8654                      'Entitlements' => {
8655                                        'EntitlementData' => [
8656                                                             {
8657                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
8658                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
8659                                                               'Provider' => '',
8660                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
8661                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
8662                                                             },
8663                                                             {
8664                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
8665                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
8666                                                               'Provider' => '',
8667                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
8668                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
8669                                                             },
8670                                                             {
8671                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
8672                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
8673                                                               'Provider' => '',
8674                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
8675                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
8676                                                             }
8677                                                           ]
8678                                      },
8679                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
8680                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
8681                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
8682                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
8683                                           'Buid' => '2323',
8684                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
8685                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
8686                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
8687                                         }
8688                    }
8689         };
8690 </pre></p>
8691
8692 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
8693 service outside the
8694 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
8695 documentation</a>, and according to
8696 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
8697 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
8698 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
8699
8700 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
8701 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
8702
8703       </div>
8704       <div class="tags">
8705
8706
8707         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8708
8709
8710       </div>
8711     </div>
8712     <div class="padding"></div>
8713
8714     <div class="entry">
8715       <div class="title">
8716         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
8717       </div>
8718       <div class="date">
8719         31st May 2012
8720       </div>
8721       <div class="body">
8722         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
8723 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
8724 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
8725 running Debian Squeeze, where
8726 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
8727 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
8728 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
8729 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
8730 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
8731 another day.</p>
8732
8733 <p>After calibration, I get a
8734 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
8735 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
8736 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
8737 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
8738 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
8739 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
8740 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
8741 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
8742 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
8743 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
8744 and a simple</p>
8745
8746 <p><pre>
8747 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
8748 </pre></p>
8749
8750 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
8751 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
8752 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
8753 enough for now.</p>
8754
8755       </div>
8756       <div class="tags">
8757
8758
8759         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8760
8761
8762       </div>
8763     </div>
8764     <div class="padding"></div>
8765
8766     <div class="entry">
8767       <div class="title">
8768         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
8769       </div>
8770       <div class="date">
8771         27th May 2012
8772       </div>
8773       <div class="body">
8774         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
8775 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
8776 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
8777 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
8778 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
8779 since then, helping to make sure the
8780 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
8781 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
8782
8783 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8784
8785 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
8786 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
8787 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
8788 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
8789 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
8790 our computer network.</p>
8791
8792 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
8793 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
8794 (4 months).</p>
8795
8796 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8797 project?</strong></p>
8798
8799 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
8800 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
8801 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
8802 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
8803 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
8804 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
8805 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
8806 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
8807 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
8808 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
8809 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
8810 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
8811 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
8812 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
8813
8814 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8815 Edu?</strong></p>
8816
8817 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
8818 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
8819 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
8820 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
8821 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
8822 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
8823 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
8824 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
8825
8826 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8827 Edu?</strong></p>
8828
8829 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
8830 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
8831 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
8832 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
8833 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
8834 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
8835 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
8836 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
8837 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
8838 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
8839 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
8840 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
8841
8842 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8843
8844 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
8845 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
8846 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
8847
8848 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8849 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8850
8851 <p><ol>
8852
8853 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
8854 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
8855 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
8856 developing.</li>
8857
8858 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
8859 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
8860 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
8861 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
8862 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
8863
8864 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
8865 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
8866 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
8867
8868 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
8869 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
8870 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
8871 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
8872
8873 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
8874 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
8875 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
8876
8877 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
8878
8879 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
8880 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
8881 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
8882 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
8883
8884 </ol></p>
8885
8886       </div>
8887       <div class="tags">
8888
8889
8890         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
8891
8892
8893       </div>
8894     </div>
8895     <div class="padding"></div>
8896
8897     <div class="entry">
8898       <div class="title">
8899         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
8900       </div>
8901       <div class="date">
8902         26th May 2012
8903       </div>
8904       <div class="body">
8905         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
8906 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
8907 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
8908 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
8909 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
8910
8911 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
8912 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
8913 comment:</p>
8914
8915 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
8916 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
8917 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
8918 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
8919 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
8920 </blockquote></p>
8921
8922 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
8923 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
8924 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
8925 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
8926 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
8927 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
8928 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
8929 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
8930 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
8931 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
8932 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
8933 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
8934 of wasted effort.</p>
8935
8936 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
8937 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
8938 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
8939
8940 <p>See
8941 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
8942 and
8943 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
8944 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
8945 </blockquote></p>
8946
8947       </div>
8948       <div class="tags">
8949
8950
8951         Tags: <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>.
8952
8953
8954       </div>
8955     </div>
8956     <div class="padding"></div>
8957
8958     <div class="entry">
8959       <div class="title">
8960         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
8961       </div>
8962       <div class="date">
8963         18th May 2012
8964       </div>
8965       <div class="body">
8966         <p>In january, I
8967 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
8968 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
8969 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
8970 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
8971 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
8972 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
8973 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
8974 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
8975 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
8976 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
8977
8978 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
8979 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
8980 drivers. :)</p>
8981
8982       </div>
8983       <div class="tags">
8984
8985
8986         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8987
8988
8989       </div>
8990     </div>
8991     <div class="padding"></div>
8992
8993     <div class="entry">
8994       <div class="title">
8995         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
8996       </div>
8997       <div class="date">
8998         13th May 2012
8999       </div>
9000       <div class="body">
9001         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
9002 publish another interview with the people behind
9003 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
9004 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
9005 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
9006 details get right before release.
9007
9008 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9009
9010 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
9011 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
9012 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
9013 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
9014 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
9015 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
9016 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
9017 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
9018
9019 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
9020 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
9021 home since 2006.</p>
9022
9023 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9024 project?</strong></p>
9025
9026 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
9027 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
9028 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
9029 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
9030 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
9031 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
9032
9033 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
9034 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
9035 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
9036 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
9037 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
9038 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
9039 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
9040 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
9041 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
9042 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
9043 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
9044 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
9045 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
9046 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
9047 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
9048 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
9049
9050 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9051 Edu?</strong></p>
9052
9053 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
9054 for me as today.</p>
9055
9056 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
9057
9058 <p><ul>
9059
9060 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
9061 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
9062
9063 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
9064 cost.</li>
9065
9066 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
9067 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
9068 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
9069 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
9070 server</li>
9071
9072 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
9073 school.</li>
9074
9075 </ul></p>
9076
9077 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
9078 came up in this way:</p>
9079
9080 <p><ul>
9081
9082 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
9083 now.</li>
9084
9085 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
9086 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
9087 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
9088
9089 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
9090 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
9091 interfaces used in the past.</li>
9092
9093 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
9094 different needs.</li>
9095
9096 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
9097
9098 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
9099 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
9100 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
9101
9102 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
9103 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
9104
9105 </ul></p>
9106
9107 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9108 Edu?</strong></p>
9109
9110 <p><ul>
9111
9112 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
9113 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
9114 whole municipality areas.</li>
9115
9116 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
9117 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
9118 politicians.</li>
9119
9120 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
9121
9122 </ul></p>
9123
9124 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9125
9126 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
9127 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
9128 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
9129 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
9130 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
9131 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
9132
9133 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
9134 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
9135 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
9136 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
9137 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
9138
9139 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9140 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9141
9142 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
9143 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
9144 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
9145
9146       </div>
9147       <div class="tags">
9148
9149
9150         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
9151
9152
9153       </div>
9154     </div>
9155     <div class="padding"></div>
9156
9157     <div class="entry">
9158       <div class="title">
9159         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
9160       </div>
9161       <div class="date">
9162         30th April 2012
9163       </div>
9164       <div class="body">
9165         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
9166 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
9167
9168 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
9169 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
9170 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
9171 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
9172 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
9173 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
9174 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
9175 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
9176 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
9177 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
9178 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
9179 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
9180 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
9181 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
9182 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
9183 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
9184
9185 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
9186 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
9187 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
9188 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
9189 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
9190 finally found a Danish supplier
9191 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
9192 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
9193 days ago.</p>
9194
9195 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
9196 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
9197 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
9198 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
9199 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
9200 toys.</p>
9201
9202       </div>
9203       <div class="tags">
9204
9205
9206         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9207
9208
9209       </div>
9210     </div>
9211     <div class="padding"></div>
9212
9213     <div class="entry">
9214       <div class="title">
9215         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
9216       </div>
9217       <div class="date">
9218         26th April 2012
9219       </div>
9220       <div class="body">
9221         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
9222 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
9223 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
9224 that the video editor application included with
9225 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
9226 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
9227 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
9228
9229 <p><blockquote>
9230 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
9231 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
9232 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
9233 </blockquote></p>
9234
9235 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
9236
9237 <p><blockquote>
9238 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
9239 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
9240 </blockquote></p>
9241
9242 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
9243 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
9244 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
9245 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
9246 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
9247 video.  AMR is
9248 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
9249 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
9250 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
9251 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
9252 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
9253 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
9254 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
9255
9256 <p>I know why I prefer
9257 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
9258 standards</a> also for video.</p>
9259
9260       </div>
9261       <div class="tags">
9262
9263
9264         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</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>.
9265
9266
9267       </div>
9268     </div>
9269     <div class="padding"></div>
9270
9271     <div class="entry">
9272       <div class="title">
9273         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
9274       </div>
9275       <div class="date">
9276         19th April 2012
9277       </div>
9278       <div class="body">
9279         <p>Here in Norway, the
9280 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
9281 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
9282 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
9283 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
9284 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
9285 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
9286 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
9287 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
9288 on the same level.</p>
9289
9290 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
9291 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
9292 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
9293 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
9294 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
9295 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
9296 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
9297 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
9298 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
9299 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
9300 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
9301 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
9302 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
9303 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
9304 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
9305 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
9306 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
9307 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
9308
9309 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
9310 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
9311 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
9312 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
9313 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
9314 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
9315 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
9316 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
9317
9318 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
9319 from Simon Phipps
9320 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
9321 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
9322
9323 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
9324 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
9325 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
9326 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
9327 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
9328 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
9329 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
9330 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
9331 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
9332
9333       </div>
9334       <div class="tags">
9335
9336
9337         Tags: <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/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
9338
9339
9340       </div>
9341     </div>
9342     <div class="padding"></div>
9343
9344     <div class="entry">
9345       <div class="title">
9346         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
9347       </div>
9348       <div class="date">
9349         15th April 2012
9350       </div>
9351       <div class="body">
9352         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
9353 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
9354 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
9355 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
9356 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
9357 up in the recently released
9358 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
9359 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
9360
9361 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9362
9363 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
9364 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
9365 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
9366 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
9367 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
9368 information technology and science/technology.</p>
9369
9370 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9371 project?</strong></p>
9372
9373 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
9374 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
9375 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
9376 contributing.</p>
9377
9378 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9379 Edu?</strong></p>
9380
9381 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
9382 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
9383 Debian Project!</p>
9384
9385 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9386 Edu?</strong></p>
9387
9388 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
9389 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
9390 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
9391 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
9392 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
9393 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
9394 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
9395
9396 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
9397 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
9398
9399 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9400
9401 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
9402 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
9403 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
9404 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
9405
9406 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9407 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9408
9409 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
9410 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
9411 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
9412 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
9413 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
9414 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
9415 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
9416
9417 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
9418 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
9419 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
9420 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
9421 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
9422 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
9423 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
9424 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
9425
9426       </div>
9427       <div class="tags">
9428
9429
9430         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
9431
9432
9433       </div>
9434     </div>
9435     <div class="padding"></div>
9436
9437     <div class="entry">
9438       <div class="title">
9439         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
9440       </div>
9441       <div class="date">
9442          8th April 2012
9443       </div>
9444       <div class="body">
9445         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
9446 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
9447 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
9448 contributor to the
9449 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
9450 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
9451
9452 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9453
9454 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
9455 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
9456
9457 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9458 project?</strong></p>
9459
9460 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
9461 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
9462 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
9463 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
9464 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
9465 "localisation".</p>
9466
9467 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9468 Edu?</strong></p>
9469
9470 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9471 Edu?</strong></p>
9472
9473 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
9474 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
9475 education system.</p>
9476
9477 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
9478 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
9479 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
9480 money on the latest hardware.</p>
9481
9482 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9483
9484 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
9485 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
9486 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
9487
9488 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9489 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9490
9491 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
9492 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
9493 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
9494
9495       </div>
9496       <div class="tags">
9497
9498
9499         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
9500
9501
9502       </div>
9503     </div>
9504     <div class="padding"></div>
9505
9506     <div class="entry">
9507       <div class="title">
9508         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
9509       </div>
9510       <div class="date">
9511          6th April 2012
9512       </div>
9513       <div class="body">
9514         <p>Recently I have spent time with
9515 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
9516 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
9517 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
9518 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
9519 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
9520 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
9521 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
9522 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
9523
9524 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
9525 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
9526 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
9527 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
9528 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
9529 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
9530 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
9531 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
9532
9533 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
9534 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
9535 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
9536 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
9537 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
9538 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
9539 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
9540 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
9541
9542 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
9543 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
9544 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
9545 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
9546 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
9547 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
9548 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
9549 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
9550 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
9551 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
9552
9553 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
9554 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
9555 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
9556 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
9557
9558 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
9559 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
9560
9561       </div>
9562       <div class="tags">
9563
9564
9565         Tags: <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>.
9566
9567
9568       </div>
9569     </div>
9570     <div class="padding"></div>
9571
9572     <div class="entry">
9573       <div class="title">
9574         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
9575       </div>
9576       <div class="date">
9577          5th April 2012
9578       </div>
9579       <div class="body">
9580         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
9581 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
9582 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
9583 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
9584 for schools.  Check out his article
9585 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
9586 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
9587
9588       </div>
9589       <div class="tags">
9590
9591
9592         Tags: <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>.
9593
9594
9595       </div>
9596     </div>
9597     <div class="padding"></div>
9598
9599     <div class="entry">
9600       <div class="title">
9601         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
9602       </div>
9603       <div class="date">
9604          1st April 2012
9605       </div>
9606       <div class="body">
9607         <p>Germany is a core area for the
9608 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
9609 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
9610 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
9611
9612 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9613
9614 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
9615 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
9616 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
9617 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
9618 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
9619 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
9620 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
9621 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
9622
9623 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
9624 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
9625 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
9626 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
9627 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
9628 the end of April this year.</p>
9629
9630 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9631 project?</strong></p>
9632
9633 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
9634 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
9635 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
9636 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
9637 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
9638 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
9639 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
9640 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
9641 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
9642 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
9643 Skolelinux.</p>
9644
9645 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
9646 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
9647 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
9648 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
9649 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
9650 the admin teachers.</p>
9651
9652 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9653 Edu?</strong></p>
9654
9655 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
9656 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
9657 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
9658
9659 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
9660 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
9661 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
9662 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
9663 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
9664
9665 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9666 Edu?</strong></p>
9667
9668 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
9669
9670 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9671
9672 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
9673 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
9674 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
9675 LibreOffice.</p>
9676
9677 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9678 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9679
9680 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
9681 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
9682 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
9683
9684       </div>
9685       <div class="tags">
9686
9687
9688         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
9689
9690
9691       </div>
9692     </div>
9693     <div class="padding"></div>
9694
9695     <div class="entry">
9696       <div class="title">
9697         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
9698       </div>
9699       <div class="date">
9700         25th March 2012
9701       </div>
9702       <div class="body">
9703         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
9704
9705 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
9706 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
9707 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
9708 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
9709 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
9710 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
9711 and download as a
9712 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
9713 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
9714
9715 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
9716   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
9717     <p>Download video as
9718       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
9719 </video></p>
9720
9721       </div>
9722       <div class="tags">
9723
9724
9725         Tags: <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>.
9726
9727
9728       </div>
9729     </div>
9730     <div class="padding"></div>
9731
9732     <div class="entry">
9733       <div class="title">
9734         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
9735       </div>
9736       <div class="date">
9737         19th March 2012
9738       </div>
9739       <div class="body">
9740         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
9741 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
9742 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
9743 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
9744 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
9745
9746 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9747
9748 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
9749 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
9750 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
9751 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
9752 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
9753 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
9754 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
9755 installations.</p>
9756
9757 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9758 project?</strong></p>
9759
9760 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
9761 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
9762 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
9763 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
9764 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
9765 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
9766 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
9767 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
9768 these things we decided to try it.</p>
9769
9770 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9771 Edu?</strong></p>
9772
9773 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
9774 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
9775 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
9776 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
9777 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
9778 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
9779 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
9780 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
9781
9782 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9783 Edu?</strong></p>
9784
9785 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
9786 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
9787 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
9788 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
9789 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
9790
9791 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9792
9793 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
9794 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
9795 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
9796 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
9797 that counts...)</p>
9798
9799 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9800 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9801
9802 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
9803 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
9804 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
9805 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
9806 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
9807 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
9808 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
9809 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
9810 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
9811 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
9812 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
9813
9814 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
9815 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
9816 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
9817
9818       </div>
9819       <div class="tags">
9820
9821
9822         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
9823
9824
9825       </div>
9826     </div>
9827     <div class="padding"></div>
9828
9829     <div class="entry">
9830       <div class="title">
9831         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
9832       </div>
9833       <div class="date">
9834         16th March 2012
9835       </div>
9836       <div class="body">
9837         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
9838 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
9839 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
9840 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
9841
9842 <ol>
9843
9844 <li>The documentation is written in a
9845 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
9846 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
9847 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
9848 docbook XML.</li>
9849
9850 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
9851 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
9852 with the translated text.</li>
9853
9854 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
9855 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
9856 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
9857 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
9858 images.</li>
9859
9860 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
9861 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
9862
9863 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
9864 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
9865
9866 </ol>
9867
9868 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
9869 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
9870 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
9871 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
9872 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
9873
9874 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
9875 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
9876 package</a>.</p>
9877
9878       </div>
9879       <div class="tags">
9880
9881
9882         Tags: <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>.
9883
9884
9885       </div>
9886     </div>
9887     <div class="padding"></div>
9888
9889     <div class="entry">
9890       <div class="title">
9891         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
9892       </div>
9893       <div class="date">
9894         11th March 2012
9895       </div>
9896       <div class="body">
9897         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
9898 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
9899 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
9900 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
9901 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
9902 you have not done so already.</p>
9903
9904 <p>I plan to present the new version at
9905 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
9906 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
9907 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
9908
9909       </div>
9910       <div class="tags">
9911
9912
9913         Tags: <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>.
9914
9915
9916       </div>
9917     </div>
9918     <div class="padding"></div>
9919
9920     <div class="entry">
9921       <div class="title">
9922         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
9923       </div>
9924       <div class="date">
9925          9th March 2012
9926       </div>
9927       <div class="body">
9928         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
9929 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
9930 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
9931 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
9932 more international audience.</p>
9933
9934 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
9935 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
9936 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
9937 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
9938 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
9939 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
9940 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
9941
9942
9943 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9944
9945 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
9946 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
9947 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
9948 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
9949 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
9950 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
9951 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
9952 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
9953 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
9954 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
9955 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
9956
9957 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9958 project?</strong></p>
9959
9960 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
9961 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
9962 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
9963 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
9964 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
9965 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
9966 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
9967 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
9968 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
9969 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
9970 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
9971 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
9972 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
9973
9974 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9975 Edu?</strong></p>
9976
9977 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
9978 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
9979 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
9980 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
9981 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
9982 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
9983 Japan.</p>
9984
9985 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9986 Edu?</strong></p>
9987
9988 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
9989 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
9990 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
9991 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
9992 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
9993 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
9994 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
9995 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
9996 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
9997 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
9998 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
9999 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
10000 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
10001 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
10002 help.</p>
10003
10004 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10005
10006 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
10007 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
10008 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
10009 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
10010 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
10011 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
10012 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
10013 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
10014 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
10015 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
10016 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
10017
10018 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10019 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10020
10021 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
10022 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
10023 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
10024 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
10025 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
10026 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
10027 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
10028 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
10029 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
10030 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
10031 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
10032 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
10033
10034       </div>
10035       <div class="tags">
10036
10037
10038         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
10039
10040
10041       </div>
10042     </div>
10043     <div class="padding"></div>
10044
10045     <div class="entry">
10046       <div class="title">
10047         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
10048       </div>
10049       <div class="date">
10050          7th March 2012
10051       </div>
10052       <div class="body">
10053         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
10054
10055 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
10056 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
10057 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
10058 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
10059 download as a
10060 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
10061 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
10062
10063 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
10064   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
10065     <p>Download video as
10066       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
10067 </video></p>
10068
10069       </div>
10070       <div class="tags">
10071
10072
10073         Tags: <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>.
10074
10075
10076       </div>
10077     </div>
10078     <div class="padding"></div>
10079
10080     <div class="entry">
10081       <div class="title">
10082         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
10083       </div>
10084       <div class="date">
10085          4th March 2012
10086       </div>
10087       <div class="body">
10088         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
10089 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
10090 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
10091 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
10092 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
10093 need a software solution for your school.</p>
10094
10095       </div>
10096       <div class="tags">
10097
10098
10099         Tags: <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>.
10100
10101
10102       </div>
10103     </div>
10104     <div class="padding"></div>
10105
10106     <div class="entry">
10107       <div class="title">
10108         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
10109       </div>
10110       <div class="date">
10111          3rd March 2012
10112       </div>
10113       <div class="body">
10114         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
10115 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
10116 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
10117 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
10118 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
10119 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
10120 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
10121 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
10122 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
10123 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
10124 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
10125 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
10126 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
10127 year...</p>
10128
10129 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
10130 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
10131 name,
10132 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
10133 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
10134 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
10135 mean). I've been following
10136 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
10137 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
10138 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
10139 Check it out. :)</p>
10140
10141       </div>
10142       <div class="tags">
10143
10144
10145         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
10146
10147
10148       </div>
10149     </div>
10150     <div class="padding"></div>
10151
10152     <div class="entry">
10153       <div class="title">
10154         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
10155       </div>
10156       <div class="date">
10157         27th February 2012
10158       </div>
10159       <div class="body">
10160         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
10161 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
10162 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
10163 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
10164 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
10165 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
10166 need a software solution for your school.</p>
10167
10168       </div>
10169       <div class="tags">
10170
10171
10172         Tags: <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>.
10173
10174
10175       </div>
10176     </div>
10177     <div class="padding"></div>
10178
10179     <div class="entry">
10180       <div class="title">
10181         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
10182       </div>
10183       <div class="date">
10184         19th February 2012
10185       </div>
10186       <div class="body">
10187         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
10188 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
10189 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
10190 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
10191 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
10192 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
10193 solution for your school.</p>
10194
10195       </div>
10196       <div class="tags">
10197
10198
10199         Tags: <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>.
10200
10201
10202       </div>
10203     </div>
10204     <div class="padding"></div>
10205
10206     <div class="entry">
10207       <div class="title">
10208         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
10209       </div>
10210       <div class="date">
10211         14th February 2012
10212       </div>
10213       <div class="body">
10214         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
10215 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
10216 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
10217 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
10218 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
10219 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
10220 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
10221 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
10222 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
10223
10224 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
10225 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
10226 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
10227 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
10228 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
10229
10230 <blockquote><pre>
10231 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
10232 do
10233     printf "Failed disk $d: "
10234     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
10235 done
10236 </blockquote></pre>
10237
10238 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
10239 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
10240
10241 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
10242
10243 <blockquote><pre>
10244 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
10245 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
10246 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
10247 </blockquote></pre>
10248
10249 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
10250 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
10251 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
10252 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
10253 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
10254 mounted inside my box.</p>
10255
10256 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
10257 Software RAID in the
10258 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
10259 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
10260 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
10261 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
10262 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
10263 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
10264
10265       </div>
10266       <div class="tags">
10267
10268
10269         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
10270
10271
10272       </div>
10273     </div>
10274     <div class="padding"></div>
10275
10276     <div class="entry">
10277       <div class="title">
10278         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
10279       </div>
10280       <div class="date">
10281         13th February 2012
10282       </div>
10283       <div class="body">
10284         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
10285 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
10286 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
10287 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
10288 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
10289 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
10290 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
10291 change the global proxy setting by editing
10292 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
10293 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
10294
10295 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
10296 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
10297 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
10298
10299 <blockquote><pre>
10300 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
10301 {
10302    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
10303        isPlainHostName(host) ||
10304        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
10305       return "DIRECT";
10306    else
10307       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
10308 }
10309 </pre></blockquote>
10310
10311 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
10312
10313 <blockquote><pre>
10314 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
10315 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
10316 </pre></blockquote>
10317
10318 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
10319 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
10320 would be used for
10321 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
10322 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
10323 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
10324 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
10325 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
10326 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
10327 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
10328 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
10329 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
10330 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
10331
10332 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
10333 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
10334 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
10335 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
10336 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
10337 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
10338
10339 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
10340 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
10341 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
10342 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
10343 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
10344 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
10345 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
10346 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
10347 the network setup changes.</p>
10348
10349 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
10350 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
10351 draft</a> and a
10352 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
10353 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
10354
10355       </div>
10356       <div class="tags">
10357
10358
10359         Tags: <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>.
10360
10361
10362       </div>
10363     </div>
10364     <div class="padding"></div>
10365
10366     <div class="entry">
10367       <div class="title">
10368         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
10369       </div>
10370       <div class="date">
10371          5th February 2012
10372       </div>
10373       <div class="body">
10374         <p>Since the Lenny version of
10375 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
10376 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
10377 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
10378 in the morning.  This is done using the
10379 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
10380
10381 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
10382 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
10383 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
10384 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
10385 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
10386 the
10387 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
10388 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
10389 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
10390 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
10391 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
10392
10393 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
10394 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
10395 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
10396 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
10397 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
10398 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
10399 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
10400
10401 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
10402 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
10403 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
10404 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
10405 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
10406
10407       </div>
10408       <div class="tags">
10409
10410
10411         Tags: <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>.
10412
10413
10414       </div>
10415     </div>
10416     <div class="padding"></div>
10417
10418     <div class="entry">
10419       <div class="title">
10420         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
10421       </div>
10422       <div class="date">
10423          4th February 2012
10424       </div>
10425       <div class="body">
10426         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
10427 publish the third beta version of
10428 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
10429 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
10430 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
10431 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
10432 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
10433 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
10434 on the project announcement list.</p>
10435
10436 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
10437 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
10438
10439 <ul>
10440
10441 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
10442   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
10443   the installation.</li>
10444
10445 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
10446   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
10447
10448 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
10449   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
10450   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
10451
10452 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
10453   for the local system administrator is created during installation
10454   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
10455   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
10456   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
10457   up to date on the system.</li>
10458
10459 </ul>
10460
10461 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
10462 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
10463 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
10464 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
10465
10466 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
10467 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
10468 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
10469 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
10470 will see you there?</p>
10471
10472       </div>
10473       <div class="tags">
10474
10475
10476         Tags: <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>.
10477
10478
10479       </div>
10480     </div>
10481     <div class="padding"></div>
10482
10483     <div class="entry">
10484       <div class="title">
10485         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
10486       </div>
10487       <div class="date">
10488         27th January 2012
10489       </div>
10490       <div class="body">
10491         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
10492 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
10493 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
10494 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
10495 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
10496 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
10497 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
10498
10499 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
10500 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
10501 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
10502 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
10503 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
10504 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
10505 not taken care of by this.</p>
10506
10507 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
10508 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
10509 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
10510 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
10511 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
10512 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
10513 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
10514 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
10515 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
10516 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
10517 firmware packages.</p>
10518
10519 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
10520 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
10521 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
10522 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
10523 initrd with extra firmware, the
10524 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
10525 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
10526 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
10527
10528 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
10529 network cards working.  For this,
10530 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
10531 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
10532 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
10533
10534 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
10535 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
10536 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
10537
10538 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
10539 try.</p>
10540
10541       </div>
10542       <div class="tags">
10543
10544
10545         Tags: <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>.
10546
10547
10548       </div>
10549     </div>
10550     <div class="padding"></div>
10551
10552     <div class="entry">
10553       <div class="title">
10554         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
10555       </div>
10556       <div class="date">
10557         25th January 2012
10558       </div>
10559       <div class="body">
10560         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
10561 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
10562 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
10563 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
10564 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
10565
10566 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
10567 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
10568 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
10569 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
10570 this is done, log on to the central server and run
10571 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
10572 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
10573 will look similar to this:</p>
10574
10575 <p><blockquote><pre>
10576 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
10577 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
10578 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
10579
10580 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
10581
10582 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10583 enter password: *******
10584 %
10585 </pre></blockquote></p>
10586
10587 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
10588 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
10589 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
10590 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
10591 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
10592 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
10593 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
10594 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
10595 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
10596 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
10597 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
10598 automatically.</p>
10599
10600 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
10601 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
10602
10603 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
10604 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
10605 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
10606
10607       </div>
10608       <div class="tags">
10609
10610
10611         Tags: <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>.
10612
10613
10614       </div>
10615     </div>
10616     <div class="padding"></div>
10617
10618     <div class="entry">
10619       <div class="title">
10620         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
10621       </div>
10622       <div class="date">
10623         10th January 2012
10624       </div>
10625       <div class="body">
10626         <p>In the Squeeze version of
10627 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
10628 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
10629 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
10630 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
10631 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
10632 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
10633 first time.</p>
10634
10635 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
10636 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
10637 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
10638 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
10639
10640 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
10641 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
10642 new setting.</p>
10643
10644 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
10645 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
10646 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
10647
10648       </div>
10649       <div class="tags">
10650
10651
10652         Tags: <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/web">web</a>.
10653
10654
10655       </div>
10656     </div>
10657     <div class="padding"></div>
10658
10659     <div class="entry">
10660       <div class="title">
10661         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
10662       </div>
10663       <div class="date">
10664          7th January 2012
10665       </div>
10666       <div class="body">
10667         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
10668 the second beta version of
10669 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
10670 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
10671 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
10672 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
10673 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
10674 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
10675 on the project announcement list.</p>
10676
10677       </div>
10678       <div class="tags">
10679
10680
10681         Tags: <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>.
10682
10683
10684       </div>
10685     </div>
10686     <div class="padding"></div>
10687
10688     <div class="entry">
10689       <div class="title">
10690         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
10691       </div>
10692       <div class="date">
10693          3rd January 2012
10694       </div>
10695       <div class="body">
10696         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
10697 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
10698 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
10699 interesting.</p>
10700
10701 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
10702 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
10703 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
10704 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
10705 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
10706 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
10707 wrap up its tasks.</p>
10708
10709 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
10710 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
10711 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
10712 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
10713 because I was typing.</P>
10714
10715 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
10716 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
10717 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
10718 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
10719 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
10720 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
10721 generate entropy.</p>
10722
10723 <p>The fix is in
10724 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
10725 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
10726 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
10727 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
10728
10729       </div>
10730       <div class="tags">
10731
10732
10733         Tags: <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>.
10734
10735
10736       </div>
10737     </div>
10738     <div class="padding"></div>
10739
10740     <div class="entry">
10741       <div class="title">
10742         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
10743       </div>
10744       <div class="date">
10745         21st November 2011
10746       </div>
10747       <div class="body">
10748         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
10749 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
10750 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
10751 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
10752 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
10753 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
10754 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
10755 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
10756 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
10757 the tools to do so.</p>
10758
10759 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
10760 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
10761 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
10762 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
10763
10764 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
10765 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
10766 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
10767 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
10768 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
10769 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
10770 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
10771 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
10772
10773 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
10774 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
10775 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
10776
10777 <p><pre>
10778 #!/usr/bin/perl
10779 use strict;
10780 use warnings;
10781 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
10782 BEGIN {
10783     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
10784     my %rhelmodules = (
10785         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
10786         );
10787     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
10788         eval "use $module;";
10789         if ($@) {
10790             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
10791             system("yum install -y $pkg");
10792             eval "use $module;";
10793         }
10794     }
10795 }
10796 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
10797
10798 upgrade_dell();
10799
10800 exit 0;
10801
10802 sub run_firmware_script {
10803     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
10804     unless ($script) {
10805         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
10806         exit 1
10807     }
10808     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
10809
10810     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
10811         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
10812     } else {
10813         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
10814     }
10815 }
10816
10817 sub run_firmware_scripts {
10818     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
10819     # Run firmware packages
10820     for my $dir (@dirs) {
10821         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
10822         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
10823         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
10824             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
10825             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
10826         }
10827         closedir $dh;
10828     }
10829 }
10830
10831 sub download {
10832     my $url = shift;
10833     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
10834     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
10835 }
10836
10837 sub upgrade_dell {
10838     my @dirs;
10839     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
10840     chomp $product;
10841
10842     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
10843
10844         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
10845         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
10846
10847         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
10848             CLEANUP => 1
10849             );
10850         chdir($tmpdir);
10851         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
10852         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
10853         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
10854         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
10855         my $fwopts = "-q";
10856         if (@paths) {
10857             for my $url (@paths) {
10858                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
10859             }
10860             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
10861         } else {
10862             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
10863             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
10864         }
10865         chdir('/');
10866     } else {
10867         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
10868         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
10869     }
10870 }
10871
10872 sub fetch_dell_fw {
10873     my $path = shift;
10874     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
10875     download($url);
10876 }
10877
10878 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
10879 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
10880 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
10881 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
10882     my $filename = shift;
10883
10884     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
10885     chomp $product;
10886     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
10887
10888     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
10889
10890     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
10891     my @paths;
10892     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
10893         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
10894         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
10895         my $oscode;
10896         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
10897             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
10898         } else {
10899             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
10900         }
10901         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
10902         {
10903             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
10904         }
10905     }
10906     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
10907         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
10908
10909         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
10910         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
10911
10912         my $cpath = $component->{path};
10913         for my $path (@paths) {
10914             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
10915                 push(@paths, $cpath);
10916             }
10917         }
10918     }
10919     return @paths;
10920 }
10921 </pre>
10922
10923 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
10924 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
10925 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
10926 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
10927 outdated.</p>
10928
10929       </div>
10930       <div class="tags">
10931
10932
10933         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>.
10934
10935
10936       </div>
10937     </div>
10938     <div class="padding"></div>
10939
10940     <div class="entry">
10941       <div class="title">
10942         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
10943       </div>
10944       <div class="date">
10945          7th October 2011
10946       </div>
10947       <div class="body">
10948         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
10949 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
10950 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
10951 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
10952 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
10953 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
10954 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
10955 models.</p>
10956
10957 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
10958 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
10959 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
10960 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
10961
10962 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
10963 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
10964 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
10965 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
10966 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
10967 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
10968 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
10969 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
10970 distributed.</p>
10971
10972 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
10973
10974 <ul>
10975
10976 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
10977   other relevant equipment.</li>
10978
10979 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
10980
10981 </ul>
10982
10983 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
10984 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
10985 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
10986 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
10987 books available.</p>
10988
10989 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
10990 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
10991 libraries. :)</p>
10992
10993       </div>
10994       <div class="tags">
10995
10996
10997         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
10998
10999
11000       </div>
11001     </div>
11002     <div class="padding"></div>
11003
11004     <div class="entry">
11005       <div class="title">
11006         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
11007       </div>
11008       <div class="date">
11009         17th September 2011
11010       </div>
11011       <div class="body">
11012         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
11013 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
11014 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
11015 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
11016 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
11017 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
11018 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
11019 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
11020
11021 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
11022
11023 <blockquote><pre>
11024 #!/bin/sh
11025 # apt-get install lsdvd
11026 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
11027 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
11028 </pre></blockquote>
11029
11030 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
11031 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
11032 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
11033 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
11034
11035 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
11036 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
11037 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
11038 back as an ISO.
11039
11040 <blockquote><pre>
11041 #!/bin/sh
11042 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
11043 set -e
11044 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
11045 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
11046 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
11047 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
11048 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
11049 </pre></blockquote>
11050
11051 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
11052
11053 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
11054 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
11055 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
11056 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
11057 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
11058
11059 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
11060 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
11061 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
11062 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
11063 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
11064 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
11065
11066       </div>
11067       <div class="tags">
11068
11069
11070         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
11071
11072
11073       </div>
11074     </div>
11075     <div class="padding"></div>
11076
11077     <div class="entry">
11078       <div class="title">
11079         <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>
11080       </div>
11081       <div class="date">
11082          4th August 2011
11083       </div>
11084       <div class="body">
11085         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
11086 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
11087 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
11088 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
11089 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
11090 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
11091 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
11092 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
11093 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
11094
11095 <p><blockquote>
11096 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
11097 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
11098 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
11099 </blockquote></p>
11100
11101 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
11102 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
11103 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
11104 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
11105 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
11106 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
11107 hard to explain.</p>
11108
11109 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
11110 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
11111 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
11112 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
11113 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
11114 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
11115 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
11116 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
11117 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
11118 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
11119 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
11120 mode).</p>
11121
11122 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
11123 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
11124 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
11125 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
11126 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
11127 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
11128 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
11129 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
11130 after visiting single user mode.</p>
11131
11132 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
11133 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
11134 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
11135 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
11136 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
11137 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
11138 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
11139 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
11140
11141 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
11142 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
11143 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
11144
11145       </div>
11146       <div class="tags">
11147
11148
11149         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>.
11150
11151
11152       </div>
11153     </div>
11154     <div class="padding"></div>
11155
11156     <div class="entry">
11157       <div class="title">
11158         <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>
11159       </div>
11160       <div class="date">
11161         30th July 2011
11162       </div>
11163       <div class="body">
11164         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
11165 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
11166 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
11167 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
11168 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
11169 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
11170 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
11171 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
11172 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
11173 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
11174 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
11175 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
11176 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
11177
11178 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
11179 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
11180 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
11181 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
11182 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
11183 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
11184 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
11185 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
11186 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
11187
11188 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
11189 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
11190 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
11191 is presented.</p>
11192
11193 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
11194 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
11195 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
11196 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
11197 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
11198 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
11199 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
11200 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
11201 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
11202 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
11203 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
11204 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
11205 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
11206 find time to push this forward.</p>
11207
11208       </div>
11209       <div class="tags">
11210
11211
11212         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>.
11213
11214
11215       </div>
11216     </div>
11217     <div class="padding"></div>
11218
11219     <div class="entry">
11220       <div class="title">
11221         <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>
11222       </div>
11223       <div class="date">
11224         29th July 2011
11225       </div>
11226       <div class="body">
11227         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
11228 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
11229 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
11230 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
11231 issues.</p>
11232
11233 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
11234 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
11235 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
11236
11237 <ol>
11238
11239 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
11240 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
11241 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
11242 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
11243 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
11244 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
11245 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
11246 Debian.</li>
11247
11248 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
11249 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
11250 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
11251 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
11252 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
11253 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
11254 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
11255 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
11256 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
11257 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
11258 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
11259 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
11260 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
11261
11262 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
11263 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
11264 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
11265 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
11266 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
11267 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
11268 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
11269 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
11270 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
11271 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
11272
11273 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
11274 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
11275 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
11276 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
11277 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
11278 latter behaviour.</li>
11279
11280 </ol>
11281
11282 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
11283 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
11284 it do not matter much.</p>
11285
11286 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
11287 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
11288 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
11289
11290       </div>
11291       <div class="tags">
11292
11293
11294         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
11295
11296
11297       </div>
11298     </div>
11299     <div class="padding"></div>
11300
11301     <div class="entry">
11302       <div class="title">
11303         <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>
11304       </div>
11305       <div class="date">
11306         26th July 2011
11307       </div>
11308       <div class="body">
11309         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
11310 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
11311 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
11312 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
11313 security support for a few years.</p>
11314
11315 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
11316 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
11317 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
11318 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
11319 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
11320 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
11321 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
11322 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
11323 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
11324 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
11325 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
11326 easier in the future.</p>
11327
11328 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
11329 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
11330 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
11331 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
11332 do not have time for.</p>
11333
11334       </div>
11335       <div class="tags">
11336
11337
11338         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>.
11339
11340
11341       </div>
11342     </div>
11343     <div class="padding"></div>
11344
11345     <div class="entry">
11346       <div class="title">
11347         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
11348       </div>
11349       <div class="date">
11350         20th June 2011
11351       </div>
11352       <div class="body">
11353         <p>Reading
11354 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
11355 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
11356 parts of the
11357 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
11358 and
11359 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
11360 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
11361 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
11362 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
11363
11364       </div>
11365       <div class="tags">
11366
11367
11368         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
11369
11370
11371       </div>
11372     </div>
11373     <div class="padding"></div>
11374
11375     <div class="entry">
11376       <div class="title">
11377         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
11378       </div>
11379       <div class="date">
11380         30th April 2011
11381       </div>
11382       <div class="body">
11383         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
11384 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
11385 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
11386 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
11387 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
11388 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
11389 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
11390 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
11391 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
11392 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
11393
11394 <p>Where is it?  Visit
11395 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
11396 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
11397 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
11398 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
11399
11400       </div>
11401       <div class="tags">
11402
11403
11404         Tags: <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/open311">open311</a>.
11405
11406
11407       </div>
11408     </div>
11409     <div class="padding"></div>
11410
11411     <div class="entry">
11412       <div class="title">
11413         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
11414       </div>
11415       <div class="date">
11416         29th April 2011
11417       </div>
11418       <div class="body">
11419         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
11420 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
11421 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
11422 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
11423 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
11424 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
11425 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
11426 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
11427 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
11428 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
11429 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
11430 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
11431 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
11432
11433 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
11434 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
11435 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
11436 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
11437 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
11438 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
11439 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
11440 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
11441 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
11442 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
11443 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
11444 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
11445 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
11446
11447 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
11448 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
11449 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
11450 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
11451 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
11452 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
11453 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
11454 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
11455 it.</p>
11456
11457 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
11458 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
11459 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
11460 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
11461 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
11462 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
11463 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
11464
11465 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
11466 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
11467 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
11468 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
11469 and range= options.</p>
11470
11471 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
11472 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
11473 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
11474 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
11475 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
11476 to best handle this.  I've noticed
11477 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
11478 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
11479 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
11480 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
11481
11482 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
11483 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
11484 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
11485 discussions instead of only
11486 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
11487 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
11488 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
11489 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
11490 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
11491 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
11492
11493       </div>
11494       <div class="tags">
11495
11496
11497         Tags: <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/open311">open311</a>.
11498
11499
11500       </div>
11501     </div>
11502     <div class="padding"></div>
11503
11504     <div class="entry">
11505       <div class="title">
11506         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
11507       </div>
11508       <div class="date">
11509          6th April 2011
11510       </div>
11511       <div class="body">
11512         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
11513 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
11514 A few days ago the project
11515 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
11516 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
11517 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
11518 into Gnash.</p>
11519
11520       </div>
11521       <div class="tags">
11522
11523
11524         Tags: <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>.
11525
11526
11527       </div>
11528     </div>
11529     <div class="padding"></div>
11530
11531     <div class="entry">
11532       <div class="title">
11533         <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>
11534       </div>
11535       <div class="date">
11536          3rd April 2011
11537       </div>
11538       <div class="body">
11539         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
11540 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
11541 update in English.</p>
11542
11543 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
11544 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
11545 of the British service
11546 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
11547 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
11548 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
11549 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
11550 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
11551 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
11552 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
11553 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
11554 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
11555 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
11556 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
11557 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
11558 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
11559
11560 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
11561 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
11562 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
11563 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
11564 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
11565 public infrastructure.</p>
11566
11567 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
11568 such service?</p>
11569
11570       </div>
11571       <div class="tags">
11572
11573
11574         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>.
11575
11576
11577       </div>
11578     </div>
11579     <div class="padding"></div>
11580
11581     <div class="entry">
11582       <div class="title">
11583         <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>
11584       </div>
11585       <div class="date">
11586         28th January 2011
11587       </div>
11588       <div class="body">
11589         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
11590 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
11591 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
11592 available on the Internet, and check our locally
11593 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
11594 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
11595 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
11596 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
11597 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
11598 out which security holes were present in our free software
11599 collection.</p>
11600
11601 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
11602 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
11603 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
11604 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
11605 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
11606 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
11607 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
11608 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
11609 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
11610 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
11611 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
11612 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
11613 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
11614 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
11615 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
11616 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
11617
11618 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
11619 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
11620 check out, one could look up
11621 <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
11622 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
11623 The most recent one is
11624 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
11625 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
11626 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
11627
11628 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
11629 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
11630 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
11631 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
11632 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
11633 security issues out.</p>
11634
11635 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
11636 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
11637 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
11638 RHEL is providing
11639 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
11640 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
11641 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
11642
11643 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
11644 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
11645 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
11646 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
11647 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
11648 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
11649 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
11650 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
11651 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
11652 established soon.</p>
11653
11654 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
11655 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
11656 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
11657 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
11658 for their packages.</p>
11659
11660       </div>
11661       <div class="tags">
11662
11663
11664         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>.
11665
11666
11667       </div>
11668     </div>
11669     <div class="padding"></div>
11670
11671     <div class="entry">
11672       <div class="title">
11673         <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>
11674       </div>
11675       <div class="date">
11676         23rd January 2011
11677       </div>
11678       <div class="body">
11679         <p>In the
11680 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
11681 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
11682 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
11683 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
11684 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
11685 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
11686 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
11687 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
11688 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
11689 one of my machines like this:</p>
11690
11691 <pre>
11692 loaded modules:
11693 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
11694 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
11695 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
11696 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
11697 10de:03ec pata_amd
11698 10de:03f6 sata_nv
11699 1022:1103 k8temp
11700 109e:036e bttv
11701 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
11702 11ab:4364 sky2
11703 </pre>
11704
11705 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
11706 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
11707
11708 <pre>
11709 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
11710     echo loaded pci modules:
11711     (
11712         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
11713         for address in * ; do
11714             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
11715                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
11716                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
11717                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
11718                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
11719                     echo "$id $module"
11720                 fi
11721             fi
11722         done
11723     )
11724     echo
11725 fi
11726 </pre>
11727
11728 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
11729 mappings:</p>
11730
11731 <pre>
11732 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
11733     echo loaded usb modules:
11734     (
11735         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
11736         for address in * ; do
11737             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
11738                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
11739                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
11740                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
11741                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
11742                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
11743                         echo "$id $module"
11744                     fi
11745                 fi
11746             fi
11747         done
11748     )
11749     echo
11750 fi
11751 </pre>
11752
11753 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
11754 well.</p>
11755
11756       </div>
11757       <div class="tags">
11758
11759
11760         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>.
11761
11762
11763       </div>
11764     </div>
11765     <div class="padding"></div>
11766
11767     <div class="entry">
11768       <div class="title">
11769         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
11770       </div>
11771       <div class="date">
11772         16th January 2011
11773       </div>
11774       <div class="body">
11775         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
11776 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
11777 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
11778 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
11779 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
11780 the Wikipedia article on
11781 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
11782 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
11783 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
11784 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
11785 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
11786 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
11787 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
11788 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
11789 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
11790 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
11791 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
11792 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
11793
11794 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
11795 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
11796 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
11797 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
11798 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
11799 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
11800 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
11801 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
11802 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
11803 from last week</a>.</p>
11804
11805 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
11806 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
11807 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
11808 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
11809 was without royalties and license terms, check out
11810 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
11811 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
11812
11813 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
11814 available from
11815 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
11816 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
11817 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
11818
11819 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
11820 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
11821 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
11822 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
11823
11824       </div>
11825       <div class="tags">
11826
11827
11828         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
11829
11830
11831       </div>
11832     </div>
11833     <div class="padding"></div>
11834
11835     <div class="entry">
11836       <div class="title">
11837         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
11838       </div>
11839       <div class="date">
11840         12th January 2011
11841       </div>
11842       <div class="body">
11843         <p>Today I discovered
11844 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
11845 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
11846 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
11847 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
11848 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
11849 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
11850 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
11851 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
11852 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
11853 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
11854 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
11855 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
11856 on the Google announcement is available from
11857 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
11858 A good read. :)</p>
11859
11860 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
11861 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
11862 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
11863 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
11864 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
11865 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
11866 browsers support H.264, and others support
11867 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
11868 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
11869 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
11870 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
11871 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
11872 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
11873 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
11874 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
11875
11876 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
11877 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
11878 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
11879 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
11880 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
11881 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
11882 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
11883
11884 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
11885 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
11886 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
11887 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
11888 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
11889 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
11890 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
11891
11892 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
11893 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
11894 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
11895 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
11896 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
11897 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
11898 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
11899
11900 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
11901 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
11902 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
11903 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
11904 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
11905 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
11906 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
11907 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
11908 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
11909 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
11910 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
11911 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
11912 I guess time will tell.</p>
11913
11914 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
11915 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
11916 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
11917
11918       </div>
11919       <div class="tags">
11920
11921
11922         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
11923
11924
11925       </div>
11926     </div>
11927     <div class="padding"></div>
11928
11929     <div class="entry">
11930       <div class="title">
11931         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
11932       </div>
11933       <div class="date">
11934         30th December 2010
11935       </div>
11936       <div class="body">
11937         <p>After trying to
11938 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
11939 Ogg Theora</a> to
11940 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
11941 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
11942 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
11943 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
11944 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
11945 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
11946 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
11947
11948 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
11949 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
11950 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
11951 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
11952 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
11953 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
11954 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
11955
11956 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
11957 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
11958
11959       </div>
11960       <div class="tags">
11961
11962
11963         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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>.
11964
11965
11966       </div>
11967     </div>
11968     <div class="padding"></div>
11969
11970     <div class="entry">
11971       <div class="title">
11972         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
11973       </div>
11974       <div class="date">
11975         27th December 2010
11976       </div>
11977       <div class="body">
11978         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
11979 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
11980 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
11981 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
11982 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
11983 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
11984 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
11985 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
11986
11987 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
11988 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
11989 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
11990 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
11991 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
11992 page</a>.</p>
11993
11994 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
11995 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
11996 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
11997 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
11998 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
11999 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
12000 specification on equal terms.</p>
12001
12002 <blockquote>
12003
12004 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
12005 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
12006 open standard:</p>
12007
12008 <ul>
12009
12010 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
12011 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
12012 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
12013 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
12014
12015 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
12016 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
12017 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
12018 nominal fee.</li>
12019
12020 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
12021 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
12022 free basis.</li>
12023
12024 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
12025
12026 </ul>
12027 </blockquote>
12028
12029 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
12030 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
12031 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
12032 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
12033 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
12034 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
12035 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
12036
12037 <blockquote>
12038
12039 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
12040
12041 <ol>
12042
12043 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
12044 tilgængelig.</li>
12045
12046 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
12047 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
12048
12049 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
12050 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
12051
12052 </ol>
12053
12054 </blockquote>
12055
12056 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
12057 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
12058
12059 <blockquote>
12060
12061 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
12062
12063 <ol>
12064
12065 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
12066 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
12067
12068 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
12069 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
12070 Standard themselves;</li>
12071
12072 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
12073 any party or in any business model;</li>
12074
12075 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
12076 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
12077 parties;</li>
12078
12079 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
12080 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
12081 parties.</li>
12082
12083 </ol>
12084
12085 </blockquote>
12086
12087 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
12088 its
12089 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
12090 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
12091
12092 <blockquote>
12093 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
12094
12095 <ul>
12096
12097 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
12098   democratic:
12099
12100          <ul>
12101
12102          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
12103             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
12104             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
12105             and managed.</li>
12106
12107          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
12108             method, can be changed through input from all
12109             participants.</li>
12110
12111          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
12112             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
12113
12114          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
12115             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
12116
12117          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
12118             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
12119             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
12120
12121          </ul>
12122
12123 </li>
12124
12125 </ul>
12126
12127 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
12128 <ul>
12129
12130 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
12131   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
12132   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
12133   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
12134   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
12135
12136 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
12137   a technical or economic barriers</li>
12138
12139 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
12140   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
12141   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
12142   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
12143   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
12144   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
12145   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
12146   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
12147   intended to function.</li>
12148
12149 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
12150   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
12151   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
12152
12153 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
12154   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
12155   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
12156   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
12157   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
12158   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
12159   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
12160   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
12161
12162       <ul>
12163
12164       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
12165         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
12166         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
12167
12168       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
12169         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
12170         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
12171         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
12172
12173       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
12174         licensor</li>
12175
12176       </ul>
12177 </li>
12178
12179 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
12180   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
12181   or restricted licensing terms</li>
12182
12183 </ul>
12184
12185 </blockquote>
12186
12187 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
12188 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
12189 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
12190 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
12191 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
12192 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
12193 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
12194 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
12195 Standards.</p>
12196
12197       </div>
12198       <div class="tags">
12199
12200
12201         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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>.
12202
12203
12204       </div>
12205     </div>
12206     <div class="padding"></div>
12207
12208     <div class="entry">
12209       <div class="title">
12210         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
12211       </div>
12212       <div class="date">
12213         25th December 2010
12214       </div>
12215       <div class="body">
12216         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
12217 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
12218
12219 <blockquote>
12220
12221 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
12222 as follows:</p>
12223
12224 <ol>
12225
12226 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
12227 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
12228 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
12229
12230 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
12231 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
12232 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
12233 parties.</li>
12234
12235 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
12236 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
12237 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
12238
12239 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
12240 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
12241
12242 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
12243
12244 </ol>
12245
12246 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
12247 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
12248 products based on the standard.</p>
12249 </blockquote>
12250
12251 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
12252 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
12253 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
12254 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
12255 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
12256 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
12257 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
12258 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
12259
12260 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
12261
12262 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
12263 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
12264 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
12265 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
12266 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
12267 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
12268 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
12269 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
12270 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
12271 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
12272 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
12273 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
12274 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
12275 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
12276
12277 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
12278
12279 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
12280 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
12281 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
12282 documentation indicating this.</p>
12283
12284 <p>According to
12285 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
12286 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
12287 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
12288 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
12289 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
12290 report is correct.</p>
12291
12292 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
12293
12294 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
12295 container format</a> and both the
12296 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
12297 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
12298 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
12299
12300 <blockquote>
12301
12302 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
12303 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
12304 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
12305 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
12306 specification compliance.
12307
12308 </blockquote>
12309
12310 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
12311 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
12312 this is the term:<p>
12313
12314 <blockquote>
12315
12316 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
12317 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
12318 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
12319 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
12320 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
12321 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
12322 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
12323 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
12324 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
12325 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
12326 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
12327 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
12328
12329 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
12330 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
12331 </blockquote>
12332
12333 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
12334 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
12335 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
12336 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
12337 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
12338
12339 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
12340
12341 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
12342 Theora format.
12343 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
12344 and
12345 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
12346 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
12347 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
12348 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
12349 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
12350 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
12351 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
12352 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
12353
12354 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
12355
12356 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
12357
12358 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
12359
12360 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
12361 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
12362 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
12363 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
12364 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
12365 this.</p>
12366
12367 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
12368 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
12369
12370       </div>
12371       <div class="tags">
12372
12373
12374         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12375
12376
12377       </div>
12378     </div>
12379     <div class="padding"></div>
12380
12381     <div class="entry">
12382       <div class="title">
12383         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
12384       </div>
12385       <div class="date">
12386         25th December 2010
12387       </div>
12388       <div class="body">
12389         <p>A few days ago
12390 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
12391 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
12392 2.0 of
12393 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
12394 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
12395 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
12396 Nothing very surprising there, given
12397 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
12398 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
12399 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
12400 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
12401 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
12402 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
12403 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
12404 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
12405 standard definition from its content.</p>
12406
12407 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
12408 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
12409 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
12410 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
12411 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
12412 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
12413 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
12414 background information about that story is available in
12415 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
12416 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
12417
12418 <blockquote>
12419 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
12420 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
12421 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
12422
12423 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
12424
12425 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
12426
12427 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
12428
12429 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
12430
12431 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
12432
12433 <p>
12434 <ul>
12435 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
12436 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
12437 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
12438 </ul>
12439 </p>
12440
12441 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
12442
12443 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
12444
12445 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
12446
12447 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
12448
12449 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
12450
12451
12452 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
12453 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
12454 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
12455 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
12456 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
12457 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
12458
12459 </p>
12460
12461 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
12462
12463 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
12464
12465 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
12466
12467 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
12468
12469 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
12470
12471 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
12472
12473 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
12474
12475 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
12476
12477 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
12478
12479 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
12480
12481 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
12482
12483 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
12484
12485 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
12486
12487 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
12488
12489 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
12490
12491 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
12492
12493 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
12494
12495 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
12496
12497 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
12498
12499 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
12500
12501 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
12502
12503 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
12504
12505 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
12506
12507 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
12508
12509 <p>On security:</p>
12510
12511 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
12512
12513 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
12514
12515 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
12516
12517 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
12518
12519 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
12520
12521 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
12522
12523 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
12524
12525 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
12526
12527 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
12528
12529 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
12530
12531 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
12532
12533 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
12534
12535 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
12536
12537 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
12538
12539 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
12540
12541 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
12542
12543 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
12544
12545 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
12546
12547 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
12548
12549 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
12550
12551 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
12552
12553 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
12554
12555 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
12556
12557 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
12558
12559 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
12560
12561 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
12562
12563 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
12564
12565 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
12566
12567 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
12568
12569 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
12570
12571 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
12572
12573 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
12574
12575 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
12576
12577 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
12578
12579 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
12580
12581 <p>Cordially,<br>
12582 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
12583 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
12584 </blockquote>
12585
12586       </div>
12587       <div class="tags">
12588
12589
12590         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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>.
12591
12592
12593       </div>
12594     </div>
12595     <div class="padding"></div>
12596
12597     <div class="entry">
12598       <div class="title">
12599         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
12600       </div>
12601       <div class="date">
12602         25th December 2010
12603       </div>
12604       <div class="body">
12605         <p>Half a year ago I
12606 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
12607 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
12608 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
12609 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
12610
12611 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
12612 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
12613 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
12614 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
12615 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
12616 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
12617 got such a great test tool available.</p>
12618
12619       </div>
12620       <div class="tags">
12621
12622
12623         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
12624
12625
12626       </div>
12627     </div>
12628     <div class="padding"></div>
12629
12630     <div class="entry">
12631       <div class="title">
12632         <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>
12633       </div>
12634       <div class="date">
12635         22nd December 2010
12636       </div>
12637       <div class="body">
12638         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
12639 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
12640 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
12641 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
12642 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
12643 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
12644 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
12645 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
12646 university.</p>
12647
12648 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
12649 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
12650 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
12651 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
12652 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
12653 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
12654 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
12655 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
12656
12657 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
12658 I perform on a new model.</p>
12659
12660 <ul>
12661
12662 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
12663 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
12664 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
12665
12666 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
12667 installation, X.org is working.</li>
12668
12669 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
12670 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
12671 reported by the program.</li>
12672
12673 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
12674 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
12675 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
12676 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
12677 normally test this by playing
12678 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
12679 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
12680
12681 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
12682 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
12683
12684 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
12685 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
12686
12687 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
12688 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
12689
12690 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
12691 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
12692 few.</li>
12693
12694 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
12695 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
12696 notice this.</li>
12697
12698 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
12699 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
12700 resume.</li>
12701
12702 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
12703 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
12704 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
12705 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
12706 not.</li>
12707
12708 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
12709 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
12710 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
12711 existence.</li>
12712
12713 </ul>
12714
12715 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
12716 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
12717 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
12718 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
12719 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
12720 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
12721 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
12722 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
12723
12724       </div>
12725       <div class="tags">
12726
12727
12728         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>.
12729
12730
12731       </div>
12732     </div>
12733     <div class="padding"></div>
12734
12735     <div class="entry">
12736       <div class="title">
12737         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
12738       </div>
12739       <div class="date">
12740         11th December 2010
12741       </div>
12742       <div class="body">
12743         <p>As I continue to explore
12744 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
12745 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
12746 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
12747
12748 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
12749 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
12750 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
12751 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
12752 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
12753 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
12754 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
12755 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
12756 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
12757 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
12758 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
12759 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
12760 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
12761 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
12762 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
12763 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
12764 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
12765 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
12766 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
12767 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
12768
12769 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
12770 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
12771 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
12772 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
12773 If the Skolelinux foundation
12774 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
12775 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
12776 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
12777 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
12778 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
12779 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
12780 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
12781 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
12782
12783 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
12784 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
12785 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
12786 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
12787 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
12788 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
12789 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
12790 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
12791 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
12792 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
12793 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
12794 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
12795 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
12796 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
12797 currencies.</p>
12798
12799 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
12800 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
12801 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
12802 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
12803 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
12804 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
12805 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
12806 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
12807 BitCoins.  Check out
12808 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
12809 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
12810 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
12811 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
12812 yet.</p>
12813
12814 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
12815 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
12816 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
12817 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
12818 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
12819
12820       </div>
12821       <div class="tags">
12822
12823
12824         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>.
12825
12826
12827       </div>
12828     </div>
12829     <div class="padding"></div>
12830
12831     <div class="entry">
12832       <div class="title">
12833         <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>
12834       </div>
12835       <div class="date">
12836         10th December 2010
12837       </div>
12838       <div class="body">
12839         <p>With this weeks lawless
12840 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
12841 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
12842 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
12843 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
12844 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
12845 A blog post from
12846 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
12847 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
12848 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
12849 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
12850 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
12851 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
12852 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
12853
12854 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
12855 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
12856 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
12857 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
12858 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
12859 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
12860 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
12861 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
12862 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
12863 Debian</a> soon.</p>
12864
12865 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
12866 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
12867 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
12868 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
12869 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
12870 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
12871 you can even get
12872 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
12873 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
12874 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
12875 on the current exchange rates.</p>
12876
12877 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
12878 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
12879 donations to the address
12880 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
12881
12882       </div>
12883       <div class="tags">
12884
12885
12886         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>.
12887
12888
12889       </div>
12890     </div>
12891     <div class="padding"></div>
12892
12893     <div class="entry">
12894       <div class="title">
12895         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
12896       </div>
12897       <div class="date">
12898          9th December 2010
12899       </div>
12900       <div class="body">
12901         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
12902 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
12903 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
12904 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
12905 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
12906 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
12907 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
12908 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
12909 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
12910 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
12911 operational.</p>
12912
12913 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
12914 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
12915 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
12916 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
12917 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
12918 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
12919 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
12920
12921       </div>
12922       <div class="tags">
12923
12924
12925         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
12926
12927
12928       </div>
12929     </div>
12930     <div class="padding"></div>
12931
12932     <div class="entry">
12933       <div class="title">
12934         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
12935       </div>
12936       <div class="date">
12937         29th November 2010
12938       </div>
12939       <div class="body">
12940         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
12941 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
12942 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
12943 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
12944 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
12945 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
12946
12947 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
12948 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
12949 will hold its
12950 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
12951 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
12952 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
12953 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
12954 vote this year.</p>
12955
12956       </div>
12957       <div class="tags">
12958
12959
12960         Tags: <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>.
12961
12962
12963       </div>
12964     </div>
12965     <div class="padding"></div>
12966
12967     <div class="entry">
12968       <div class="title">
12969         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
12970       </div>
12971       <div class="date">
12972         27th November 2010
12973       </div>
12974       <div class="body">
12975         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
12976 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
12977 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
12978 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
12979 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
12980 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
12981 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
12982 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
12983
12984 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
12985 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
12986 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
12987 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
12988 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
12989 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
12990 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
12991 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
12992 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
12993 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
12994 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
12995
12996 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
12997 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
12998 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
12999 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
13000 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
13001 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
13002 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
13003 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
13004 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
13005 what is going on.</p>
13006
13007       </div>
13008       <div class="tags">
13009
13010
13011         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>.
13012
13013
13014       </div>
13015     </div>
13016     <div class="padding"></div>
13017
13018     <div class="entry">
13019       <div class="title">
13020         <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>
13021       </div>
13022       <div class="date">
13023         22nd November 2010
13024       </div>
13025       <div class="body">
13026         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
13027 upgrade testing of the
13028 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
13029 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
13030 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
13031 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
13032
13033 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
13034
13035 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13036
13037 <blockquote><p>
13038   apache2.2-bin
13039   aptdaemon
13040   baobab
13041   binfmt-support
13042   browser-plugin-gnash
13043   cheese-common
13044   cli-common
13045   cups-pk-helper
13046   dmz-cursor-theme
13047   empathy
13048   empathy-common
13049   freedesktop-sound-theme
13050   freeglut3
13051   gconf-defaults-service
13052   gdm-themes
13053   gedit-plugins
13054   geoclue
13055   geoclue-hostip
13056   geoclue-localnet
13057   geoclue-manual
13058   geoclue-yahoo
13059   gnash
13060   gnash-common
13061   gnome
13062   gnome-backgrounds
13063   gnome-cards-data
13064   gnome-codec-install
13065   gnome-core
13066   gnome-desktop-environment
13067   gnome-disk-utility
13068   gnome-screenshot
13069   gnome-search-tool
13070   gnome-session-canberra
13071   gnome-system-log
13072   gnome-themes-extras
13073   gnome-themes-more
13074   gnome-user-share
13075   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
13076   gstreamer0.10-tools
13077   gtk2-engines
13078   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
13079   gtk2-engines-smooth
13080   hamster-applet
13081   libapache2-mod-dnssd
13082   libapr1
13083   libaprutil1
13084   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
13085   libaprutil1-ldap
13086   libart2.0-cil
13087   libboost-date-time1.42.0
13088   libboost-python1.42.0
13089   libboost-thread1.42.0
13090   libchamplain-0.4-0
13091   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
13092   libcheese-gtk18
13093   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
13094   libcryptui0
13095   libdiscid0
13096   libelf1
13097   libepc-1.0-2
13098   libepc-common
13099   libepc-ui-1.0-2
13100   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
13101   libfreerdp0
13102   libgconf2.0-cil
13103   libgdata-common
13104   libgdata7
13105   libgdu-gtk0
13106   libgee2
13107   libgeoclue0
13108   libgexiv2-0
13109   libgif4
13110   libglade2.0-cil
13111   libglib2.0-cil
13112   libgmime2.4-cil
13113   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
13114   libgnome2.24-cil
13115   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
13116   libgpod-common
13117   libgpod4
13118   libgtk2.0-cil
13119   libgtkglext1
13120   libgtksourceview2.0-common
13121   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
13122   libmono-addins0.2-cil
13123   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
13124   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
13125   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
13126   libmono-posix2.0-cil
13127   libmono-security2.0-cil
13128   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
13129   libmono-system2.0-cil
13130   libmtp8
13131   libmusicbrainz3-6
13132   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
13133   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
13134   libopal3.6.8
13135   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
13136   libpt2.6.7
13137   libpython2.6
13138   librpm1
13139   librpmio1
13140   libsdl1.2debian
13141   libsrtp0
13142   libssh-4
13143   libtelepathy-farsight0
13144   libtelepathy-glib0
13145   libtidy-0.99-0
13146   media-player-info
13147   mesa-utils
13148   mono-2.0-gac
13149   mono-gac
13150   mono-runtime
13151   nautilus-sendto
13152   nautilus-sendto-empathy
13153   p7zip-full
13154   pkg-config
13155   python-aptdaemon
13156   python-aptdaemon-gtk
13157   python-axiom
13158   python-beautifulsoup
13159   python-bugbuddy
13160   python-clientform
13161   python-coherence
13162   python-configobj
13163   python-crypto
13164   python-cupshelpers
13165   python-elementtree
13166   python-epsilon
13167   python-evolution
13168   python-feedparser
13169   python-gdata
13170   python-gdbm
13171   python-gst0.10
13172   python-gtkglext1
13173   python-gtksourceview2
13174   python-httplib2
13175   python-louie
13176   python-mako
13177   python-markupsafe
13178   python-mechanize
13179   python-nevow
13180   python-notify
13181   python-opengl
13182   python-openssl
13183   python-pam
13184   python-pkg-resources
13185   python-pyasn1
13186   python-pysqlite2
13187   python-rdflib
13188   python-serial
13189   python-tagpy
13190   python-twisted-bin
13191   python-twisted-conch
13192   python-twisted-core
13193   python-twisted-web
13194   python-utidylib
13195   python-webkit
13196   python-xdg
13197   python-zope.interface
13198   remmina
13199   remmina-plugin-data
13200   remmina-plugin-rdp
13201   remmina-plugin-vnc
13202   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
13203   rhythmbox-plugins
13204   rpm-common
13205   rpm2cpio
13206   seahorse-plugins
13207   shotwell
13208   software-center
13209   system-config-printer-udev
13210   telepathy-gabble
13211   telepathy-mission-control-5
13212   telepathy-salut
13213   tomboy
13214   totem
13215   totem-coherence
13216   totem-mozilla
13217   totem-plugins
13218   transmission-common
13219   xdg-user-dirs
13220   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
13221   xserver-xephyr
13222 </p></blockquote>
13223
13224 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
13225
13226 <blockquote><p>
13227   cheese
13228   ekiga
13229   eog
13230   epiphany-extensions
13231   evolution-exchange
13232   fast-user-switch-applet
13233   file-roller
13234   gcalctool
13235   gconf-editor
13236   gdm
13237   gedit
13238   gedit-common
13239   gnome-games
13240   gnome-games-data
13241   gnome-nettool
13242   gnome-system-tools
13243   gnome-themes
13244   gnuchess
13245   gucharmap
13246   guile-1.8-libs
13247   libavahi-ui0
13248   libdmx1
13249   libgalago3
13250   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
13251   libgtksourceview2.0-0
13252   liblircclient0
13253   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
13254   libspeexdsp1
13255   libsvga1
13256   rhythmbox
13257   seahorse
13258   sound-juicer
13259   system-config-printer
13260   totem-common
13261   transmission-gtk
13262   vinagre
13263   vino
13264 </p></blockquote>
13265
13266 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
13267
13268 <blockquote><p>
13269   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
13270 </p></blockquote>
13271
13272 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
13273
13274 <blockquote><p>
13275 [nothing]
13276 </p></blockquote>
13277
13278 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
13279
13280 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13281
13282 <blockquote><p>
13283   ksmserver
13284 </p></blockquote>
13285
13286 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
13287
13288 <blockquote><p>
13289   kwin
13290   network-manager-kde
13291 </p></blockquote>
13292
13293 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
13294
13295 <blockquote><p>
13296   arts
13297   dolphin
13298   freespacenotifier
13299   google-gadgets-gst
13300   google-gadgets-xul
13301   kappfinder
13302   kcalc
13303   kcharselect
13304   kde-core
13305   kde-plasma-desktop
13306   kde-standard
13307   kde-window-manager
13308   kdeartwork
13309   kdeartwork-emoticons
13310   kdeartwork-style
13311   kdeartwork-theme-icon
13312   kdebase
13313   kdebase-apps
13314   kdebase-workspace
13315   kdebase-workspace-bin
13316   kdebase-workspace-data
13317   kdeeject
13318   kdelibs
13319   kdeplasma-addons
13320   kdeutils
13321   kdewallpapers
13322   kdf
13323   kfloppy
13324   kgpg
13325   khelpcenter4
13326   kinfocenter
13327   konq-plugins-l10n
13328   konqueror-nsplugins
13329   kscreensaver
13330   kscreensaver-xsavers
13331   ktimer
13332   kwrite
13333   libgle3
13334   libkde4-ruby1.8
13335   libkonq5
13336   libkonq5-templates
13337   libnetpbm10
13338   libplasma-ruby
13339   libplasma-ruby1.8
13340   libqt4-ruby1.8
13341   marble-data
13342   marble-plugins
13343   netpbm
13344   nuvola-icon-theme
13345   plasma-dataengines-workspace
13346   plasma-desktop
13347   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
13348   plasma-runners-addons
13349   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
13350   plasma-scriptengine-python
13351   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
13352   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
13353   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
13354   plasma-scriptengines
13355   plasma-wallpapers-addons
13356   plasma-widget-folderview
13357   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
13358   ruby
13359   sweeper
13360   update-notifier-kde
13361   xscreensaver-data-extra
13362   xscreensaver-gl
13363   xscreensaver-gl-extra
13364   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
13365 </p></blockquote>
13366
13367 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
13368
13369 <blockquote><p>
13370   ark
13371   google-gadgets-common
13372   google-gadgets-qt
13373   htdig
13374   kate
13375   kdebase-bin
13376   kdebase-data
13377   kdepasswd
13378   kfind
13379   klipper
13380   konq-plugins
13381   konqueror
13382   ksysguard
13383   ksysguardd
13384   libarchive1
13385   libcln6
13386   libeet1
13387   libeina-svn-06
13388   libggadget-1.0-0b
13389   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
13390   libgps19
13391   libkdecorations4
13392   libkephal4
13393   libkonq4
13394   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
13395   libkscreensaver5
13396   libksgrd4
13397   libksignalplotter4
13398   libkunitconversion4
13399   libkwineffects1a
13400   libmarblewidget4
13401   libntrack-qt4-1
13402   libntrack0
13403   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
13404   libplasmaclock4a
13405   libplasmagenericshell4
13406   libprocesscore4a
13407   libprocessui4a
13408   libqalculate5
13409   libqedje0a
13410   libqtruby4shared2
13411   libqzion0a
13412   libruby1.8
13413   libscim8c2a
13414   libsmokekdecore4-3
13415   libsmokekdeui4-3
13416   libsmokekfile3
13417   libsmokekhtml3
13418   libsmokekio3
13419   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
13420   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
13421   libsmokekparts3
13422   libsmokektexteditor3
13423   libsmokekutils3
13424   libsmokenepomuk3
13425   libsmokephonon3
13426   libsmokeplasma3
13427   libsmokeqtcore4-3
13428   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
13429   libsmokeqtgui4-3
13430   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
13431   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
13432   libsmokeqtscript4-3
13433   libsmokeqtsql4-3
13434   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
13435   libsmokeqttest4-3
13436   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
13437   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
13438   libsmokeqtxml4-3
13439   libsmokesolid3
13440   libsmokesoprano3
13441   libtaskmanager4a
13442   libtidy-0.99-0
13443   libweather-ion4a
13444   libxklavier16
13445   libxxf86misc1
13446   okteta
13447   oxygencursors
13448   plasma-dataengines-addons
13449   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
13450   plasma-widget-lancelot
13451   plasma-widgets-addons
13452   plasma-widgets-workspace
13453   polkit-kde-1
13454   ruby1.8
13455   systemsettings
13456   update-notifier-common
13457 </p></blockquote>
13458
13459 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
13460 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
13461 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
13462 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
13463
13464       </div>
13465       <div class="tags">
13466
13467
13468         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>.
13469
13470
13471       </div>
13472     </div>
13473     <div class="padding"></div>
13474
13475     <div class="entry">
13476       <div class="title">
13477         <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>
13478       </div>
13479       <div class="date">
13480         22nd November 2010
13481       </div>
13482       <div class="body">
13483         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
13484 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
13485 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
13486 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
13487 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
13488 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
13489 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
13490 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
13491 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
13492
13493 <p>I found
13494 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
13495 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
13496 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
13497 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
13498 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
13499 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
13500
13501 <pre>
13502 #!/bin/sh
13503
13504 # Based on
13505 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
13506
13507 set -e
13508 set -x
13509
13510 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
13511     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
13512     exit 1
13513 else
13514     host="$1"
13515 fi
13516
13517 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
13518     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
13519     exit 1
13520 fi
13521
13522 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
13523 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
13524 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
13525 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
13526
13527 img=$host.img
13528 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
13529 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
13530
13531 parted $img mklabel msdos
13532 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
13533 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
13534 parted $img set 1 boot on
13535
13536 modprobe dm-mod
13537 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
13538 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
13539
13540 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
13541 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
13542 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
13543
13544 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
13545 losetup -d /dev/loop0
13546 </pre>
13547
13548 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
13549 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
13550
13551 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
13552 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
13553 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
13554 seem to work just fine.</p>
13555
13556       </div>
13557       <div class="tags">
13558
13559
13560         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>.
13561
13562
13563       </div>
13564     </div>
13565     <div class="padding"></div>
13566
13567     <div class="entry">
13568       <div class="title">
13569         <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>
13570       </div>
13571       <div class="date">
13572         20th November 2010
13573       </div>
13574       <div class="body">
13575         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
13576 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
13577 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
13578 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
13579
13580 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
13581 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
13582 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
13583
13584 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
13585
13586 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13587
13588 <blockquote><p>
13589   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
13590   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
13591   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
13592   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
13593   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
13594   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
13595   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
13596   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
13597   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
13598   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
13599   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
13600   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
13601   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
13602   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
13603   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
13604   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
13605   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
13606   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
13607   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
13608   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
13609   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
13610   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
13611   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
13612   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
13613   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
13614   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
13615   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
13616   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
13617   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
13618   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
13619   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
13620   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
13621   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
13622   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
13623   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
13624   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
13625   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
13626   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
13627   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
13628   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
13629   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
13630   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
13631   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
13632   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
13633   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
13634   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
13635   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
13636   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
13637   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
13638   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
13639   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
13640   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
13641   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
13642   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
13643   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
13644   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
13645   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
13646   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
13647   zip
13648 </p></blockquote>
13649
13650 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
13651
13652 <blockquote><p>
13653   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
13654   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
13655   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
13656   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
13657   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
13658   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
13659   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
13660   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
13661   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
13662   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
13663   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
13664   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
13665   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
13666   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
13667   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
13668   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
13669   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
13670   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
13671   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
13672   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
13673   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
13674   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
13675   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
13676   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
13677   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
13678   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
13679   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
13680   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
13681   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
13682 </p></blockquote>
13683
13684 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
13685
13686 <blockquote><p>
13687   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
13688 </p></blockquote>
13689
13690 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
13691
13692 <blockquote><p>
13693 [nothing]
13694 </p></blockquote>
13695
13696 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
13697
13698 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13699
13700 <blockquote><p>
13701   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
13702   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
13703   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
13704   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
13705   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
13706   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
13707   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
13708   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
13709   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
13710   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
13711   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
13712   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
13713   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
13714   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
13715   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
13716   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
13717   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
13718   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
13719   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
13720   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
13721   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
13722   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
13723   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
13724   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
13725   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
13726   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
13727   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
13728   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
13729   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
13730   ttf-sazanami-gothic
13731 </p></blockquote>
13732
13733 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
13734
13735 <blockquote><p>
13736   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
13737   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
13738   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
13739   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
13740   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
13741   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
13742   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
13743   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
13744   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
13745   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
13746   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
13747   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
13748   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
13749   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
13750   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
13751   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
13752   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
13753   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
13754   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
13755   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
13756   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
13757   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
13758   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
13759   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
13760   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
13761   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
13762   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
13763   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
13764   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
13765   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
13766   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
13767   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
13768   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
13769 </p></blockquote>
13770
13771 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
13772
13773 <blockquote><p>
13774   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
13775   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
13776   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
13777   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
13778   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
13779   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
13780   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
13781 </p></blockquote>
13782
13783 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
13784
13785 <blockquote><p>
13786   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
13787 </p></blockquote>
13788
13789       </div>
13790       <div class="tags">
13791
13792
13793         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>.
13794
13795
13796       </div>
13797     </div>
13798     <div class="padding"></div>
13799
13800     <div class="entry">
13801       <div class="title">
13802         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
13803       </div>
13804       <div class="date">
13805         20th November 2010
13806       </div>
13807       <div class="body">
13808         <p>Answering
13809 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
13810 call from the Gnash project</a> for
13811 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
13812 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
13813 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
13814 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
13815 releases out more often.</p>
13816
13817 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
13818 I have considered setting up a <a
13819 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
13820 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
13821 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
13822 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
13823 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
13824 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
13825 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
13826 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
13827 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
13828 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
13829 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
13830 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
13831
13832       </div>
13833       <div class="tags">
13834
13835
13836         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>.
13837
13838
13839       </div>
13840     </div>
13841     <div class="padding"></div>
13842
13843     <div class="entry">
13844       <div class="title">
13845         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
13846       </div>
13847       <div class="date">
13848          9th November 2010
13849       </div>
13850       <div class="body">
13851         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
13852
13853 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
13854 3D linked in from
13855 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
13856 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
13857
13858       </div>
13859       <div class="tags">
13860
13861
13862         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>.
13863
13864
13865       </div>
13866     </div>
13867     <div class="padding"></div>
13868
13869     <div class="entry">
13870       <div class="title">
13871         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
13872       </div>
13873       <div class="date">
13874          7th November 2010
13875       </div>
13876       <div class="body">
13877         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
13878 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
13879 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
13880 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
13881 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
13882 working using this DVD.</p>
13883
13884 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
13885 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
13886 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
13887 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
13888 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
13889 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
13890 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
13891
13892 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
13893 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
13894 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
13895 Debian archive.</p>
13896
13897 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
13898 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
13899 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
13900 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
13901 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
13902 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
13903 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
13904 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
13905 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
13906 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
13907 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
13908 free X driver should work.</p>
13909
13910 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
13911 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
13912 DVD more useful again.</p>
13913
13914       </div>
13915       <div class="tags">
13916
13917
13918         Tags: <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>.
13919
13920
13921       </div>
13922     </div>
13923     <div class="padding"></div>
13924
13925     <div class="entry">
13926       <div class="title">
13927         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
13928       </div>
13929       <div class="date">
13930         24th October 2010
13931       </div>
13932       <div class="body">
13933         <p>Some updates.</p>
13934
13935 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
13936 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
13937 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
13938 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
13939 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
13940 :)</p>
13941
13942 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
13943 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
13944 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
13945 It is called
13946 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
13947 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
13948 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
13949 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
13950 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
13951 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
13952
13953 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
13954 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
13955 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
13956 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
13957 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
13958 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
13959 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
13960 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
13961 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
13962 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
13963
13964       </div>
13965       <div class="tags">
13966
13967
13968         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>.
13969
13970
13971       </div>
13972     </div>
13973     <div class="padding"></div>
13974
13975     <div class="entry">
13976       <div class="title">
13977         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
13978       </div>
13979       <div class="date">
13980         19th October 2010
13981       </div>
13982       <div class="body">
13983         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
13984 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
13985 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
13986 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
13987 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
13988 AVM2 flash files.</p>
13989
13990 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
13991 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
13992 following text:</P>
13993
13994 <p><blockquote>
13995
13996   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
13997   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
13998
13999   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
14000
14001   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
14002
14003   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
14004   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
14005   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
14006   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
14007   days. The project web page is available from
14008   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
14009   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
14010   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
14011
14012   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
14013   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
14014   to get this to happen.</p>
14015
14016   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
14017   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
14018
14019 </blockquote></p>
14020
14021 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
14022 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
14023 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
14024 :)</p>
14025
14026       </div>
14027       <div class="tags">
14028
14029
14030         Tags: <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/nuug">nuug</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>.
14031
14032
14033       </div>
14034     </div>
14035     <div class="padding"></div>
14036
14037     <div class="entry">
14038       <div class="title">
14039         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
14040       </div>
14041       <div class="date">
14042          9th October 2010
14043       </div>
14044       <div class="body">
14045         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
14046 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
14047 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
14048 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
14049 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
14050 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
14051 robots.</p>
14052
14053 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
14054 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
14055 a few less important features too.</p>
14056
14057 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
14058 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
14059 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
14060 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
14061
14062 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
14063 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
14064 source or binary package:</p>
14065
14066 <p><ul>
14067 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
14068 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
14069 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
14070 </ul></p>
14071
14072 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
14073 please let me know.</p>
14074
14075       </div>
14076       <div class="tags">
14077
14078
14079         Tags: <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/robot">robot</a>.
14080
14081
14082       </div>
14083     </div>
14084     <div class="padding"></div>
14085
14086     <div class="entry">
14087       <div class="title">
14088         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
14089       </div>
14090       <div class="date">
14091          3rd October 2010
14092       </div>
14093       <div class="body">
14094         <p><ul>
14095
14096 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
14097 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
14098
14099 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
14100 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
14101 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
14102
14103 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
14104 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
14105 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
14106 simple setup.
14107
14108 </ul></p>
14109
14110       </div>
14111       <div class="tags">
14112
14113
14114         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14115
14116
14117       </div>
14118     </div>
14119     <div class="padding"></div>
14120
14121     <div class="entry">
14122       <div class="title">
14123         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
14124       </div>
14125       <div class="date">
14126          9th September 2010
14127       </div>
14128       <div class="body">
14129         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
14130 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
14131 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
14132 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
14133 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
14134 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
14135 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
14136 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
14137 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
14138
14139 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
14140 written:</p>
14141
14142 <blockquote>
14143 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
14144 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
14145 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
14146 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
14147 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
14148
14149 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
14150 standard.</p>
14151 </blockquote>
14152
14153 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
14154 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
14155 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
14156 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
14157
14158 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
14159 read
14160 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
14161 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
14162 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
14163 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
14164 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
14165 the issue.  The solution is to support the
14166 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
14167 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
14168 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
14169
14170       </div>
14171       <div class="tags">
14172
14173
14174         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</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>.
14175
14176
14177       </div>
14178     </div>
14179     <div class="padding"></div>
14180
14181     <div class="entry">
14182       <div class="title">
14183         <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>
14184       </div>
14185       <div class="date">
14186          4th September 2010
14187       </div>
14188       <div class="body">
14189         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
14190 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
14191 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
14192 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
14193 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
14194 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
14195 installed.</p>
14196
14197 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
14198 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
14199 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
14200 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
14201 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
14202 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
14203 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
14204 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
14205 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
14206
14207 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
14208 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
14209 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
14210 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
14211 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
14212 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
14213 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
14214 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
14215 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
14216 pages they want to visit.</p>
14217
14218 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
14219 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
14220 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
14221 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
14222 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
14223 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
14224 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
14225 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
14226 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
14227 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
14228 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
14229
14230       </div>
14231       <div class="tags">
14232
14233
14234         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>.
14235
14236
14237       </div>
14238     </div>
14239     <div class="padding"></div>
14240
14241     <div class="entry">
14242       <div class="title">
14243         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
14244       </div>
14245       <div class="date">
14246          1st September 2010
14247       </div>
14248       <div class="body">
14249         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
14250 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
14251 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
14252 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
14253 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
14254 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
14255 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
14256 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
14257 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
14258 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
14259 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
14260 drive around.</p>
14261
14262 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
14263 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
14264
14265 <p><pre>
14266 use Spykee;
14267 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
14268 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
14269 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
14270 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
14271 $spykee->left();
14272 sleep 2;
14273 $spykee->right();
14274 sleep 2;
14275 $spykee->forward();
14276 sleep 2;
14277 $spykee->back();
14278 sleep 2;
14279 $spykee->stop();
14280 </pre></p>
14281
14282 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
14283 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
14284 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
14285 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
14286 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
14287 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
14288 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
14289 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
14290 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
14291 going. :).</p>
14292
14293 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
14294 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
14295 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
14296 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
14297
14298       </div>
14299       <div class="tags">
14300
14301
14302         Tags: <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/robot">robot</a>.
14303
14304
14305       </div>
14306     </div>
14307     <div class="padding"></div>
14308
14309     <div class="entry">
14310       <div class="title">
14311         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
14312       </div>
14313       <div class="date">
14314         30th August 2010
14315       </div>
14316       <div class="body">
14317         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
14318 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
14319 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
14320 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
14321 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
14322 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
14323 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
14324
14325 <pre>
14326 % ln foo bar
14327 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
14328 %
14329 </pre>
14330
14331 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
14332 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
14333 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
14334 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
14335 nevertheless. :)</p>
14336
14337 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
14338 git from
14339 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
14340
14341       </div>
14342       <div class="tags">
14343
14344
14345         Tags: <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>.
14346
14347
14348       </div>
14349     </div>
14350     <div class="padding"></div>
14351
14352     <div class="entry">
14353       <div class="title">
14354         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
14355       </div>
14356       <div class="date">
14357         26th August 2010
14358       </div>
14359       <div class="body">
14360         <p>My file system sematics program
14361 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
14362 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
14363 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
14364 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
14365 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
14366 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
14367 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
14368 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
14369 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
14370 script:</p>
14371
14372 <pre>
14373 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
14374   mode_t retval = 0;
14375   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
14376   if (-1 != fd) {
14377     unlink(name);
14378     struct stat statbuf;
14379     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
14380       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
14381     }
14382     close(fd);
14383   }
14384   return retval;
14385 }
14386
14387 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
14388 int test_umask(void) {
14389   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
14390
14391   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
14392   mode_t newmode;
14393   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
14394     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
14395            newmode);
14396   }
14397   umask(007);
14398   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
14399     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
14400            newmode);
14401   }
14402
14403   umask (orig_umask);
14404   return 0;
14405 }
14406
14407 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
14408   [...]
14409   test_umask();
14410   return 0;
14411 }
14412 </pre>
14413
14414 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
14415
14416 <pre>
14417 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
14418 info: testing symlink creation
14419 info: testing subdirectory creation
14420 info: testing fcntl locking
14421   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14422   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14423   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
14424   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14425   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14426   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
14427 info: testing umask effect on file creation
14428 </pre>
14429
14430 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
14431 result:</p>
14432
14433 <pre>
14434 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
14435 info: testing symlink creation
14436 info: testing subdirectory creation
14437 info: testing fcntl locking
14438   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14439   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14440   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
14441   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14442   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14443   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
14444 info: testing umask effect on file creation
14445   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
14446   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
14447 </pre>
14448
14449 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
14450 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
14451 directory.</p>
14452
14453 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
14454 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
14455
14456 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
14457 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
14458 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
14459
14460       </div>
14461       <div class="tags">
14462
14463
14464         Tags: <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>.
14465
14466
14467       </div>
14468     </div>
14469     <div class="padding"></div>
14470
14471     <div class="entry">
14472       <div class="title">
14473         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
14474       </div>
14475       <div class="date">
14476         15th August 2010
14477       </div>
14478       <div class="body">
14479         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
14480 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
14481 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
14482 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
14483 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
14484 long time.</p>
14485
14486       </div>
14487       <div class="tags">
14488
14489
14490         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</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/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
14491
14492
14493       </div>
14494     </div>
14495     <div class="padding"></div>
14496
14497     <div class="entry">
14498       <div class="title">
14499         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
14500       </div>
14501       <div class="date">
14502          9th August 2010
14503       </div>
14504       <div class="body">
14505         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
14506 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
14507 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
14508 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
14509 generated configuration.</p>
14510
14511 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
14512 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
14513 without any manual configuration.</p>
14514
14515 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
14516 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
14517 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
14518 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
14519 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
14520 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
14521 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
14522 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
14523 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
14524 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
14525 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
14526 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
14527 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
14528 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
14529 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
14530 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
14531 use.</p>
14532
14533 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
14534 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
14535 working properly out of the box:</p>
14536
14537 <ul>
14538 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
14539 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
14540 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
14541 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
14542 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
14543 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
14544 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
14545 </ul>
14546
14547 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
14548
14549 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
14550 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
14551 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
14552 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
14553 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
14554
14555 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
14556 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
14557 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
14558 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
14559 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
14560 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
14561 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
14562 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
14563
14564 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
14565 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
14566 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
14567 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
14568 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
14569 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
14570 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
14571 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
14572 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
14573 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
14574 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
14575 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
14576 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
14577 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
14578 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
14579 current DNS domain is used.</p>
14580
14581 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
14582 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
14583 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
14584 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
14585 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
14586 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
14587 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
14588 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
14589 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
14590 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
14591 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
14592 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
14593 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
14594
14595 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
14596 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
14597 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
14598 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
14599 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
14600 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
14601 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
14602 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
14603 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
14604 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
14605 do for now. :)</p>
14606
14607 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
14608 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
14609 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
14610 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
14611 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
14612 yet.</p>
14613
14614 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
14615 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
14616
14617 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
14618 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
14619 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
14620 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
14621
14622       </div>
14623       <div class="tags">
14624
14625
14626         Tags: <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>.
14627
14628
14629       </div>
14630     </div>
14631     <div class="padding"></div>
14632
14633     <div class="entry">
14634       <div class="title">
14635         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
14636       </div>
14637       <div class="date">
14638          8th August 2010
14639       </div>
14640       <div class="body">
14641         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
14642 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
14643 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
14644 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
14645 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
14646 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
14647 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
14648
14649 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
14650 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
14651 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
14652 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
14653 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
14654 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
14655 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
14656
14657 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
14658 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
14659 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
14660 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
14661 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
14662
14663 <pre>
14664 /*
14665  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
14666  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
14667  * directory.
14668  * License: GPL v2 or later
14669  *
14670  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
14671  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
14672 */
14673
14674 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
14675 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
14676 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
14677
14678 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
14679
14680 #include &lt;errno.h>
14681 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
14682 #include &lt;stdio.h>
14683 #include &lt;string.h>
14684 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
14685 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
14686 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
14687 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
14688 #include &lt;unistd.h>
14689
14690 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
14691 /*
14692  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
14693  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
14694  * below.
14695  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
14696  */
14697 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
14698 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
14699   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
14700 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
14701   char *zErrMsg;
14702   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
14703   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
14704   unlink(name);
14705   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
14706   if( rc ){
14707     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
14708     sqlite3_close(db);
14709     return -1;
14710   }
14711
14712   /* create tables */
14713   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
14714   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
14715     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
14716     sqlite3_close(db);
14717     return -1;
14718   }
14719   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
14720   sqlite3_close(db);
14721   return 0;
14722 }
14723 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
14724
14725 /*
14726  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
14727  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
14728  * done in the sqlite3 library.
14729  * See also
14730  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
14731  * POSIX specification
14732  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
14733  */
14734 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
14735   struct flock fl;
14736   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
14737   unlink(name);
14738   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
14739   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
14740
14741   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
14742   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
14743   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
14744   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
14745   fl.l_len    = 1;
14746   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
14747   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
14748
14749   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
14750   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
14751   fl.l_len    = 510;
14752   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
14753   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
14754
14755   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
14756   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
14757   fl.l_len    = 1;
14758   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
14759   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
14760
14761   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
14762   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
14763   fl.l_len    = 1;
14764   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
14765   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
14766
14767   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
14768   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
14769   fl.l_len    = 510;
14770   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
14771
14772   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
14773   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
14774   fl.l_len    = 2;
14775   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
14776   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
14777
14778   close(fd);
14779   return 0;
14780 }
14781
14782 /*
14783  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
14784  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
14785  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
14786  * slowing down file operations.
14787  */
14788 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
14789 #define LEVELS 5
14790   char *path = strdup("test");
14791   char *dirs[LEVELS];
14792   int level;
14793   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
14794   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
14795     char *newpath = NULL;
14796     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
14797       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
14798              path, strerror(errno));
14799       break;
14800     }
14801     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
14802     free(path);
14803     path = newpath;
14804   }
14805   return 0;
14806 }
14807
14808 /*
14809  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
14810  * KDE.
14811  */
14812 int test_symlinks(void) {
14813   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
14814   unlink("symlink");
14815   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
14816     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
14817   return 0;
14818 }
14819
14820 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
14821   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
14822   test_symlinks();
14823   test_subdirectory_creation();
14824 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
14825   test_sqlite_open();
14826 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
14827   test_gcompris_locking();
14828   return 0;
14829 }
14830 </pre>
14831
14832 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
14833 this:</p>
14834
14835 <pre>
14836 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
14837 info: testing symlink creation
14838 info: testing subdirectory creation
14839 info: sqlite worked
14840 info: testing fcntl locking
14841   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14842   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14843   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
14844   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14845   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14846   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
14847 </pre>
14848
14849 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
14850 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
14851 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
14852 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
14853 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
14854 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
14855 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
14856 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
14857
14858 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
14859 it. :)</p>
14860
14861 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
14862 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
14863 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
14864
14865       </div>
14866       <div class="tags">
14867
14868
14869         Tags: <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>.
14870
14871
14872       </div>
14873     </div>
14874     <div class="padding"></div>
14875
14876     <div class="entry">
14877       <div class="title">
14878         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
14879       </div>
14880       <div class="date">
14881          7th August 2010
14882       </div>
14883       <div class="body">
14884         <p>A few days ago, I
14885 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
14886 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
14887 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
14888 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
14889 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
14890 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
14891 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
14892 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
14893 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
14894
14895 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
14896 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
14897 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
14898 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
14899 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
14900 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
14901 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
14902 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
14903 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
14904 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
14905 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
14906 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
14907 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
14908 gave it a IP address.</p>
14909
14910 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
14911 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
14912 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
14913 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
14914 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
14915 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
14916 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
14917 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
14918
14919 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
14920 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
14921 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
14922 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
14923 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
14924 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
14925
14926 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
14927 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
14928 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
14929 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
14930 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
14931 with UID and GID values.</p>
14932
14933 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
14934 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
14935
14936       </div>
14937       <div class="tags">
14938
14939
14940         Tags: <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>.
14941
14942
14943       </div>
14944     </div>
14945     <div class="padding"></div>
14946
14947     <div class="entry">
14948       <div class="title">
14949         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
14950       </div>
14951       <div class="date">
14952          3rd August 2010
14953       </div>
14954       <div class="body">
14955         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
14956 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
14957 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
14958 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
14959 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
14960 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
14961 servers.</p>
14962
14963 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
14964 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
14965 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
14966 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
14967 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
14968 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
14969 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
14970 .uio.no.</p>
14971
14972 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
14973 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
14974 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
14975 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
14976 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
14977 university servers.</p>
14978
14979 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
14980 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
14981 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
14982 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
14983 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
14984 uses.</p>
14985
14986       </div>
14987       <div class="tags">
14988
14989
14990         Tags: <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>.
14991
14992
14993       </div>
14994     </div>
14995     <div class="padding"></div>
14996
14997     <div class="entry">
14998       <div class="title">
14999         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
15000       </div>
15001       <div class="date">
15002         27th July 2010
15003       </div>
15004       <div class="body">
15005         <p>I discovered this while doing
15006 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
15007 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
15008 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
15009 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
15010 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
15011
15012 <p>An example is from todays
15013 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
15014 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
15015 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
15016 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
15017 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
15018 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
15019 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
15020
15021 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
15022
15023 <blockquote><pre>
15024 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
15025  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
15026   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
15027 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
15028  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
15029 </pre></blockquote>
15030
15031 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
15032 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
15033 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
15034 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
15035 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
15036 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
15037 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
15038 of dependency loops.</p>
15039
15040 <p>Thanks to
15041 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
15042 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
15043 dependencies
15044 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
15045 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
15046
15047 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
15048 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
15049 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
15050 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
15051 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
15052 it.</p>
15053
15054       </div>
15055       <div class="tags">
15056
15057
15058         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>.
15059
15060
15061       </div>
15062     </div>
15063     <div class="padding"></div>
15064
15065     <div class="entry">
15066       <div class="title">
15067         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
15068       </div>
15069       <div class="date">
15070         27th July 2010
15071       </div>
15072       <div class="body">
15073         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
15074 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
15075 completed.</p>
15076
15077 <blockquote>
15078 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
15079 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
15080 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
15081 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
15082 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
15083 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
15084 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
15085 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
15086
15087 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
15088 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
15089 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
15090
15091 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
15092 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
15093 much.</p>
15094
15095 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
15096
15097 <ul>
15098 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
15099 <ul>
15100   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
15101          combination with some new artwork
15102   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
15103   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
15104   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
15105   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
15106   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
15107   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
15108   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
15109   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
15110   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
15111 </ul></li>
15112 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
15113     Enabled for:
15114 <ul>
15115   <li>PAM
15116   <li>LDAP
15117   <li>IMAP
15118   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
15119 </ul>
15120 </li>
15121 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
15122 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
15123     fetched from LDAP.</li>
15124 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
15125 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
15126 </ul>
15127 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
15128
15129 <ul>
15130 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
15131     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
15132     for testing.</li>
15133 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
15134     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
15135     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
15136 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
15137 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
15138 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
15139 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
15140     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
15141 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
15142     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
15143     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
15144 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
15145     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
15146     and help out with translations.</li>
15147 </ul>
15148
15149 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
15150
15151 <ul>
15152 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
15153 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
15154 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
15155 </ul>
15156 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
15157
15158 <ul>
15159 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
15160 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
15161 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
15162 </ul>
15163
15164 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
15165 get closer to the final release.</p>
15166
15167 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
15168
15169 <ul>
15170 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
15171 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
15172 </ul>
15173
15174 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
15175 <ul>
15176 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
15177 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
15178 </ul>
15179 <p>How to report bugs:
15180 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
15181
15182 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
15183 </blockquote>
15184
15185       </div>
15186       <div class="tags">
15187
15188
15189         Tags: <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>.
15190
15191
15192       </div>
15193     </div>
15194     <div class="padding"></div>
15195
15196     <div class="entry">
15197       <div class="title">
15198         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
15199       </div>
15200       <div class="date">
15201         25th July 2010
15202       </div>
15203       <div class="body">
15204         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
15205 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
15206 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
15207 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
15208 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
15209
15210 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
15211 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
15212 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
15213 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
15214 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
15215 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
15216 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
15217
15218 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
15219 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
15220 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
15221 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
15222 up. :)</p>
15223
15224 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
15225 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
15226 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
15227
15228 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
15229 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
15230 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
15231 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
15232 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
15233 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
15234 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
15235 release another day.</p>
15236
15237 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
15238 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15239
15240       </div>
15241       <div class="tags">
15242
15243
15244         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
15245
15246
15247       </div>
15248     </div>
15249     <div class="padding"></div>
15250
15251     <div class="entry">
15252       <div class="title">
15253         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
15254       </div>
15255       <div class="date">
15256         18th July 2010
15257       </div>
15258       <div class="body">
15259         <p>Thanks to
15260 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
15261 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
15262 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
15263 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
15264 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
15265 only available from the development server, until more experience is
15266 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
15267
15268 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
15269 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
15270 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
15271 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
15272 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
15273 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
15274 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
15275
15276       </div>
15277       <div class="tags">
15278
15279
15280         Tags: <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/web">web</a>.
15281
15282
15283       </div>
15284     </div>
15285     <div class="padding"></div>
15286
15287     <div class="entry">
15288       <div class="title">
15289         <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>
15290       </div>
15291       <div class="date">
15292         17th July 2010
15293       </div>
15294       <div class="body">
15295         <p>This is a
15296 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
15297 on my
15298 <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
15299 work</a> on
15300 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
15301 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
15302
15303 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
15304 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
15305 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
15306 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
15307
15308 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
15309 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
15310 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
15311
15312 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
15313
15314 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
15315 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
15316 the web.
15317
15318 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
15319 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
15320 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
15321 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
15322 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
15323 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
15324
15325 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
15326 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
15327 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
15328 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
15329 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
15330 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
15331 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
15332 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
15333 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
15334 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
15335 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
15336 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
15337 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
15338 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
15339 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
15340 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
15341
15342 <blockquote><pre>
15343 ldapsearch -h ldap \
15344   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
15345   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
15346   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
15347   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
15348   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
15349   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
15350
15351 ldapsearch -h ldap \
15352   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
15353   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
15354   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
15355   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
15356   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
15357 </pre></blockquote>
15358
15359 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
15360 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
15361 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
15362 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15363 also exist.</p>
15364
15365 <blockquote><pre>
15366 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15367 objectclass: top
15368 objectclass: dnsdomain
15369 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15370 dc: tjener
15371 arecord: 10.0.2.2
15372 associateddomain: tjener.intern
15373
15374 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15375 objectclass: top
15376 objectclass: dnsdomain2
15377 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15378 dc: 2
15379 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
15380 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
15381 </pre></blockquote>
15382
15383 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
15384 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
15385 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
15386 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
15387 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
15388 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
15389 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
15390 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
15391 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
15392 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
15393 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
15394 instead.</p>
15395
15396 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
15397 like this:</p>
15398
15399 <blockquote><pre>
15400 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
15401   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
15402   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
15403   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
15404   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
15405   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
15406
15407 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
15408   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
15409 </pre></blockquote>
15410
15411 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
15412 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
15413 reverse lookups.</p>
15414
15415 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
15416 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
15417 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
15418 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
15419
15420 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
15421 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
15422 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
15423
15424 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
15425 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
15426 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
15427 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
15428 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
15429
15430 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
15431 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
15432 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
15433 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
15434 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
15435
15436 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
15437 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
15438 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
15439 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
15440 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
15441 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
15442
15443 <blockquote><pre>
15444 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
15445     SUP top
15446     AUXILIARY
15447     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
15448           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
15449           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
15450           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
15451           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
15452     ))
15453 </pre></blockquote>
15454
15455 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
15456 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
15457 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
15458 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
15459 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
15460 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
15461
15462 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
15463
15464 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
15465 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
15466 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
15467 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
15468 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
15469
15470 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
15471 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
15472 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
15473 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
15474
15475 <blockquote><pre>
15476 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
15477 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
15478 </pre></blockquote>
15479
15480 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
15481 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
15482 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
15483 search result is this entry:</p>
15484
15485 <blockquote><pre>
15486 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15487 cn: dhcp
15488 objectClass: top
15489 objectClass: dhcpServer
15490 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15491 </pre></blockquote>
15492
15493 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
15494 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
15495 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
15496 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
15497 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
15498 The search result is this entry:</p>
15499
15500 <blockquote><pre>
15501 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15502 cn: DHCP Config
15503 objectClass: top
15504 objectClass: dhcpService
15505 objectClass: dhcpOptions
15506 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15507 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
15508 dhcpStatements: authoritative
15509 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
15510 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
15511 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
15512 </pre></blockquote>
15513
15514 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
15515 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
15516 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
15517 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
15518 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
15519 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
15520 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
15521 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
15522 related computer objects.</p>
15523
15524 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
15525 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
15526 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
15527 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
15528 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
15529 like:</p>
15530
15531 <blockquote><pre>
15532 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15533 cn: hostname
15534 objectClass: top
15535 objectClass: dhcpHost
15536 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
15537 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
15538 </pre></blockquote>
15539
15540 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
15541 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
15542 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
15543 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
15544 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
15545 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
15546 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
15547 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
15548 structural object class.
15549
15550 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
15551
15552 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
15553 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
15554 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
15555 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
15556 in the configuration.</p>
15557
15558 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
15559 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
15560 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
15561 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
15562 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
15563 structure.</p>
15564
15565 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
15566 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
15567
15568 <blockquote><pre>
15569 ou=services
15570   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
15571     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
15572     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
15573       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
15574         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
15575     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
15576       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
15577         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
15578     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
15579       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
15580 </pre></blockquote>
15581
15582 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
15583 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
15584 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
15585 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
15586
15587 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
15588 like this:</p>
15589
15590 <blockquote><pre>
15591 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15592 dc: hostname
15593 objectClass: top
15594 objectClass: dhcpHost
15595 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15596 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
15597 associateddomain: hostname.intern
15598 arecord: 10.11.12.13
15599 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
15600 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
15601 </pre></blockquote>
15602
15603 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
15604 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
15605 auxiliary object class.</p>
15606
15607       </div>
15608       <div class="tags">
15609
15610
15611         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>.
15612
15613
15614       </div>
15615     </div>
15616     <div class="padding"></div>
15617
15618     <div class="entry">
15619       <div class="title">
15620         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
15621       </div>
15622       <div class="date">
15623         14th July 2010
15624       </div>
15625       <div class="body">
15626         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
15627 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
15628 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
15629 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
15630 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
15631
15632 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
15633 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
15634
15635 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
15636 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
15637 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
15638 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
15639 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
15640 to a slave DNS server.</p>
15641
15642 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
15643 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
15644 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
15645 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
15646 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
15647 seem to work.</p>
15648
15649 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
15650 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
15651 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
15652 this:</p>
15653
15654 <blockquote><pre>
15655   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15656   cn: hostname
15657   objectClass: dhcphost
15658   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15659   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
15660   associateddomain: hostname.intern
15661   arecord: 10.11.12.13
15662   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
15663   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
15664   ldapconfigsound: Y
15665 </pre></blockquote>
15666
15667 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
15668 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
15669 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
15670 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
15671
15672 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
15673 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
15674 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
15675 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
15676 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
15677 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
15678 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
15679 might be a good place to put it.</p>
15680
15681 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15682 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15683
15684       </div>
15685       <div class="tags">
15686
15687
15688         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>.
15689
15690
15691       </div>
15692     </div>
15693     <div class="padding"></div>
15694
15695     <div class="entry">
15696       <div class="title">
15697         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
15698       </div>
15699       <div class="date">
15700         11th July 2010
15701       </div>
15702       <div class="body">
15703         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
15704 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
15705 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
15706 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
15707
15708 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
15709 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
15710 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
15711 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
15712 LTSP clients.</p>
15713
15714 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
15715 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
15716 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
15717
15718 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
15719 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
15720 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
15721
15722 <blockquote><pre>
15723 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
15724 #
15725 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
15726 #
15727 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
15728 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
15729 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
15730 #
15731 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
15732 # existence of attribute names.
15733 #
15734 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
15735 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
15736 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
15737 #
15738 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
15739 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
15740 #
15741 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
15742 #     SUP top
15743 #     AUXILIARY
15744 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
15745
15746 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
15747 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
15748     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
15749     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
15750         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
15751         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
15752             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
15753             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
15754             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
15755             # bass value on to clients
15756             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
15757         done
15758     done
15759 fi
15760 </pre></blockquote>
15761
15762 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
15763 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
15764 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
15765 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
15766 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
15767
15768 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15769 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15770
15771 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
15772 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
15773 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
15774 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
15775 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
15776 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
15777
15778       </div>
15779       <div class="tags">
15780
15781
15782         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>.
15783
15784
15785       </div>
15786     </div>
15787     <div class="padding"></div>
15788
15789     <div class="entry">
15790       <div class="title">
15791         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
15792       </div>
15793       <div class="date">
15794          9th July 2010
15795       </div>
15796       <div class="body">
15797         <p>Since
15798 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
15799 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
15800 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
15801 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
15802 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
15803 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
15804 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
15805 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
15806 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
15807 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
15808 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
15809 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
15810 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
15811
15812       </div>
15813       <div class="tags">
15814
15815
15816         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>.
15817
15818
15819       </div>
15820     </div>
15821     <div class="padding"></div>
15822
15823     <div class="entry">
15824       <div class="title">
15825         <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>
15826       </div>
15827       <div class="date">
15828          3rd July 2010
15829       </div>
15830       <div class="body">
15831         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
15832 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
15833 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
15834 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
15835 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
15836 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
15837 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
15838 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
15839
15840 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
15841 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
15842 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
15843 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
15844 publish the difference.</p>
15845
15846 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
15847
15848 <blockquote><p>
15849   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
15850   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
15851   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
15852   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
15853   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
15854   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
15855   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
15856   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
15857 </p></blockquote>
15858
15859 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
15860
15861 <blockquote><p>
15862   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
15863   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
15864   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
15865   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
15866   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
15867   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
15868   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
15869   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
15870   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
15871   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
15872   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
15873   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
15874   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
15875   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
15876   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
15877   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
15878   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
15879   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
15880   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
15881   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
15882 </p></blockquote>
15883
15884 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
15885
15886 <blockquote><p>
15887   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
15888   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
15889   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
15890   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
15891   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
15892   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
15893   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
15894   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
15895   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
15896   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
15897   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
15898   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
15899   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
15900   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
15901   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
15902   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
15903   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
15904   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
15905   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
15906   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
15907   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
15908 </p></blockquote>
15909
15910 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
15911
15912 <blockquote><p>
15913   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
15914   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
15915   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
15916 </p></blockquote>
15917
15918 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
15919 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
15920 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
15921 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
15922 the difference somewhat.
15923
15924       </div>
15925       <div class="tags">
15926
15927
15928         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>.
15929
15930
15931       </div>
15932     </div>
15933     <div class="padding"></div>
15934
15935     <div class="entry">
15936       <div class="title">
15937         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
15938       </div>
15939       <div class="date">
15940          1st July 2010
15941       </div>
15942       <div class="body">
15943         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
15944 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
15945 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
15946 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
15947 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
15948 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
15949 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
15950 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
15951 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
15952
15953 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
15954
15955 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
15956 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
15957 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
15958 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
15959 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
15960 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
15961 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
15962 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
15963 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
15964 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
15965 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
15966 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
15967 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
15968 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
15969 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
15970
15971 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
15972
15973 <blockquote><pre>
15974 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
15975 </pre></blockquote>
15976
15977 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
15978 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
15979 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
15980 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
15981 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
15982 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
15983 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
15984 on how to get this working.</p>
15985
15986 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
15987 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
15988 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
15989 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
15990 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
15991 instructions I found in the
15992 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
15993 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
15994
15995 <blockquote><pre>
15996         debug-level             0
15997         reload-count            unlimited
15998         paranoia                no
15999
16000         enable-cache            passwd          yes
16001         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
16002         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
16003         suggested-size          passwd          211
16004         check-files             passwd          yes
16005         persistent              passwd          yes
16006         shared                  passwd          yes
16007         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
16008         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
16009
16010         enable-cache            group           yes
16011         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
16012         negative-time-to-live   group           20
16013         suggested-size          group           211
16014         check-files             group           yes
16015         persistent              group           yes
16016         shared                  group           yes
16017         max-db-size             group           33554432
16018         auto-propagate          group           yes
16019
16020         enable-cache            hosts           no
16021         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
16022         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
16023         suggested-size          hosts           211
16024         check-files             hosts           yes
16025         persistent              hosts           yes
16026         shared                  hosts           yes
16027         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
16028
16029         enable-cache            services        yes
16030         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
16031         negative-time-to-live   services        20
16032         suggested-size          services        211
16033         check-files             services        yes
16034         persistent              services        yes
16035         shared                  services        yes
16036         max-db-size             services        33554432
16037 </pre></blockquote>
16038
16039 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
16040 automatically like the one provided in
16041 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
16042 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
16043 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
16044 look like this:</p>
16045
16046 <blockquote><pre>
16047 passwd:         files ldap
16048 group:          files ldap
16049 shadow:         files ldap
16050 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
16051 networks:       files
16052 protocols:      files
16053 services:       files
16054 ethers:         files
16055 rpc:            files
16056 netgroup:       files ldap
16057 </pre></blockquote>
16058
16059 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
16060 shadow and netgroup.</p>
16061
16062 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
16063 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
16064 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
16065 attributes cached.
16066
16067 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
16068   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
16069
16070 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
16071 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
16072 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
16073 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
16074 discovered sssd.</p>
16075
16076 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
16077
16078 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
16079 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
16080 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
16081 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
16082 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
16083 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
16084 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
16085 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
16086 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
16087 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
16088 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
16089 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
16090 version 1.2 is now in testing.
16091
16092 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
16093 roaming setup I want</p>
16094
16095 <blockquote><pre>
16096 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
16097 </pre></blockquote>
16098
16099 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
16100 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
16101
16102 <blockquote><pre>
16103 [sssd]
16104 config_file_version = 2
16105 reconnection_retries = 3
16106 sbus_timeout = 30
16107 services = nss, pam
16108 domains = INTERN
16109
16110 [nss]
16111 filter_groups = root
16112 filter_users = root
16113 reconnection_retries = 3
16114
16115 [pam]
16116 reconnection_retries = 3
16117
16118 [domain/INTERN]
16119 enumerate = false
16120 cache_credentials = true
16121
16122 id_provider = ldap
16123 auth_provider = ldap
16124 chpass_provider = ldap
16125
16126 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
16127 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16128 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
16129 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
16130 </pre></blockquote>
16131
16132 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
16133 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
16134
16135 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
16136 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
16137 modify it manually.</p>
16138
16139 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16140 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16141
16142       </div>
16143       <div class="tags">
16144
16145
16146         Tags: <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>.
16147
16148
16149       </div>
16150     </div>
16151     <div class="padding"></div>
16152
16153     <div class="entry">
16154       <div class="title">
16155         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
16156       </div>
16157       <div class="date">
16158         28th June 2010
16159       </div>
16160       <div class="body">
16161         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
16162 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
16163 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
16164 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
16165 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
16166 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
16167 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
16168 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
16169 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
16170 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
16171
16172 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
16173 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
16174 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
16175 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
16176 released.</p>
16177
16178 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
16179 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
16180 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
16181 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
16182
16183 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
16184 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16185
16186 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
16187 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
16188 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
16189 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
16190 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
16191
16192       </div>
16193       <div class="tags">
16194
16195
16196         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>.
16197
16198
16199       </div>
16200     </div>
16201     <div class="padding"></div>
16202
16203     <div class="entry">
16204       <div class="title">
16205         <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>
16206       </div>
16207       <div class="date">
16208         24th June 2010
16209       </div>
16210       <div class="body">
16211         <p>A while back, I
16212 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
16213 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
16214 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
16215 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
16216
16217 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
16218 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
16219 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
16220 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
16221
16222 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
16223 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
16224 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
16225 Debian Edu.</p>
16226
16227 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
16228 the
16229 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
16230 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
16231 available today from IETF.</p>
16232
16233 <pre>
16234 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
16235 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
16236 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
16237  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
16238         NAME 'dhcpHost'
16239         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
16240 -       SUP top
16241 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
16242         MUST cn
16243         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
16244         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
16245 </pre>
16246
16247 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
16248 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
16249 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
16250
16251 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16252 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16253
16254       </div>
16255       <div class="tags">
16256
16257
16258         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>.
16259
16260
16261       </div>
16262     </div>
16263     <div class="padding"></div>
16264
16265     <div class="entry">
16266       <div class="title">
16267         <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>
16268       </div>
16269       <div class="date">
16270         16th June 2010
16271       </div>
16272       <div class="body">
16273         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
16274 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
16275 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
16276 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
16277 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
16278 this:
16279
16280 <blockquote><pre>
16281 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
16282 tasksel --new-install
16283 </pre></blockquote>
16284
16285 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
16286 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
16287 any output what so ever.
16288
16289 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
16290 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
16291 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
16292 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
16293 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
16294 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
16295 code like this:
16296
16297 <blockquote><pre>
16298 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
16299 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
16300 $cmd
16301 </pre></blockquote>
16302
16303 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
16304 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
16305 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
16306 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
16307 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
16308 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
16309 installation.</p>
16310
16311 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
16312 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
16313 like this.</p>
16314
16315       </div>
16316       <div class="tags">
16317
16318
16319         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>.
16320
16321
16322       </div>
16323     </div>
16324     <div class="padding"></div>
16325
16326     <div class="entry">
16327       <div class="title">
16328         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
16329       </div>
16330       <div class="date">
16331         13th June 2010
16332       </div>
16333       <div class="body">
16334         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
16335 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
16336 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
16337 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
16338 pages.</p>
16339
16340 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
16341 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
16342 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
16343 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
16344 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
16345 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
16346 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
16347 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
16348 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
16349 see how the project is doing.</p>
16350
16351 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
16352 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
16353 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
16354 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
16355 Windows.  This is great.</p>
16356
16357       </div>
16358       <div class="tags">
16359
16360
16361         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
16362
16363
16364       </div>
16365     </div>
16366     <div class="padding"></div>
16367
16368     <div class="entry">
16369       <div class="title">
16370         <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>
16371       </div>
16372       <div class="date">
16373         13th June 2010
16374       </div>
16375       <div class="body">
16376         <p>My
16377 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
16378 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
16379 finally made the upgrade logs available from
16380 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
16381 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
16382 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
16383 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
16384
16385 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
16386 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
16387 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
16388 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
16389 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
16390 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
16391 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
16392 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
16393
16394 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
16395 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
16396 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
16397 too surprising.</p>
16398
16399 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
16400 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
16401 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
16402 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
16403 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
16404 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
16405 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
16406 continue.</p>
16407
16408 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
16409 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
16410   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
16411   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
16412   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
16413   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
16414   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
16415   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
16416   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
16417   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
16418   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
16419   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
16420   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
16421   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
16422   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
16423   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16424   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
16425   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
16426   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
16427   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
16428   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
16429   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
16430   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
16431   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
16432   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
16433   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
16434   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
16435   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
16436   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
16437   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
16438
16439 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
16440
16441 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
16442   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
16443   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
16444   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
16445   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
16446   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
16447   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
16448   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
16449   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
16450   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
16451   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
16452   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
16453   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
16454   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
16455   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
16456   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
16457   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
16458   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
16459   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
16460   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
16461   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
16462   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
16463   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
16464   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
16465   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
16466   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
16467   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
16468   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
16469   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
16470   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16471   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
16472   zip</p>
16473
16474 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
16475
16476 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
16477   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
16478   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
16479   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
16480   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
16481   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
16482   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
16483   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
16484   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
16485   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
16486   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
16487   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
16488   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
16489   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
16490   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16491   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
16492   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
16493   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
16494   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
16495   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
16496   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
16497   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
16498   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
16499   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
16500   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
16501   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
16502   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
16503   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
16504
16505 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
16506 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
16507   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
16508   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
16509   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
16510   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
16511   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
16512   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
16513   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
16514   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
16515   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
16516   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
16517   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
16518   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
16519   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
16520   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
16521   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
16522   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
16523   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
16524   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
16525   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
16526   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
16527   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
16528   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
16529   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
16530   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
16531   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
16532   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
16533   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
16534   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
16535   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
16536   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
16537   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
16538   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
16539   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
16540   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16541   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
16542   xulrunner-1.9</p>
16543
16544
16545       </div>
16546       <div class="tags">
16547
16548
16549         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>.
16550
16551
16552       </div>
16553     </div>
16554     <div class="padding"></div>
16555
16556     <div class="entry">
16557       <div class="title">
16558         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
16559       </div>
16560       <div class="date">
16561         11th June 2010
16562       </div>
16563       <div class="body">
16564         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
16565 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
16566 have been discovered and reported in the process
16567 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
16568 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
16569 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
16570 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
16571 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
16572
16573 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
16574 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
16575 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
16576 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
16577 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
16578 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
16579
16580 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
16581 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
16582 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
16583 is created.  The bug report
16584 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
16585 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
16586 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
16587 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
16588 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
16589 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
16590 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
16591 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
16592 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
16593 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
16594 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
16595 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
16596 Debian Squeeze.</p>
16597
16598 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
16599 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
16600 trick:</p>
16601
16602 <blockquote><pre>
16603 #!/bin/sh
16604 set -ex
16605
16606 if [ "$1" ] ; then
16607     desktop=$1
16608 else
16609     desktop=gnome
16610 fi
16611
16612 from=lenny
16613 to=squeeze
16614
16615 exec &lt; /dev/null
16616 unset LANG
16617 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
16618 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
16619 fuser -mv .
16620 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
16621 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
16622 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
16623 #!/bin/sh
16624 exit 101
16625 EOF
16626 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
16627 exit_cleanup() {
16628     umount $tmpdir/proc
16629 }
16630 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
16631 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
16632 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
16633
16634 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
16635
16636 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
16637 # to return the correct answers.
16638 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
16639     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
16640
16641 # Include the desktop and laptop task
16642 for test in desktop laptop ; do
16643     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
16644 #!/bin/sh
16645 exit 2
16646 EOF
16647     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
16648 done
16649
16650 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
16651 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
16652 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
16653 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
16654
16655 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
16656 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
16657 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
16658 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
16659 fuser -mv
16660 </pre></blockquote>
16661
16662 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
16663 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
16664 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
16665 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
16666 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
16667 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
16668
16669 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
16670 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
16671 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
16672 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
16673 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
16674 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
16675 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
16676
16677 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
16678 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
16679 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
16680 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
16681 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
16682 packages.</p>
16683
16684       </div>
16685       <div class="tags">
16686
16687
16688         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>.
16689
16690
16691       </div>
16692     </div>
16693     <div class="padding"></div>
16694
16695     <div class="entry">
16696       <div class="title">
16697         <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>
16698       </div>
16699       <div class="date">
16700          6th June 2010
16701       </div>
16702       <div class="body">
16703         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
16704 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
16705 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
16706 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
16707 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
16708 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
16709 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
16710
16711 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
16712 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
16713 COLUMNS):</p>
16714
16715 <blockquote><pre>
16716 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
16717 previous=N
16718 PREVLEVEL=
16719 RUNLEVEL=
16720 runlevel=S
16721 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
16722 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
16723 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
16724 </pre></blockquote>
16725
16726 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
16727 script.</p>
16728
16729 <blockquote><pre>
16730 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
16731 previous=N
16732 PREVLEVEL=N
16733 RUNLEVEL=S
16734 runlevel=S
16735 </pre></blockquote>
16736
16737 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
16738 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
16739 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
16740
16741 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
16742 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
16743 choice.</p>
16744
16745       </div>
16746       <div class="tags">
16747
16748
16749         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>.
16750
16751
16752       </div>
16753     </div>
16754     <div class="padding"></div>
16755
16756     <div class="entry">
16757       <div class="title">
16758         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
16759       </div>
16760       <div class="date">
16761          6th June 2010
16762       </div>
16763       <div class="body">
16764         <p>Via the
16765 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
16766 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
16767 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
16768 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
16769 following the standards wars of today.</p>
16770
16771       </div>
16772       <div class="tags">
16773
16774
16775         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>.
16776
16777
16778       </div>
16779     </div>
16780     <div class="padding"></div>
16781
16782     <div class="entry">
16783       <div class="title">
16784         <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>
16785       </div>
16786       <div class="date">
16787          3rd June 2010
16788       </div>
16789       <div class="body">
16790         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
16791 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
16792 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
16793 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
16794 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
16795
16796 <blockquote><pre>
16797 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
16798   vendor                    count
16799   Dell Computer Corporation     1
16800     PowerEdge 1750              1
16801   IBM                           1
16802     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
16803   Intel                         2
16804   [no-dmi-info]                 3
16805 maintainer:~#
16806 </pre></blockquote>
16807
16808 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
16809 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
16810 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
16811 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
16812 option to list the individual machines.</p>
16813
16814 <p>A larger list is
16815 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
16816 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
16817 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
16818 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
16819 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
16820 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
16821 collector.</p>
16822
16823       </div>
16824       <div class="tags">
16825
16826
16827         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>.
16828
16829
16830       </div>
16831     </div>
16832     <div class="padding"></div>
16833
16834     <div class="entry">
16835       <div class="title">
16836         <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>
16837       </div>
16838       <div class="date">
16839          1st June 2010
16840       </div>
16841       <div class="body">
16842         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
16843 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
16844 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
16845 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
16846 wait.</p>
16847
16848 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
16849 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
16850 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
16851 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
16852 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
16853 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
16854
16855 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
16856 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
16857 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
16858 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
16859 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
16860 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
16861 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
16862 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
16863
16864 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
16865
16866       </div>
16867       <div class="tags">
16868
16869
16870         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>.
16871
16872
16873       </div>
16874     </div>
16875     <div class="padding"></div>
16876
16877     <div class="entry">
16878       <div class="title">
16879         <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>
16880       </div>
16881       <div class="date">
16882         27th May 2010
16883       </div>
16884       <div class="body">
16885         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
16886 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
16887 issues are known and should be solved:
16888
16889 <p><ul>
16890
16891 <li>The wicd package seen to
16892 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
16893 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
16894 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
16895 seem to be on the case.</li>
16896
16897 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
16898 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
16899 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
16900 maintainer is on the case.</li>
16901
16902 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
16903 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
16904 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
16905 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
16906 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
16907 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
16908 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
16909 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
16910
16911 </ul></p>
16912
16913 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
16914 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
16915 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
16916 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
16917
16918 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
16919 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
16920 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
16921 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
16922
16923 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
16924
16925       </div>
16926       <div class="tags">
16927
16928
16929         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>.
16930
16931
16932       </div>
16933     </div>
16934     <div class="padding"></div>
16935
16936     <div class="entry">
16937       <div class="title">
16938         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
16939       </div>
16940       <div class="date">
16941         22nd May 2010
16942       </div>
16943       <div class="body">
16944         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
16945 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
16946 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
16947 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
16948
16949 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
16950 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
16951 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
16952 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
16953 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
16954 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
16955 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
16956 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
16957 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
16958 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
16959 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
16960 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
16961 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
16962 going to work.</p>
16963
16964 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
16965 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
16966 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
16967 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
16968 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
16969 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
16970 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
16971 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
16972 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
16973 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
16974 Edu.</p>
16975
16976 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
16977 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
16978 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
16979 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
16980 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
16981 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
16982
16983 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
16984 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
16985
16986       </div>
16987       <div class="tags">
16988
16989
16990         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>.
16991
16992
16993       </div>
16994     </div>
16995     <div class="padding"></div>
16996
16997     <div class="entry">
16998       <div class="title">
16999         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
17000       </div>
17001       <div class="date">
17002         19th May 2010
17003       </div>
17004       <div class="body">
17005         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
17006 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
17007 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
17008 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
17009 into unstable.  The
17010 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
17011 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
17012 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
17013 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
17014 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
17015 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
17016 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
17017
17018 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
17019 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
17020 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
17021 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
17022 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
17023 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
17024 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
17025 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
17026
17027 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
17028 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
17029 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
17030 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
17031 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
17032 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
17033 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
17034
17035 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
17036 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
17037 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
17038 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
17039 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
17040 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
17041 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
17042 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
17043 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
17044 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
17045 on the home directory servers.</p>
17046
17047 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
17048 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
17049 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
17050 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
17051 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
17052 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
17053
17054 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17055 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17056
17057       </div>
17058       <div class="tags">
17059
17060
17061         Tags: <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>.
17062
17063
17064       </div>
17065     </div>
17066     <div class="padding"></div>
17067
17068     <div class="entry">
17069       <div class="title">
17070         <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>
17071       </div>
17072       <div class="date">
17073         14th May 2010
17074       </div>
17075       <div class="body">
17076         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
17077 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
17078 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
17079 expected, if I am to believe the
17080 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
17081 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
17082 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
17083 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
17084 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
17085 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
17086 version.</p>
17087
17088 More information about
17089 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
17090 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
17091 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
17092 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
17093
17094 <blockquote><pre>
17095 CONCURRENCY=none
17096 </pre></blockquote>
17097
17098 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
17099 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
17100 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
17101 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
17102
17103       </div>
17104       <div class="tags">
17105
17106
17107         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>.
17108
17109
17110       </div>
17111     </div>
17112     <div class="padding"></div>
17113
17114     <div class="entry">
17115       <div class="title">
17116         <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>
17117       </div>
17118       <div class="date">
17119         14th May 2010
17120       </div>
17121       <div class="body">
17122         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
17123 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
17124 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
17125 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
17126 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
17127 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
17128 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
17129 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
17130
17131 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
17132 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
17133 this on the collector host:</p>
17134
17135 <blockquote><pre>
17136 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
17137 </pre></blockquote>
17138
17139 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
17140 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
17141
17142 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
17143 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
17144 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
17145 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
17146 written yet.</p>
17147
17148       </div>
17149       <div class="tags">
17150
17151
17152         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>.
17153
17154
17155       </div>
17156     </div>
17157     <div class="padding"></div>
17158
17159     <div class="entry">
17160       <div class="title">
17161         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
17162       </div>
17163       <div class="date">
17164         13th May 2010
17165       </div>
17166       <div class="body">
17167         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
17168 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
17169 has been
17170 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
17171
17172 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
17173 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
17174 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
17175 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
17176 based boot system.  Tollef is
17177 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
17178 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
17179 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
17180 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
17181 at the moment do not.</p>
17182
17183 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
17184 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
17185 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
17186 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
17187 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
17188 way forward.</p>
17189
17190 <p>In the mean time, based on the
17191 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
17192 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
17193 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
17194 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
17195 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
17196 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
17197 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
17198 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
17199
17200       </div>
17201       <div class="tags">
17202
17203
17204         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>.
17205
17206
17207       </div>
17208     </div>
17209     <div class="padding"></div>
17210
17211     <div class="entry">
17212       <div class="title">
17213         <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>
17214       </div>
17215       <div class="date">
17216          6th May 2010
17217       </div>
17218       <div class="body">
17219         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
17220 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
17221 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
17222 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
17223 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
17224 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
17225 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
17226
17227 <blockquote><pre>
17228 CONCURRENCY=makefile
17229 </pre></blockquote>
17230
17231 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
17232 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
17233 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
17234 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
17235 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
17236 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
17237 make this happen.</p>
17238
17239 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
17240 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
17241 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
17242 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
17243 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
17244
17245 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
17246 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
17247 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
17248 fix the remaining issues.</p>
17249
17250 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
17251 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
17252 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
17253 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
17254
17255       </div>
17256       <div class="tags">
17257
17258
17259         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>.
17260
17261
17262       </div>
17263     </div>
17264     <div class="padding"></div>
17265
17266     <div class="entry">
17267       <div class="title">
17268         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
17269       </div>
17270       <div class="date">
17271          2nd May 2010
17272       </div>
17273       <div class="body">
17274         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
17275 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
17276 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
17277
17278 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
17279 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
17280 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
17281 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
17282 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
17283
17284 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
17285 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
17286
17287 <blockquote><pre>
17288 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
17289 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
17290 Password expires                                        : never
17291 Password inactive                                       : never
17292 Account expires                                         : never
17293 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
17294 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
17295 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
17296 root@tjener:~#
17297 </pre></blockquote>
17298
17299 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
17300 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
17301 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
17302 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
17303 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
17304 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
17305
17306 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
17307 intended:</p>
17308
17309 <blockquote><pre>
17310 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
17311 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
17312 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
17313 Password expires                                        : never
17314 Password inactive                                       : never
17315 Account expires                                         : never
17316 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
17317 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
17318 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
17319 root@tjener:~#
17320 </pre></blockquote>
17321
17322 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
17323 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
17324 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
17325
17326 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
17327 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
17328
17329 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
17330 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17331
17332 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
17333 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
17334 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
17335 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
17336 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
17337 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
17338 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
17339
17340 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
17341 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
17342 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
17343 change.</p>
17344
17345       </div>
17346       <div class="tags">
17347
17348
17349         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
17350
17351
17352       </div>
17353     </div>
17354     <div class="padding"></div>
17355
17356     <div class="entry">
17357       <div class="title">
17358         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
17359       </div>
17360       <div class="date">
17361         28th April 2010
17362       </div>
17363       <div class="body">
17364         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
17365 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
17366 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
17367 and go.</p>
17368
17369 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
17370 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
17371 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
17372 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
17373
17374 <ul>
17375
17376  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
17377    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
17378    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
17379    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
17380    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
17381    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
17382    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
17383    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
17384    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
17385    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
17386    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
17387    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
17388
17389  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
17390    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
17391    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
17392    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
17393    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
17394    or the Fedora developed
17395    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
17396    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
17397
17398  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
17399    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
17400    directory, using unison.</li>
17401
17402  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
17403    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
17404    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
17405    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
17406    implemented.</li>
17407
17408  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
17409    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
17410
17411  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
17412    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
17413    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
17414
17415 </ul>
17416
17417 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
17418 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
17419 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
17420 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
17421 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
17422 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
17423 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
17424 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
17425 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
17426
17427 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17428 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17429
17430       </div>
17431       <div class="tags">
17432
17433
17434         Tags: <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>.
17435
17436
17437       </div>
17438     </div>
17439     <div class="padding"></div>
17440
17441     <div class="entry">
17442       <div class="title">
17443         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
17444       </div>
17445       <div class="date">
17446         19th April 2010
17447       </div>
17448       <div class="body">
17449         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
17450 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
17451 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
17452 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
17453 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
17454 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
17455 restrictions on the web, for example from
17456 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
17457 epub-version from
17458 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
17459 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
17460 strongly recommend this book.</p>
17461
17462       </div>
17463       <div class="tags">
17464
17465
17466         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
17467
17468
17469       </div>
17470     </div>
17471     <div class="padding"></div>
17472
17473     <div class="entry">
17474       <div class="title">
17475         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
17476       </div>
17477       <div class="date">
17478         14th April 2010
17479       </div>
17480       <div class="body">
17481         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
17482 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
17483 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
17484 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
17485 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
17486 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
17487 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
17488 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
17489 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
17490
17491 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
17492 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
17493 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
17494 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
17495 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
17496
17497 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
17498 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
17499
17500 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
17501 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
17502 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
17503 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
17504 to work properly.</p>
17505
17506 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
17507 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
17508 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
17509 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
17510 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
17511 time.</p>
17512
17513 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
17514 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
17515 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
17516 up in a few days.</p>
17517
17518       </div>
17519       <div class="tags">
17520
17521
17522         Tags: <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>.
17523
17524
17525       </div>
17526     </div>
17527     <div class="padding"></div>
17528
17529     <div class="entry">
17530       <div class="title">
17531         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
17532       </div>
17533       <div class="date">
17534          6th March 2010
17535       </div>
17536       <div class="body">
17537         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
17538 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
17539 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
17540 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
17541 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
17542 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
17543
17544 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
17545 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
17546 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
17547 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
17548
17549 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
17550 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
17551 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
17552 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
17553 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
17554 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
17555
17556       </div>
17557       <div class="tags">
17558
17559
17560         Tags: <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>.
17561
17562
17563       </div>
17564     </div>
17565     <div class="padding"></div>
17566
17567     <div class="entry">
17568       <div class="title">
17569         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
17570       </div>
17571       <div class="date">
17572         11th February 2010
17573       </div>
17574       <div class="body">
17575         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
17576 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
17577 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
17578 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
17579 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
17580 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
17581 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
17582
17583 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
17584
17585 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
17586 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
17587 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
17588 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
17589
17590       </div>
17591       <div class="tags">
17592
17593
17594         Tags: <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>.
17595
17596
17597       </div>
17598     </div>
17599     <div class="padding"></div>
17600
17601     <div class="entry">
17602       <div class="title">
17603         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
17604       </div>
17605       <div class="date">
17606         27th January 2010
17607       </div>
17608       <div class="body">
17609         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
17610 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
17611 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
17612 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
17613 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
17614 further.</p>
17615
17616 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
17617 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
17618 configured to be a server for the
17619 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
17620 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
17621 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
17622 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
17623 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
17624 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
17625 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
17626 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
17627 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
17628 and Nagios configuration.</p>
17629
17630 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
17631 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
17632 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
17633 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
17634
17635 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
17636 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
17637 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
17638 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
17639 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
17640 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
17641 the machine.</p>
17642
17643 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
17644 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
17645 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
17646 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
17647
17648 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
17649 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
17650 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
17651 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
17652 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
17653 everything is taken care of.</p>
17654
17655       </div>
17656       <div class="tags">
17657
17658
17659         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
17660
17661
17662       </div>
17663     </div>
17664     <div class="padding"></div>
17665
17666     <div class="entry">
17667       <div class="title">
17668         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
17669       </div>
17670       <div class="date">
17671         12th August 2009
17672       </div>
17673       <div class="body">
17674         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
17675 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
17676 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
17677 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
17678
17679 <table>
17680 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
17681 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
17682 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
17683 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
17684 </table>
17685
17686 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
17687 got these numbers:</p>
17688
17689 <table>
17690 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
17691 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
17692 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
17693 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
17694 </table>
17695
17696 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
17697
17698 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
17699 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
17700 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
17701 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
17702 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
17703
17704
17705 <table>
17706 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
17707 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
17708 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
17709 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
17710 </table>
17711
17712 <p>And with 'site:no':
17713
17714 <table>
17715 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
17716 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
17717 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
17718 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
17719 </table>
17720
17721 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
17722 numbers.</p>
17723
17724       </div>
17725       <div class="tags">
17726
17727
17728         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
17729
17730
17731       </div>
17732     </div>
17733     <div class="padding"></div>
17734
17735     <div class="entry">
17736       <div class="title">
17737         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
17738       </div>
17739       <div class="date">
17740          8th August 2009
17741       </div>
17742       <div class="body">
17743         <p>According to <a
17744 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
17745 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
17746 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
17747 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
17748 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
17749 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
17750 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
17751 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
17752 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
17753 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
17754
17755 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
17756 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
17757 seminar this autumn.</p>
17758
17759       </div>
17760       <div class="tags">
17761
17762
17763         Tags: <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>.
17764
17765
17766       </div>
17767     </div>
17768     <div class="padding"></div>
17769
17770     <div class="entry">
17771       <div class="title">
17772         <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>
17773       </div>
17774       <div class="date">
17775         27th July 2009
17776       </div>
17777       <div class="body">
17778         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
17779 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
17780 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
17781 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
17782 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
17783 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
17784 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
17785
17786 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
17787 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
17788 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
17789
17790       </div>
17791       <div class="tags">
17792
17793
17794         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>.
17795
17796
17797       </div>
17798     </div>
17799     <div class="padding"></div>
17800
17801     <div class="entry">
17802       <div class="title">
17803         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
17804       </div>
17805       <div class="date">
17806         22nd July 2009
17807       </div>
17808       <div class="body">
17809         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
17810 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
17811 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
17812 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
17813 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
17814 the package up to date.</p>
17815
17816 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
17817 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
17818 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
17819 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
17820 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
17821 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
17822 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
17823 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
17824 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
17825 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
17826 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
17827 working on the future release.</p>
17828
17829 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
17830 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
17831
17832       </div>
17833       <div class="tags">
17834
17835
17836         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>.
17837
17838
17839       </div>
17840     </div>
17841     <div class="padding"></div>
17842
17843     <div class="entry">
17844       <div class="title">
17845         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
17846       </div>
17847       <div class="date">
17848         24th June 2009
17849       </div>
17850       <div class="body">
17851         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
17852 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
17853 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
17854 funded
17855 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
17856 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
17857 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
17858 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
17859 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
17860 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
17861
17862 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
17863 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
17864 boot:</p>
17865
17866 <ul>
17867
17868 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
17869
17870 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
17871    clock is in UTC.</li>
17872
17873 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
17874    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
17875    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
17876
17877 </ul>
17878
17879 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
17880 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
17881 Villegas</a>.
17882
17883 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
17884 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
17885 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
17886 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
17887 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
17888 using this.</p>
17889
17890 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
17891 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
17892 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
17893 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
17894 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
17895 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
17896 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
17897
17898       </div>
17899       <div class="tags">
17900
17901
17902         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>.
17903
17904
17905       </div>
17906     </div>
17907     <div class="padding"></div>
17908
17909     <div class="entry">
17910       <div class="title">
17911         <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>
17912       </div>
17913       <div class="date">
17914          2nd May 2009
17915       </div>
17916       <div class="body">
17917         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
17918 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
17919 do not yet know them.</p>
17920
17921 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
17922 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
17923 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
17924 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
17925 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
17926 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
17927 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
17928 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
17929 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
17930 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
17931 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
17932
17933 <p>The second one is
17934 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
17935 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
17936 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
17937 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
17938 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
17939 and the company behind it is running
17940 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
17941 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
17942 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
17943 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
17944 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
17945 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
17946 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
17947 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
17948
17949 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
17950 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
17951 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
17952 surrounded by today.</p>
17953
17954       </div>
17955       <div class="tags">
17956
17957
17958         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>.
17959
17960
17961       </div>
17962     </div>
17963     <div class="padding"></div>
17964
17965     <div class="entry">
17966       <div class="title">
17967         <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>
17968       </div>
17969       <div class="date">
17970         28th April 2009
17971       </div>
17972       <div class="body">
17973         <p>Julien Blache
17974 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
17975 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
17976 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
17977 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
17978 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
17979 properties.</p>
17980
17981       </div>
17982       <div class="tags">
17983
17984
17985         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>.
17986
17987
17988       </div>
17989     </div>
17990     <div class="padding"></div>
17991
17992     <div class="entry">
17993       <div class="title">
17994         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
17995       </div>
17996       <div class="date">
17997          5th April 2009
17998       </div>
17999       <div class="body">
18000         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
18001 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
18002 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
18003 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
18004 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
18005 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
18006 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
18007 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
18008
18009 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
18010 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
18011 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
18012   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
18013   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
18014
18015 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
18016 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
18017 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
18018 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
18019
18020 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
18021 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
18022 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
18023 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
18024
18025 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
18026 set -e
18027 URL="$1"
18028 SAVEFILE="$2"
18029 DURATION="$3"
18030 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
18031   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
18032   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
18033 pid=$!
18034 sleep $DURATION
18035 kill $pid
18036 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
18037
18038       </div>
18039       <div class="tags">
18040
18041
18042         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
18043
18044
18045       </div>
18046     </div>
18047     <div class="padding"></div>
18048
18049     <div class="entry">
18050       <div class="title">
18051         <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>
18052       </div>
18053       <div class="date">
18054         30th March 2009
18055       </div>
18056       <div class="body">
18057         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
18058 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
18059 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
18060 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
18061 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
18062 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
18063 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
18064 application.</p>
18065
18066 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
18067 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
18068 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
18069 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
18070 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
18071 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
18072 blocked from doing so.</p>
18073
18074 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
18075 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
18076 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
18077 requirements change.</p>
18078
18079 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
18080 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
18081 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
18082
18083       </div>
18084       <div class="tags">
18085
18086
18087         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>.
18088
18089
18090       </div>
18091     </div>
18092     <div class="padding"></div>
18093
18094     <div class="entry">
18095       <div class="title">
18096         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
18097       </div>
18098       <div class="date">
18099         29th March 2009
18100       </div>
18101       <div class="body">
18102         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
18103 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
18104 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
18105 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
18106 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
18107 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
18108 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
18109 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
18110 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
18111 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
18112 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
18113 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
18114 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
18115 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
18116 now. :)</p>
18117
18118       </div>
18119       <div class="tags">
18120
18121
18122         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>.
18123
18124
18125       </div>
18126     </div>
18127     <div class="padding"></div>
18128
18129     <div class="entry">
18130       <div class="title">
18131         <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>
18132       </div>
18133       <div class="date">
18134         29th March 2009
18135       </div>
18136       <div class="body">
18137         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
18138 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
18139 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
18140 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
18141 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
18142 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
18143
18144 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
18145 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
18146 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
18147 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
18148 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
18149 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
18150 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
18151 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
18152 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
18153 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
18154 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
18155 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
18156 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
18157
18158 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
18159 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
18160 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
18161 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
18162
18163 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
18164 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
18165
18166 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
18167 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
18168 new IETF work group?</p>
18169
18170       </div>
18171       <div class="tags">
18172
18173
18174         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>.
18175
18176
18177       </div>
18178     </div>
18179     <div class="padding"></div>
18180
18181     <div class="entry">
18182       <div class="title">
18183         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
18184       </div>
18185       <div class="date">
18186         28th February 2009
18187       </div>
18188       <div class="body">
18189         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
18190 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
18191 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
18192 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
18193 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
18194 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
18195 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
18196 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
18197 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
18198 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
18199 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
18200 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
18201 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
18202 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
18203 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
18204 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
18205 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
18206 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
18207 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
18208 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
18209 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
18210 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
18211 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
18212 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
18213 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
18214 machine.</p>
18215
18216 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
18217 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
18218 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
18219 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
18220 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
18221 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
18222 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
18223
18224 <pre>
18225 use LWP::Simple;
18226 use POSIX;
18227 use WWW::Mechanize;
18228 use Date::Parse;
18229 [...]
18230 sub get_support_info {
18231     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
18232     my $str;
18233
18234     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
18235         # fetch website from Dell support
18236         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
18237         my $webpage = get($url);
18238         return undef unless ($webpage);
18239
18240         my $daysleft = -1;
18241         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
18242         foreach my $line (@lines) {
18243             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
18244             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
18245             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
18246
18247             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
18248             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
18249             my $lastend = "";
18250             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
18251                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
18252
18253                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
18254                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
18255                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
18256                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
18257                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
18258                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
18259                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
18260             }
18261             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
18262             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
18263                 if ($lastend lt $today);
18264         }
18265     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
18266         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
18267         my $url =
18268             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
18269         $mech->get($url);
18270         my $fields = {
18271             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
18272             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
18273             'country' => 'NO',
18274             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
18275             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
18276         };
18277         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
18278                             fields      => $fields );
18279         # Next step is screen scraping
18280         my $content = $mech->content();
18281
18282         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
18283         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
18284         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
18285         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
18286
18287         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
18288
18289         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
18290             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
18291                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
18292             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
18293             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
18294                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
18295             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
18296                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
18297
18298             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
18299
18300             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
18301                 if ($end lt $today);
18302         }
18303     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
18304         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
18305         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
18306         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
18307             my $content =
18308                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
18309             if ($content) {
18310                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
18311                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
18312                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
18313                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
18314
18315                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
18316                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
18317
18318                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
18319
18320                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
18321                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
18322                     if ($end lt $today);
18323             }
18324         }
18325     }
18326     return $str;
18327 }
18328 </pre>
18329
18330 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
18331 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
18332 from dmidecode.</p>
18333
18334 <pre>
18335 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
18336                        "447707-B21");
18337 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
18338 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
18339                        "1234567");
18340 </pre>
18341
18342 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
18343 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
18344
18345 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
18346 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
18347 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
18348 do so.</p>
18349
18350       </div>
18351       <div class="tags">
18352
18353
18354         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18355
18356
18357       </div>
18358     </div>
18359     <div class="padding"></div>
18360
18361     <div class="entry">
18362       <div class="title">
18363         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
18364       </div>
18365       <div class="date">
18366         20th February 2009
18367       </div>
18368       <div class="body">
18369         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
18370 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
18371 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
18372 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
18373 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
18374 the "missing" computer.</p>
18375
18376 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
18377 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
18378 code blocks as defined in the
18379 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
18380 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
18381 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
18382 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
18383 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
18384 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
18385 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
18386 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
18387 codes.</p>
18388
18389 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
18390 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
18391 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
18392 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
18393 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
18394 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
18395
18396 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
18397 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
18398 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
18399 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
18400 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
18401 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
18402 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
18403 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
18404 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
18405 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
18406
18407 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
18408 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
18409 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
18410
18411       </div>
18412       <div class="tags">
18413
18414
18415         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18416
18417
18418       </div>
18419     </div>
18420     <div class="padding"></div>
18421
18422     <div class="entry">
18423       <div class="title">
18424         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
18425       </div>
18426       <div class="date">
18427         17th January 2009
18428       </div>
18429       <div class="body">
18430         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
18431 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
18432 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
18433 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
18434 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
18435 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
18436 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
18437 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
18438 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
18439 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
18440 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
18441 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
18442 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
18443 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
18444
18445 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
18446 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
18447 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
18448 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
18449 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
18450 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
18451 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
18452 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
18453 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
18454 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
18455 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
18456 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
18457 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
18458 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
18459 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
18460 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
18461 playing when the download is done.</p>
18462
18463 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
18464 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
18465 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
18466 too.</p>
18467
18468 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
18469 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
18470 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
18471 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
18472
18473       </div>
18474       <div class="tags">
18475
18476
18477         Tags: <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/nuug">nuug</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>.
18478
18479
18480       </div>
18481     </div>
18482     <div class="padding"></div>
18483
18484     <div class="entry">
18485       <div class="title">
18486         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
18487       </div>
18488       <div class="date">
18489         28th December 2008
18490       </div>
18491       <div class="body">
18492         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
18493 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
18494 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
18495 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
18496 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
18497 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
18498 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
18499 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
18500 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
18501 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
18502 source, sink and mixer applications and
18503 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
18504 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
18505 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
18506 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
18507 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
18508 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
18509 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
18510 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
18511 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
18512
18513 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
18514 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
18515 larger stick as well.</p>
18516
18517       </div>
18518       <div class="tags">
18519
18520
18521         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
18522
18523
18524       </div>
18525     </div>
18526     <div class="padding"></div>
18527
18528     <div class="entry">
18529       <div class="title">
18530         <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>
18531       </div>
18532       <div class="date">
18533          7th December 2008
18534       </div>
18535       <div class="body">
18536         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
18537 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
18538 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
18539 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
18540 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
18541 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
18542 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
18543 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
18544
18545 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
18546 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
18547 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
18548 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
18549 of these cards.</p>
18550
18551       </div>
18552       <div class="tags">
18553
18554
18555         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>.
18556
18557
18558       </div>
18559     </div>
18560     <div class="padding"></div>
18561
18562     <div class="entry">
18563       <div class="title">
18564         <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>
18565       </div>
18566       <div class="date">
18567         25th November 2008
18568       </div>
18569       <div class="body">
18570         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
18571 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
18572 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
18573 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
18574 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
18575 notes are available on
18576 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
18577 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
18578 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
18579 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
18580 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
18581 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
18582 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
18583 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
18584 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
18585
18586 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
18587 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
18588
18589       </div>
18590       <div class="tags">
18591
18592
18593         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>.
18594
18595
18596       </div>
18597     </div>
18598     <div class="padding"></div>
18599
18600     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
18601     <div id="sidebar">
18602
18603
18604
18605 <h2>Archive</h2>
18606 <ul>
18607
18608 <li>2014
18609 <ul>
18610
18611 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (1)</a></li>
18612
18613 </ul></li>
18614
18615 <li>2013
18616 <ul>
18617
18618 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
18619
18620 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
18621
18622 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
18623
18624 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
18625
18626 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
18627
18628 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
18629
18630 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
18631
18632 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
18633
18634 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
18635
18636 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
18637
18638 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
18639
18640 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
18641
18642 </ul></li>
18643
18644 <li>2012
18645 <ul>
18646
18647 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
18648
18649 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
18650
18651 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
18652
18653 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
18654
18655 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
18656
18657 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
18658
18659 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
18660
18661 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
18662
18663 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
18664
18665 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
18666
18667 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
18668
18669 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
18670
18671 </ul></li>
18672
18673 <li>2011
18674 <ul>
18675
18676 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
18677
18678 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
18679
18680 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
18681
18682 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
18683
18684 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
18685
18686 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
18687
18688 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
18689
18690 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
18691
18692 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
18693
18694 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
18695
18696 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
18697
18698 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
18699
18700 </ul></li>
18701
18702 <li>2010
18703 <ul>
18704
18705 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
18706
18707 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
18708
18709 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
18710
18711 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
18712
18713 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
18714
18715 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
18716
18717 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
18718
18719 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
18720
18721 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
18722
18723 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
18724
18725 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
18726
18727 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
18728
18729 </ul></li>
18730
18731 <li>2009
18732 <ul>
18733
18734 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
18735
18736 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
18737
18738 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
18739
18740 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
18741
18742 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
18743
18744 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
18745
18746 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
18747
18748 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
18749
18750 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
18751
18752 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
18753
18754 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
18755
18756 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
18757
18758 </ul></li>
18759
18760 <li>2008
18761 <ul>
18762
18763 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
18764
18765 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
18766
18767 </ul></li>
18768
18769 </ul>
18770
18771
18772
18773 <h2>Tags</h2>
18774 <ul>
18775
18776  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
18777
18778  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
18779
18780  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
18781
18782  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
18783
18784  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (7)</a></li>
18785
18786  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (13)</a></li>
18787
18788  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
18789
18790  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
18791
18792  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (92)</a></li>
18793
18794  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (144)</a></li>
18795
18796  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
18797
18798  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (10)</a></li>
18799
18800  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
18801
18802  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (233)</a></li>
18803
18804  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
18805
18806  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
18807
18808  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (12)</a></li>
18809
18810  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (5)</a></li>
18811
18812  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
18813
18814  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (39)</a></li>
18815
18816  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (7)</a></li>
18817
18818  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
18819
18820  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
18821
18822  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (6)</a></li>
18823
18824  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
18825
18826  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (7)</a></li>
18827
18828  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
18829
18830  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (239)</a></li>
18831
18832  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (161)</a></li>
18833
18834  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (9)</a></li>
18835
18836  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
18837
18838  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (45)</a></li>
18839
18840  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (67)</a></li>
18841
18842  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
18843
18844  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
18845
18846  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
18847
18848  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
18849
18850  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
18851
18852  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
18853
18854  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
18855
18856  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (33)</a></li>
18857
18858  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
18859
18860  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
18861
18862  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (44)</a></li>
18863
18864  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
18865
18866  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
18867
18868  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (21)</a></li>
18869
18870  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
18871
18872  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
18873
18874  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (39)</a></li>
18875
18876  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
18877
18878  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (28)</a></li>
18879
18880 </ul>
18881
18882
18883     </div>
18884     <p style="text-align: right">
18885  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
18886 </p>
18887
18888   </body>
18889 </html>