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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          9th January 2013
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
  32 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
  33 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
  34 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
  35 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
  36 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
  37 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
  38 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
  39 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
  40 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
  41 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
  42
  43 <p>Many years ago, I proposed to
  44 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
  45 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
  46 simple:
  47
  48 <ul>
  49
  50 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
  51   starting when a user log in.</li>
  52
  53 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
  54   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
  55
  56 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
  57   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
  58   packages.</li>
  59
  60 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
  61   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
  62
  63 </ul>
  64
  65 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
  66 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
  67 discover database to find packages and
  68 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
  69 packages.</p>
  70
  71 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
  72 draft package is now checked into
  73 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
  74 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
  75 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
  76 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
  77 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
  78 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
  79 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
  80 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
  81 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
  82 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
  83 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
  84 because of the freeze).</p>
  85
  86 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
  87 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
  88 inserted):</p>
  89
  90 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
  91
  92 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
  93 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
  94 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
  95
  96 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
  97 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
  98 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
  99 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
 100 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
 101 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
 102 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
 103
 104 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
 105 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
 106 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
 107 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
 108 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
 109 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
 110 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
 111 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
 112 not be installed?</p>
 113
 114 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
 115 please send me an email. :)</p>
 116
 117       </div>
 118       <div class="tags">
 119
 120
 121         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>.
 122
 123
 124       </div>
 125     </div>
 126     <div class="padding"></div>
 127
 128     <div class="entry">
 129       <div class="title">
 130         <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>
 131       </div>
 132       <div class="date">
 133         25th December 2012
 134       </div>
 135       <div class="body">
 136         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
 137 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
 138
 139 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
 140 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
 141 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
 142 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
 143 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
 144 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
 145 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
 146 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
 147 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
 148 name.</p>
 149
 150 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
 151 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
 152 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
 153
 154 <blockquote><pre>
 155 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
 156 cd bitcoin
 157 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
 158 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
 159 </pre></blockquote>
 160
 161 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
 162 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
 163 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
 164 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
 165 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
 166 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
 167 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
 168 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
 169 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
 170
 171 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 172 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 173 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 174
 175       </div>
 176       <div class="tags">
 177
 178
 179         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>.
 180
 181
 182       </div>
 183     </div>
 184     <div class="padding"></div>
 185
 186     <div class="entry">
 187       <div class="title">
 188         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
 189       </div>
 190       <div class="date">
 191         21st December 2012
 192       </div>
 193       <div class="body">
 194         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
 195 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
 196 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
 197 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
 198 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
 199 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
 200 is now maintained by a
 201 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
 202 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
 203 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
 204 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
 205 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
 206 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
 207 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
 208 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
 209 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
 210 Corallo in a
 211 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
 212 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
 213 Debian package.</p>
 214
 215 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
 216 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
 217 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
 218 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
 219 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
 220 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
 221 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
 222 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
 223 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
 224 new version to unstable.
 225
 226 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
 227 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
 228 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
 229 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
 230 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
 231 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
 232 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
 233 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
 234 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
 235 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
 236 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
 237 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
 238 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
 239 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
 240 have not tested them.</p>
 241
 242 <p>My
 243 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
 244 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
 245 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
 246 years ago, as can be
 247 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
 248 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
 249 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
 250 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
 251 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
 252 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
 253 the same address as last time,
 254 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 255
 256       </div>
 257       <div class="tags">
 258
 259
 260         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>.
 261
 262
 263       </div>
 264     </div>
 265     <div class="padding"></div>
 266
 267     <div class="entry">
 268       <div class="title">
 269         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
 270       </div>
 271       <div class="date">
 272          7th September 2012
 273       </div>
 274       <div class="body">
 275         <p>As I
 276 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
 277 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
 278 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
 279 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
 280 repository for the project</a>.</p>
 281
 282 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
 283 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
 284 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
 285 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
 286
 287 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
 288 PostScript formats at
 289 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
 290 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
 291
 292       </div>
 293       <div class="tags">
 294
 295
 296         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>.
 297
 298
 299       </div>
 300     </div>
 301     <div class="padding"></div>
 302
 303     <div class="entry">
 304       <div class="title">
 305         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
 306       </div>
 307       <div class="date">
 308         16th August 2012
 309       </div>
 310       <div class="body">
 311         <p>I dag fyller
 312 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
 313 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
 314 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
 315
 316       </div>
 317       <div class="tags">
 318
 319
 320         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
 321
 322
 323       </div>
 324     </div>
 325     <div class="padding"></div>
 326
 327     <div class="entry">
 328       <div class="title">
 329         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
 330       </div>
 331       <div class="date">
 332         24th June 2012
 333       </div>
 334       <div class="body">
 335         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
 336 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
 337 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
 338 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
 339 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
 340 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
 341 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
 342 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
 343 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
 344 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
 345 missing in my book.</p>
 346
 347 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
 348 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
 349 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
 350 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
 351 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
 352 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
 353 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
 354
 355       </div>
 356       <div class="tags">
 357
 358
 359         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>.
 360
 361
 362       </div>
 363     </div>
 364     <div class="padding"></div>
 365
 366     <div class="entry">
 367       <div class="title">
 368         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
 369       </div>
 370       <div class="date">
 371         21st November 2011
 372       </div>
 373       <div class="body">
 374         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
 375 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
 376 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
 377 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
 378 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
 379 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
 380 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
 381 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
 382 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
 383 the tools to do so.</p>
 384
 385 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
 386 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
 387 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
 388 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
 389
 390 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
 391 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
 392 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
 393 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
 394 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
 395 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
 396 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
 397 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
 398
 399 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
 400 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
 401 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
 402
 403 <p><pre>
 404 #!/usr/bin/perl
 405 use strict;
 406 use warnings;
 407 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
 408 BEGIN {
 409     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
 410     my %rhelmodules = (
 411         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
 412         );
 413     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
 414         eval "use $module;";
 415         if ($@) {
 416             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
 417             system("yum install -y $pkg");
 418             eval "use $module;";
 419         }
 420     }
 421 }
 422 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
 423
 424 upgrade_dell();
 425
 426 exit 0;
 427
 428 sub run_firmware_script {
 429     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
 430     unless ($script) {
 431         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
 432         exit 1
 433     }
 434     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
 435
 436     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
 437         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
 438     } else {
 439         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
 440     }
 441 }
 442
 443 sub run_firmware_scripts {
 444     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
 445     # Run firmware packages
 446     for my $dir (@dirs) {
 447         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
 448         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
 449         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
 450             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
 451             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
 452         }
 453         closedir $dh;
 454     }
 455 }
 456
 457 sub download {
 458     my $url = shift;
 459     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
 460     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
 461 }
 462
 463 sub upgrade_dell {
 464     my @dirs;
 465     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
 466     chomp $product;
 467
 468     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
 469
 470         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
 471         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
 472
 473         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
 474             CLEANUP => 1
 475             );
 476         chdir($tmpdir);
 477         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
 478         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
 479         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
 480         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
 481         my $fwopts = "-q";
 482         if (@paths) {
 483             for my $url (@paths) {
 484                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
 485             }
 486             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
 487         } else {
 488             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
 489             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
 490         }
 491         chdir('/');
 492     } else {
 493         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
 494         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
 495     }
 496 }
 497
 498 sub fetch_dell_fw {
 499     my $path = shift;
 500     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
 501     download($url);
 502 }
 503
 504 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
 505 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
 506 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
 507 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
 508     my $filename = shift;
 509
 510     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
 511     chomp $product;
 512     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
 513
 514     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
 515
 516     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
 517     my @paths;
 518     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
 519         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
 520         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
 521         my $oscode;
 522         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
 523             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
 524         } else {
 525             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
 526         }
 527         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
 528         {
 529             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
 530         }
 531     }
 532     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
 533         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
 534
 535         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
 536         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
 537
 538         my $cpath = $component->{path};
 539         for my $path (@paths) {
 540             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
 541                 push(@paths, $cpath);
 542             }
 543         }
 544     }
 545     return @paths;
 546 }
 547 </pre>
 548
 549 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
 550 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
 551 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
 552 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
 553 outdated.</p>
 554
 555       </div>
 556       <div class="tags">
 557
 558
 559         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>.
 560
 561
 562       </div>
 563     </div>
 564     <div class="padding"></div>
 565
 566     <div class="entry">
 567       <div class="title">
 568         <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>
 569       </div>
 570       <div class="date">
 571          4th August 2011
 572       </div>
 573       <div class="body">
 574         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
 575 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
 576 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
 577 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
 578 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
 579 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
 580 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
 581 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
 582 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
 583
 584 <p><blockquote>
 585 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
 586 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
 587 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
 588 </blockquote></p>
 589
 590 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
 591 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
 592 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
 593 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
 594 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
 595 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
 596 hard to explain.</p>
 597
 598 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
 599 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
 600 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
 601 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
 602 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
 603 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
 604 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
 605 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
 606 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
 607 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
 608 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
 609 mode).</p>
 610
 611 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
 612 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
 613 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
 614 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
 615 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
 616 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
 617 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
 618 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
 619 after visiting single user mode.</p>
 620
 621 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
 622 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
 623 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
 624 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
 625 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
 626 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
 627 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
 628 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
 629
 630 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
 631 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
 632 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
 633
 634       </div>
 635       <div class="tags">
 636
 637
 638         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>.
 639
 640
 641       </div>
 642     </div>
 643     <div class="padding"></div>
 644
 645     <div class="entry">
 646       <div class="title">
 647         <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>
 648       </div>
 649       <div class="date">
 650         30th July 2011
 651       </div>
 652       <div class="body">
 653         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
 654 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
 655 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
 656 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
 657 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
 658 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
 659 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
 660 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
 661 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
 662 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
 663 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
 664 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
 665 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
 666
 667 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
 668 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
 669 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
 670 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
 671 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
 672 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
 673 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
 674 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
 675 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
 676
 677 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
 678 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
 679 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
 680 is presented.</p>
 681
 682 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
 683 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
 684 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
 685 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
 686 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
 687 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
 688 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
 689 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
 690 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
 691 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
 692 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
 693 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
 694 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
 695 find time to push this forward.</p>
 696
 697       </div>
 698       <div class="tags">
 699
 700
 701         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>.
 702
 703
 704       </div>
 705     </div>
 706     <div class="padding"></div>
 707
 708     <div class="entry">
 709       <div class="title">
 710         <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>
 711       </div>
 712       <div class="date">
 713         29th July 2011
 714       </div>
 715       <div class="body">
 716         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
 717 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
 718 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
 719 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
 720 issues.</p>
 721
 722 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
 723 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
 724 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
 725
 726 <ol>
 727
 728 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
 729 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
 730 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
 731 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
 732 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
 733 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
 734 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
 735 Debian.</li>
 736
 737 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
 738 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
 739 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
 740 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
 741 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
 742 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
 743 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
 744 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
 745 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
 746 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
 747 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
 748 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
 749 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
 750
 751 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
 752 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
 753 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
 754 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
 755 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
 756 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
 757 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
 758 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
 759 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
 760 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
 761
 762 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
 763 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
 764 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
 765 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
 766 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
 767 latter behaviour.</li>
 768
 769 </ol>
 770
 771 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
 772 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
 773 it do not matter much.</p>
 774
 775 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
 776 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
 777 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
 778
 779       </div>
 780       <div class="tags">
 781
 782
 783         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>.
 784
 785
 786       </div>
 787     </div>
 788     <div class="padding"></div>
 789
 790     <div class="entry">
 791       <div class="title">
 792         <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>
 793       </div>
 794       <div class="date">
 795         26th July 2011
 796       </div>
 797       <div class="body">
 798         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
 799 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
 800 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
 801 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
 802 security support for a few years.</p>
 803
 804 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
 805 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
 806 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
 807 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
 808 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
 809 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
 810 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
 811 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
 812 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
 813 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
 814 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
 815 easier in the future.</p>
 816
 817 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
 818 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
 819 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
 820 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
 821 do not have time for.</p>
 822
 823       </div>
 824       <div class="tags">
 825
 826
 827         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>.
 828
 829
 830       </div>
 831     </div>
 832     <div class="padding"></div>
 833
 834     <div class="entry">
 835       <div class="title">
 836         <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>
 837       </div>
 838       <div class="date">
 839          3rd April 2011
 840       </div>
 841       <div class="body">
 842         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
 843 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
 844 update in English.</p>
 845
 846 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
 847 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
 848 of the British service
 849 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
 850 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
 851 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
 852 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
 853 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
 854 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
 855 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
 856 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
 857 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
 858 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
 859 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
 860 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
 861 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
 862
 863 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
 864 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
 865 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
 866 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
 867 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
 868 public infrastructure.</p>
 869
 870 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
 871 such service?</p>
 872
 873       </div>
 874       <div class="tags">
 875
 876
 877         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>.
 878
 879
 880       </div>
 881     </div>
 882     <div class="padding"></div>
 883
 884     <div class="entry">
 885       <div class="title">
 886         <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>
 887       </div>
 888       <div class="date">
 889         28th January 2011
 890       </div>
 891       <div class="body">
 892         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
 893 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
 894 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
 895 available on the Internet, and check our locally
 896 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
 897 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
 898 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
 899 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
 900 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
 901 out which security holes were present in our free software
 902 collection.</p>
 903
 904 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
 905 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
 906 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
 907 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
 908 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
 909 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
 910 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
 911 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
 912 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
 913 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
 914 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
 915 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
 916 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
 917 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
 918 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
 919 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
 920
 921 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
 922 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
 923 check out, one could look up
 924 <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
 925 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
 926 The most recent one is
 927 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
 928 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
 929 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
 930
 931 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
 932 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
 933 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
 934 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
 935 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
 936 security issues out.</p>
 937
 938 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
 939 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
 940 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
 941 RHEL is providing
 942 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
 943 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
 944 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
 945
 946 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
 947 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
 948 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
 949 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
 950 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
 951 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
 952 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
 953 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
 954 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
 955 established soon.</p>
 956
 957 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
 958 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
 959 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
 960 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
 961 for their packages.</p>
 962
 963       </div>
 964       <div class="tags">
 965
 966
 967         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>.
 968
 969
 970       </div>
 971     </div>
 972     <div class="padding"></div>
 973
 974     <div class="entry">
 975       <div class="title">
 976         <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>
 977       </div>
 978       <div class="date">
 979         23rd January 2011
 980       </div>
 981       <div class="body">
 982         <p>In the
 983 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
 984 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
 985 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
 986 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
 987 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
 988 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
 989 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
 990 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
 991 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
 992 one of my machines like this:</p>
 993
 994 <pre>
 995 loaded modules:
 996 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
 997 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
 998 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
 999 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
1000 10de:03ec pata_amd
1001 10de:03f6 sata_nv
1002 1022:1103 k8temp
1003 109e:036e bttv
1004 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
1005 11ab:4364 sky2
1006 </pre>
1007
1008 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
1009 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
1010
1011 <pre>
1012 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
1013     echo loaded pci modules:
1014     (
1015         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
1016         for address in * ; do
1017             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
1018                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
1019                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
1020                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
1021                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
1022                     echo "$id $module"
1023                 fi
1024             fi
1025         done
1026     )
1027     echo
1028 fi
1029 </pre>
1030
1031 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
1032 mappings:</p>
1033
1034 <pre>
1035 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
1036     echo loaded usb modules:
1037     (
1038         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
1039         for address in * ; do
1040             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
1041                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
1042                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
1043                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
1044                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
1045                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
1046                         echo "$id $module"
1047                     fi
1048                 fi
1049             fi
1050         done
1051     )
1052     echo
1053 fi
1054 </pre>
1055
1056 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
1057 well.</p>
1058
1059       </div>
1060       <div class="tags">
1061
1062
1063         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>.
1064
1065
1066       </div>
1067     </div>
1068     <div class="padding"></div>
1069
1070     <div class="entry">
1071       <div class="title">
1072         <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>
1073       </div>
1074       <div class="date">
1075         22nd December 2010
1076       </div>
1077       <div class="body">
1078         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
1079 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
1080 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
1081 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
1082 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
1083 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
1084 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
1085 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
1086 university.</p>
1087
1088 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
1089 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
1090 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
1091 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
1092 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
1093 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
1094 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
1095 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
1096
1097 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
1098 I perform on a new model.</p>
1099
1100 <ul>
1101
1102 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
1103 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
1104 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
1105
1106 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
1107 installation, X.org is working.</li>
1108
1109 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
1110 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
1111 reported by the program.</li>
1112
1113 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
1114 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
1115 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
1116 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
1117 normally test this by playing
1118 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
1119 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
1120
1121 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
1122 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
1123
1124 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
1125 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
1126
1127 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
1128 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
1129
1130 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
1131 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
1132 few.</li>
1133
1134 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
1135 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
1136 notice this.</li>
1137
1138 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
1139 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
1140 resume.</li>
1141
1142 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
1143 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
1144 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
1145 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
1146 not.</li>
1147
1148 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
1149 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
1150 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
1151 existence.</li>
1152
1153 </ul>
1154
1155 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
1156 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
1157 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
1158 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
1159 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
1160 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
1161 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
1162 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
1163
1164       </div>
1165       <div class="tags">
1166
1167
1168         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>.
1169
1170
1171       </div>
1172     </div>
1173     <div class="padding"></div>
1174
1175     <div class="entry">
1176       <div class="title">
1177         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
1178       </div>
1179       <div class="date">
1180         11th December 2010
1181       </div>
1182       <div class="body">
1183         <p>As I continue to explore
1184 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
1185 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
1186 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
1187
1188 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
1189 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
1190 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
1191 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
1192 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
1193 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
1194 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
1195 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
1196 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
1197 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
1198 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
1199 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
1200 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
1201 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
1202 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
1203 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
1204 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
1205 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
1206 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
1207 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
1208
1209 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
1210 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
1211 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
1212 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
1213 If the Skolelinux foundation
1214 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
1215 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
1216 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
1217 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
1218 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
1219 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
1220 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
1221 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
1222
1223 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
1224 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
1225 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
1226 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
1227 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
1228 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
1229 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
1230 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
1231 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
1232 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
1233 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
1234 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
1235 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
1236 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
1237 currencies.</p>
1238
1239 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
1240 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
1241 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
1242 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
1243 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
1244 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
1245 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
1246 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
1247 BitCoins.  Check out
1248 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
1249 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
1250 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
1251 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
1252 yet.</p>
1253
1254 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
1255 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
1256 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
1257 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
1258 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
1259
1260       </div>
1261       <div class="tags">
1262
1263
1264         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>.
1265
1266
1267       </div>
1268     </div>
1269     <div class="padding"></div>
1270
1271     <div class="entry">
1272       <div class="title">
1273         <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>
1274       </div>
1275       <div class="date">
1276         10th December 2010
1277       </div>
1278       <div class="body">
1279         <p>With this weeks lawless
1280 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
1281 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
1282 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
1283 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
1284 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
1285 A blog post from
1286 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
1287 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
1288 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
1289 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
1290 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
1291 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
1292 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
1293
1294 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
1295 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
1296 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
1297 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
1298 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
1299 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
1300 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
1301 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
1302 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
1303 Debian</a> soon.</p>
1304
1305 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
1306 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
1307 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
1308 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
1309 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
1310 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
1311 you can even get
1312 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
1313 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
1314 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
1315 on the current exchange rates.</p>
1316
1317 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
1318 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
1319 donations to the address
1320 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
1321
1322       </div>
1323       <div class="tags">
1324
1325
1326         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>.
1327
1328
1329       </div>
1330     </div>
1331     <div class="padding"></div>
1332
1333     <div class="entry">
1334       <div class="title">
1335         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
1336       </div>
1337       <div class="date">
1338         27th November 2010
1339       </div>
1340       <div class="body">
1341         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
1342 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
1343 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
1344 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
1345 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
1346 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
1347 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
1348 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
1349
1350 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
1351 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
1352 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
1353 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
1354 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
1355 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
1356 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
1357 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
1358 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
1359 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
1360 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
1361
1362 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
1363 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
1364 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
1365 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
1366 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
1367 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
1368 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
1369 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
1370 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
1371 what is going on.</p>
1372
1373       </div>
1374       <div class="tags">
1375
1376
1377         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>.
1378
1379
1380       </div>
1381     </div>
1382     <div class="padding"></div>
1383
1384     <div class="entry">
1385       <div class="title">
1386         <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>
1387       </div>
1388       <div class="date">
1389         22nd November 2010
1390       </div>
1391       <div class="body">
1392         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
1393 upgrade testing of the
1394 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
1395 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
1396 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
1397 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
1398
1399 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
1400
1401 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
1402
1403 <blockquote><p>
1404   apache2.2-bin
1405   aptdaemon
1406   baobab
1407   binfmt-support
1408   browser-plugin-gnash
1409   cheese-common
1410   cli-common
1411   cups-pk-helper
1412   dmz-cursor-theme
1413   empathy
1414   empathy-common
1415   freedesktop-sound-theme
1416   freeglut3
1417   gconf-defaults-service
1418   gdm-themes
1419   gedit-plugins
1420   geoclue
1421   geoclue-hostip
1422   geoclue-localnet
1423   geoclue-manual
1424   geoclue-yahoo
1425   gnash
1426   gnash-common
1427   gnome
1428   gnome-backgrounds
1429   gnome-cards-data
1430   gnome-codec-install
1431   gnome-core
1432   gnome-desktop-environment
1433   gnome-disk-utility
1434   gnome-screenshot
1435   gnome-search-tool
1436   gnome-session-canberra
1437   gnome-system-log
1438   gnome-themes-extras
1439   gnome-themes-more
1440   gnome-user-share
1441   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
1442   gstreamer0.10-tools
1443   gtk2-engines
1444   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
1445   gtk2-engines-smooth
1446   hamster-applet
1447   libapache2-mod-dnssd
1448   libapr1
1449   libaprutil1
1450   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
1451   libaprutil1-ldap
1452   libart2.0-cil
1453   libboost-date-time1.42.0
1454   libboost-python1.42.0
1455   libboost-thread1.42.0
1456   libchamplain-0.4-0
1457   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
1458   libcheese-gtk18
1459   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
1460   libcryptui0
1461   libdiscid0
1462   libelf1
1463   libepc-1.0-2
1464   libepc-common
1465   libepc-ui-1.0-2
1466   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
1467   libfreerdp0
1468   libgconf2.0-cil
1469   libgdata-common
1470   libgdata7
1471   libgdu-gtk0
1472   libgee2
1473   libgeoclue0
1474   libgexiv2-0
1475   libgif4
1476   libglade2.0-cil
1477   libglib2.0-cil
1478   libgmime2.4-cil
1479   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
1480   libgnome2.24-cil
1481   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
1482   libgpod-common
1483   libgpod4
1484   libgtk2.0-cil
1485   libgtkglext1
1486   libgtksourceview2.0-common
1487   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
1488   libmono-addins0.2-cil
1489   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
1490   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
1491   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
1492   libmono-posix2.0-cil
1493   libmono-security2.0-cil
1494   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
1495   libmono-system2.0-cil
1496   libmtp8
1497   libmusicbrainz3-6
1498   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
1499   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
1500   libopal3.6.8
1501   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
1502   libpt2.6.7
1503   libpython2.6
1504   librpm1
1505   librpmio1
1506   libsdl1.2debian
1507   libsrtp0
1508   libssh-4
1509   libtelepathy-farsight0
1510   libtelepathy-glib0
1511   libtidy-0.99-0
1512   media-player-info
1513   mesa-utils
1514   mono-2.0-gac
1515   mono-gac
1516   mono-runtime
1517   nautilus-sendto
1518   nautilus-sendto-empathy
1519   p7zip-full
1520   pkg-config
1521   python-aptdaemon
1522   python-aptdaemon-gtk
1523   python-axiom
1524   python-beautifulsoup
1525   python-bugbuddy
1526   python-clientform
1527   python-coherence
1528   python-configobj
1529   python-crypto
1530   python-cupshelpers
1531   python-elementtree
1532   python-epsilon
1533   python-evolution
1534   python-feedparser
1535   python-gdata
1536   python-gdbm
1537   python-gst0.10
1538   python-gtkglext1
1539   python-gtksourceview2
1540   python-httplib2
1541   python-louie
1542   python-mako
1543   python-markupsafe
1544   python-mechanize
1545   python-nevow
1546   python-notify
1547   python-opengl
1548   python-openssl
1549   python-pam
1550   python-pkg-resources
1551   python-pyasn1
1552   python-pysqlite2
1553   python-rdflib
1554   python-serial
1555   python-tagpy
1556   python-twisted-bin
1557   python-twisted-conch
1558   python-twisted-core
1559   python-twisted-web
1560   python-utidylib
1561   python-webkit
1562   python-xdg
1563   python-zope.interface
1564   remmina
1565   remmina-plugin-data
1566   remmina-plugin-rdp
1567   remmina-plugin-vnc
1568   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
1569   rhythmbox-plugins
1570   rpm-common
1571   rpm2cpio
1572   seahorse-plugins
1573   shotwell
1574   software-center
1575   system-config-printer-udev
1576   telepathy-gabble
1577   telepathy-mission-control-5
1578   telepathy-salut
1579   tomboy
1580   totem
1581   totem-coherence
1582   totem-mozilla
1583   totem-plugins
1584   transmission-common
1585   xdg-user-dirs
1586   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
1587   xserver-xephyr
1588 </p></blockquote>
1589
1590 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
1591
1592 <blockquote><p>
1593   cheese
1594   ekiga
1595   eog
1596   epiphany-extensions
1597   evolution-exchange
1598   fast-user-switch-applet
1599   file-roller
1600   gcalctool
1601   gconf-editor
1602   gdm
1603   gedit
1604   gedit-common
1605   gnome-games
1606   gnome-games-data
1607   gnome-nettool
1608   gnome-system-tools
1609   gnome-themes
1610   gnuchess
1611   gucharmap
1612   guile-1.8-libs
1613   libavahi-ui0
1614   libdmx1
1615   libgalago3
1616   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
1617   libgtksourceview2.0-0
1618   liblircclient0
1619   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
1620   libspeexdsp1
1621   libsvga1
1622   rhythmbox
1623   seahorse
1624   sound-juicer
1625   system-config-printer
1626   totem-common
1627   transmission-gtk
1628   vinagre
1629   vino
1630 </p></blockquote>
1631
1632 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
1633
1634 <blockquote><p>
1635   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
1636 </p></blockquote>
1637
1638 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
1639
1640 <blockquote><p>
1641 [nothing]
1642 </p></blockquote>
1643
1644 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
1645
1646 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
1647
1648 <blockquote><p>
1649   ksmserver
1650 </p></blockquote>
1651
1652 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
1653
1654 <blockquote><p>
1655   kwin
1656   network-manager-kde
1657 </p></blockquote>
1658
1659 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
1660
1661 <blockquote><p>
1662   arts
1663   dolphin
1664   freespacenotifier
1665   google-gadgets-gst
1666   google-gadgets-xul
1667   kappfinder
1668   kcalc
1669   kcharselect
1670   kde-core
1671   kde-plasma-desktop
1672   kde-standard
1673   kde-window-manager
1674   kdeartwork
1675   kdeartwork-emoticons
1676   kdeartwork-style
1677   kdeartwork-theme-icon
1678   kdebase
1679   kdebase-apps
1680   kdebase-workspace
1681   kdebase-workspace-bin
1682   kdebase-workspace-data
1683   kdeeject
1684   kdelibs
1685   kdeplasma-addons
1686   kdeutils
1687   kdewallpapers
1688   kdf
1689   kfloppy
1690   kgpg
1691   khelpcenter4
1692   kinfocenter
1693   konq-plugins-l10n
1694   konqueror-nsplugins
1695   kscreensaver
1696   kscreensaver-xsavers
1697   ktimer
1698   kwrite
1699   libgle3
1700   libkde4-ruby1.8
1701   libkonq5
1702   libkonq5-templates
1703   libnetpbm10
1704   libplasma-ruby
1705   libplasma-ruby1.8
1706   libqt4-ruby1.8
1707   marble-data
1708   marble-plugins
1709   netpbm
1710   nuvola-icon-theme
1711   plasma-dataengines-workspace
1712   plasma-desktop
1713   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
1714   plasma-runners-addons
1715   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
1716   plasma-scriptengine-python
1717   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
1718   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
1719   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
1720   plasma-scriptengines
1721   plasma-wallpapers-addons
1722   plasma-widget-folderview
1723   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
1724   ruby
1725   sweeper
1726   update-notifier-kde
1727   xscreensaver-data-extra
1728   xscreensaver-gl
1729   xscreensaver-gl-extra
1730   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
1731 </p></blockquote>
1732
1733 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
1734
1735 <blockquote><p>
1736   ark
1737   google-gadgets-common
1738   google-gadgets-qt
1739   htdig
1740   kate
1741   kdebase-bin
1742   kdebase-data
1743   kdepasswd
1744   kfind
1745   klipper
1746   konq-plugins
1747   konqueror
1748   ksysguard
1749   ksysguardd
1750   libarchive1
1751   libcln6
1752   libeet1
1753   libeina-svn-06
1754   libggadget-1.0-0b
1755   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
1756   libgps19
1757   libkdecorations4
1758   libkephal4
1759   libkonq4
1760   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
1761   libkscreensaver5
1762   libksgrd4
1763   libksignalplotter4
1764   libkunitconversion4
1765   libkwineffects1a
1766   libmarblewidget4
1767   libntrack-qt4-1
1768   libntrack0
1769   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
1770   libplasmaclock4a
1771   libplasmagenericshell4
1772   libprocesscore4a
1773   libprocessui4a
1774   libqalculate5
1775   libqedje0a
1776   libqtruby4shared2
1777   libqzion0a
1778   libruby1.8
1779   libscim8c2a
1780   libsmokekdecore4-3
1781   libsmokekdeui4-3
1782   libsmokekfile3
1783   libsmokekhtml3
1784   libsmokekio3
1785   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
1786   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
1787   libsmokekparts3
1788   libsmokektexteditor3
1789   libsmokekutils3
1790   libsmokenepomuk3
1791   libsmokephonon3
1792   libsmokeplasma3
1793   libsmokeqtcore4-3
1794   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
1795   libsmokeqtgui4-3
1796   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
1797   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
1798   libsmokeqtscript4-3
1799   libsmokeqtsql4-3
1800   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
1801   libsmokeqttest4-3
1802   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
1803   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
1804   libsmokeqtxml4-3
1805   libsmokesolid3
1806   libsmokesoprano3
1807   libtaskmanager4a
1808   libtidy-0.99-0
1809   libweather-ion4a
1810   libxklavier16
1811   libxxf86misc1
1812   okteta
1813   oxygencursors
1814   plasma-dataengines-addons
1815   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
1816   plasma-widget-lancelot
1817   plasma-widgets-addons
1818   plasma-widgets-workspace
1819   polkit-kde-1
1820   ruby1.8
1821   systemsettings
1822   update-notifier-common
1823 </p></blockquote>
1824
1825 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
1826 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
1827 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
1828 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
1829
1830       </div>
1831       <div class="tags">
1832
1833
1834         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>.
1835
1836
1837       </div>
1838     </div>
1839     <div class="padding"></div>
1840
1841     <div class="entry">
1842       <div class="title">
1843         <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>
1844       </div>
1845       <div class="date">
1846         22nd November 2010
1847       </div>
1848       <div class="body">
1849         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
1850 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
1851 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
1852 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
1853 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
1854 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
1855 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
1856 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
1857 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
1858
1859 <p>I found
1860 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
1861 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
1862 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
1863 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
1864 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
1865 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
1866
1867 <pre>
1868 #!/bin/sh
1869
1870 # Based on
1871 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
1872
1873 set -e
1874 set -x
1875
1876 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
1877     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
1878     exit 1
1879 else
1880     host="$1"
1881 fi
1882
1883 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
1884     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
1885     exit 1
1886 fi
1887
1888 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
1889 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
1890 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
1891 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
1892
1893 img=$host.img
1894 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
1895 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
1896
1897 parted $img mklabel msdos
1898 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
1899 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
1900 parted $img set 1 boot on
1901
1902 modprobe dm-mod
1903 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
1904 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
1905
1906 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
1907 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
1908 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
1909
1910 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
1911 losetup -d /dev/loop0
1912 </pre>
1913
1914 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
1915 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
1916
1917 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
1918 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
1919 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
1920 seem to work just fine.</p>
1921
1922       </div>
1923       <div class="tags">
1924
1925
1926         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>.
1927
1928
1929       </div>
1930     </div>
1931     <div class="padding"></div>
1932
1933     <div class="entry">
1934       <div class="title">
1935         <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>
1936       </div>
1937       <div class="date">
1938         20th November 2010
1939       </div>
1940       <div class="body">
1941         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
1942 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
1943 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
1944 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
1945
1946 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
1947 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
1948 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
1949
1950 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
1951
1952 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
1953
1954 <blockquote><p>
1955   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
1956   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
1957   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
1958   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
1959   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
1960   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
1961   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
1962   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
1963   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
1964   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
1965   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
1966   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
1967   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
1968   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
1969   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
1970   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
1971   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
1972   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
1973   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
1974   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
1975   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
1976   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
1977   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
1978   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
1979   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
1980   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
1981   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
1982   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
1983   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
1984   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
1985   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
1986   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
1987   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
1988   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
1989   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
1990   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
1991   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
1992   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
1993   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
1994   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
1995   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
1996   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
1997   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
1998   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
1999   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
2000   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
2001   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
2002   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
2003   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
2004   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
2005   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
2006   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
2007   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
2008   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
2009   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
2010   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
2011   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
2012   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
2013   zip
2014 </p></blockquote>
2015
2016 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
2017
2018 <blockquote><p>
2019   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
2020   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
2021   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
2022   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
2023   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
2024   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
2025   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
2026   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
2027   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
2028   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
2029   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
2030   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
2031   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
2032   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
2033   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
2034   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
2035   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
2036   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
2037   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
2038   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
2039   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
2040   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
2041   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
2042   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
2043   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
2044   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
2045   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
2046   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
2047   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
2048 </p></blockquote>
2049
2050 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
2051
2052 <blockquote><p>
2053   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
2054 </p></blockquote>
2055
2056 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
2057
2058 <blockquote><p>
2059 [nothing]
2060 </p></blockquote>
2061
2062 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
2063
2064 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2065
2066 <blockquote><p>
2067   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
2068   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
2069   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
2070   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
2071   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
2072   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
2073   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
2074   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
2075   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
2076   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
2077   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
2078   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
2079   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
2080   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
2081   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
2082   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
2083   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
2084   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
2085   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
2086   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
2087   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
2088   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
2089   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
2090   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
2091   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
2092   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
2093   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
2094   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
2095   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
2096   ttf-sazanami-gothic
2097 </p></blockquote>
2098
2099 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
2100
2101 <blockquote><p>
2102   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
2103   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
2104   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
2105   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
2106   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
2107   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
2108   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
2109   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
2110   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
2111   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
2112   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
2113   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
2114   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
2115   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
2116   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
2117   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
2118   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
2119   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
2120   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
2121   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
2122   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
2123   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
2124   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
2125   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
2126   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
2127   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
2128   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
2129   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
2130   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
2131   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
2132   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
2133   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
2134   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
2135 </p></blockquote>
2136
2137 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
2138
2139 <blockquote><p>
2140   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
2141   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
2142   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
2143   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
2144   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
2145   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
2146   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
2147 </p></blockquote>
2148
2149 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
2150
2151 <blockquote><p>
2152   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
2153 </p></blockquote>
2154
2155       </div>
2156       <div class="tags">
2157
2158
2159         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>.
2160
2161
2162       </div>
2163     </div>
2164     <div class="padding"></div>
2165
2166     <div class="entry">
2167       <div class="title">
2168         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
2169       </div>
2170       <div class="date">
2171         20th November 2010
2172       </div>
2173       <div class="body">
2174         <p>Answering
2175 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
2176 call from the Gnash project</a> for
2177 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
2178 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
2179 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
2180 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
2181 releases out more often.</p>
2182
2183 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
2184 I have considered setting up a <a
2185 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
2186 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
2187 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
2188 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
2189 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
2190 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
2191 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
2192 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
2193 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
2194 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
2195 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
2196 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
2197
2198       </div>
2199       <div class="tags">
2200
2201
2202         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>.
2203
2204
2205       </div>
2206     </div>
2207     <div class="padding"></div>
2208
2209     <div class="entry">
2210       <div class="title">
2211         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
2212       </div>
2213       <div class="date">
2214          9th November 2010
2215       </div>
2216       <div class="body">
2217         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
2218
2219 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
2220 3D linked in from
2221 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
2222 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
2223
2224       </div>
2225       <div class="tags">
2226
2227
2228         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>.
2229
2230
2231       </div>
2232     </div>
2233     <div class="padding"></div>
2234
2235     <div class="entry">
2236       <div class="title">
2237         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
2238       </div>
2239       <div class="date">
2240         24th October 2010
2241       </div>
2242       <div class="body">
2243         <p>Some updates.</p>
2244
2245 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
2246 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
2247 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
2248 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
2249 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
2250 :)</p>
2251
2252 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
2253 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
2254 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
2255 It is called
2256 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
2257 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
2258 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
2259 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
2260 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
2261 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
2262
2263 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
2264 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
2265 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
2266 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
2267 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
2268 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
2269 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
2270 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
2271 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
2272 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
2273
2274       </div>
2275       <div class="tags">
2276
2277
2278         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>.
2279
2280
2281       </div>
2282     </div>
2283     <div class="padding"></div>
2284
2285     <div class="entry">
2286       <div class="title">
2287         <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>
2288       </div>
2289       <div class="date">
2290          4th September 2010
2291       </div>
2292       <div class="body">
2293         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
2294 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
2295 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
2296 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
2297 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
2298 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
2299 installed.</p>
2300
2301 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
2302 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
2303 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
2304 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
2305 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
2306 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
2307 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
2308 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
2309 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
2310
2311 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
2312 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
2313 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
2314 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
2315 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
2316 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
2317 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
2318 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
2319 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
2320 pages they want to visit.</p>
2321
2322 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
2323 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
2324 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
2325 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
2326 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
2327 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
2328 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
2329 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
2330 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
2331 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
2332 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
2333
2334       </div>
2335       <div class="tags">
2336
2337
2338         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>.
2339
2340
2341       </div>
2342     </div>
2343     <div class="padding"></div>
2344
2345     <div class="entry">
2346       <div class="title">
2347         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
2348       </div>
2349       <div class="date">
2350         27th July 2010
2351       </div>
2352       <div class="body">
2353         <p>I discovered this while doing
2354 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
2355 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
2356 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
2357 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
2358 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
2359
2360 <p>An example is from todays
2361 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
2362 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
2363 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
2364 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
2365 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
2366 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
2367 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
2368
2369 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
2370
2371 <blockquote><pre>
2372 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
2373  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
2374   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
2375 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
2376  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
2377 </pre></blockquote>
2378
2379 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
2380 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
2381 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
2382 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
2383 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
2384 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
2385 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
2386 of dependency loops.</p>
2387
2388 <p>Thanks to
2389 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
2390 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
2391 dependencies
2392 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
2393 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
2394
2395 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
2396 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
2397 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
2398 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
2399 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
2400 it.</p>
2401
2402       </div>
2403       <div class="tags">
2404
2405
2406         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2407
2408
2409       </div>
2410     </div>
2411     <div class="padding"></div>
2412
2413     <div class="entry">
2414       <div class="title">
2415         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html">What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</a>
2416       </div>
2417       <div class="date">
2418         17th July 2010
2419       </div>
2420       <div class="body">
2421         <p>This is a
2422 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
2423 on my
2424 <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
2425 work</a> on
2426 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
2427 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
2428
2429 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
2430 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
2431 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
2432 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
2433
2434 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
2435 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
2436 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
2437
2438 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
2439
2440 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
2441 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
2442 the web.
2443
2444 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
2445 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
2446 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
2447 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
2448 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
2449 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
2450
2451 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
2452 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
2453 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
2454 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
2455 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
2456 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
2457 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
2458 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
2459 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
2460 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
2461 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
2462 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
2463 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
2464 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
2465 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
2466 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
2467
2468 <blockquote><pre>
2469 ldapsearch -h ldap \
2470   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
2471   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
2472   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
2473   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
2474   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
2475   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
2476
2477 ldapsearch -h ldap \
2478   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
2479   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
2480   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
2481   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
2482   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
2483 </pre></blockquote>
2484
2485 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
2486 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
2487 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
2488 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2489 also exist.</p>
2490
2491 <blockquote><pre>
2492 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2493 objectclass: top
2494 objectclass: dnsdomain
2495 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2496 dc: tjener
2497 arecord: 10.0.2.2
2498 associateddomain: tjener.intern
2499
2500 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2501 objectclass: top
2502 objectclass: dnsdomain2
2503 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2504 dc: 2
2505 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
2506 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
2507 </pre></blockquote>
2508
2509 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
2510 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
2511 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
2512 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
2513 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
2514 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
2515 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
2516 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
2517 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
2518 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
2519 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
2520 instead.</p>
2521
2522 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
2523 like this:</p>
2524
2525 <blockquote><pre>
2526 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
2527   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
2528   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
2529   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
2530   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
2531   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
2532
2533 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
2534   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
2535 </pre></blockquote>
2536
2537 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
2538 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
2539 reverse lookups.</p>
2540
2541 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
2542 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
2543 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
2544 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
2545
2546 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
2547 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
2548 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
2549
2550 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
2551 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
2552 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
2553 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
2554 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
2555
2556 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
2557 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
2558 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
2559 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
2560 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
2561
2562 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
2563 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
2564 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
2565 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
2566 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
2567 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
2568
2569 <blockquote><pre>
2570 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
2571     SUP top
2572     AUXILIARY
2573     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
2574           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
2575           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
2576           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
2577           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
2578     ))
2579 </pre></blockquote>
2580
2581 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
2582 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
2583 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
2584 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
2585 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
2586 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
2587
2588 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
2589
2590 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
2591 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
2592 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
2593 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
2594 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
2595
2596 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
2597 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
2598 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
2599 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
2600
2601 <blockquote><pre>
2602 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
2603 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
2604 </pre></blockquote>
2605
2606 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
2607 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
2608 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
2609 search result is this entry:</p>
2610
2611 <blockquote><pre>
2612 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2613 cn: dhcp
2614 objectClass: top
2615 objectClass: dhcpServer
2616 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2617 </pre></blockquote>
2618
2619 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
2620 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
2621 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
2622 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
2623 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
2624 The search result is this entry:</p>
2625
2626 <blockquote><pre>
2627 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2628 cn: DHCP Config
2629 objectClass: top
2630 objectClass: dhcpService
2631 objectClass: dhcpOptions
2632 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2633 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
2634 dhcpStatements: authoritative
2635 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
2636 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
2637 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
2638 </pre></blockquote>
2639
2640 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
2641 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
2642 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
2643 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
2644 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
2645 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
2646 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
2647 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
2648 related computer objects.</p>
2649
2650 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
2651 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
2652 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
2653 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
2654 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
2655 like:</p>
2656
2657 <blockquote><pre>
2658 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2659 cn: hostname
2660 objectClass: top
2661 objectClass: dhcpHost
2662 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
2663 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
2664 </pre></blockquote>
2665
2666 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
2667 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
2668 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
2669 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
2670 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
2671 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
2672 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
2673 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
2674 structural object class.
2675
2676 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
2677
2678 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
2679 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
2680 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
2681 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
2682 in the configuration.</p>
2683
2684 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
2685 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
2686 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
2687 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
2688 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
2689 structure.</p>
2690
2691 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
2692 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
2693
2694 <blockquote><pre>
2695 ou=services
2696   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
2697     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
2698     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
2699       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
2700         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
2701     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
2702       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
2703         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
2704     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
2705       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
2706 </pre></blockquote>
2707
2708 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
2709 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
2710 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
2711 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
2712
2713 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
2714 like this:</p>
2715
2716 <blockquote><pre>
2717 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2718 dc: hostname
2719 objectClass: top
2720 objectClass: dhcpHost
2721 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2722 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
2723 associateddomain: hostname.intern
2724 arecord: 10.11.12.13
2725 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
2726 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
2727 </pre></blockquote>
2728
2729 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
2730 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
2731 auxiliary object class.</p>
2732
2733       </div>
2734       <div class="tags">
2735
2736
2737         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>.
2738
2739
2740       </div>
2741     </div>
2742     <div class="padding"></div>
2743
2744     <div class="entry">
2745       <div class="title">
2746         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
2747       </div>
2748       <div class="date">
2749         14th July 2010
2750       </div>
2751       <div class="body">
2752         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
2753 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
2754 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
2755 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
2756 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
2757
2758 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
2759 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
2760
2761 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
2762 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
2763 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
2764 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
2765 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
2766 to a slave DNS server.</p>
2767
2768 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
2769 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
2770 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
2771 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
2772 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
2773 seem to work.</p>
2774
2775 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
2776 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
2777 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
2778 this:</p>
2779
2780 <blockquote><pre>
2781   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2782   cn: hostname
2783   objectClass: dhcphost
2784   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2785   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
2786   associateddomain: hostname.intern
2787   arecord: 10.11.12.13
2788   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
2789   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
2790   ldapconfigsound: Y
2791 </pre></blockquote>
2792
2793 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
2794 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
2795 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
2796 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
2797
2798 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
2799 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
2800 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
2801 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
2802 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
2803 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
2804 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
2805 might be a good place to put it.</p>
2806
2807 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
2808 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
2809
2810       </div>
2811       <div class="tags">
2812
2813
2814         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>.
2815
2816
2817       </div>
2818     </div>
2819     <div class="padding"></div>
2820
2821     <div class="entry">
2822       <div class="title">
2823         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
2824       </div>
2825       <div class="date">
2826         11th July 2010
2827       </div>
2828       <div class="body">
2829         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
2830 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
2831 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
2832 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
2833
2834 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
2835 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
2836 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
2837 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
2838 LTSP clients.</p>
2839
2840 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
2841 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
2842 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
2843
2844 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
2845 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
2846 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
2847
2848 <blockquote><pre>
2849 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
2850 #
2851 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
2852 #
2853 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
2854 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
2855 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
2856 #
2857 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
2858 # existence of attribute names.
2859 #
2860 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
2861 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
2862 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
2863 #
2864 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
2865 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
2866 #
2867 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
2868 #     SUP top
2869 #     AUXILIARY
2870 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
2871
2872 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
2873 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
2874     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
2875     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
2876         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
2877         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
2878             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
2879             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
2880             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
2881             # bass value on to clients
2882             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
2883         done
2884     done
2885 fi
2886 </pre></blockquote>
2887
2888 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
2889 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
2890 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
2891 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
2892 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
2893
2894 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
2895 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
2896
2897 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
2898 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
2899 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
2900 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
2901 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
2902 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
2903
2904       </div>
2905       <div class="tags">
2906
2907
2908         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>.
2909
2910
2911       </div>
2912     </div>
2913     <div class="padding"></div>
2914
2915     <div class="entry">
2916       <div class="title">
2917         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
2918       </div>
2919       <div class="date">
2920          9th July 2010
2921       </div>
2922       <div class="body">
2923         <p>Since
2924 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
2925 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
2926 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
2927 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
2928 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
2929 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
2930 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
2931 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
2932 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
2933 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
2934 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
2935 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
2936 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
2937
2938       </div>
2939       <div class="tags">
2940
2941
2942         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>.
2943
2944
2945       </div>
2946     </div>
2947     <div class="padding"></div>
2948
2949     <div class="entry">
2950       <div class="title">
2951         <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>
2952       </div>
2953       <div class="date">
2954          3rd July 2010
2955       </div>
2956       <div class="body">
2957         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
2958 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
2959 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
2960 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
2961 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
2962 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
2963 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
2964 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
2965
2966 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
2967 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
2968 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
2969 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
2970 publish the difference.</p>
2971
2972 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2973
2974 <blockquote><p>
2975   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
2976   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
2977   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
2978   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
2979   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
2980   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
2981   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
2982   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
2983 </p></blockquote>
2984
2985 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
2986
2987 <blockquote><p>
2988   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
2989   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
2990   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
2991   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
2992   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
2993   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
2994   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
2995   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
2996   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
2997   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
2998   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
2999   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
3000   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
3001   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
3002   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
3003   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
3004   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
3005   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
3006   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
3007   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
3008 </p></blockquote>
3009
3010 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3011
3012 <blockquote><p>
3013   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
3014   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
3015   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
3016   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
3017   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
3018   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
3019   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
3020   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
3021   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
3022   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
3023   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
3024   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
3025   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
3026   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
3027   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
3028   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
3029   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
3030   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
3031   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
3032   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
3033   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
3034 </p></blockquote>
3035
3036 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3037
3038 <blockquote><p>
3039   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
3040   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
3041   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
3042 </p></blockquote>
3043
3044 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
3045 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
3046 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
3047 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
3048 the difference somewhat.
3049
3050       </div>
3051       <div class="tags">
3052
3053
3054         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>.
3055
3056
3057       </div>
3058     </div>
3059     <div class="padding"></div>
3060
3061     <div class="entry">
3062       <div class="title">
3063         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
3064       </div>
3065       <div class="date">
3066         28th June 2010
3067       </div>
3068       <div class="body">
3069         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
3070 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
3071 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
3072 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
3073 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
3074 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
3075 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
3076 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
3077 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
3078 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
3079
3080 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
3081 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
3082 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
3083 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
3084 released.</p>
3085
3086 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
3087 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
3088 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
3089 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
3090
3091 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
3092 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
3093
3094 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
3095 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
3096 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
3097 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
3098 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
3099
3100       </div>
3101       <div class="tags">
3102
3103
3104         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>.
3105
3106
3107       </div>
3108     </div>
3109     <div class="padding"></div>
3110
3111     <div class="entry">
3112       <div class="title">
3113         <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>
3114       </div>
3115       <div class="date">
3116         24th June 2010
3117       </div>
3118       <div class="body">
3119         <p>A while back, I
3120 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
3121 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
3122 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
3123 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
3124
3125 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
3126 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
3127 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
3128 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
3129
3130 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
3131 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
3132 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
3133 Debian Edu.</p>
3134
3135 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
3136 the
3137 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
3138 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
3139 available today from IETF.</p>
3140
3141 <pre>
3142 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
3143 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
3144 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
3145  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
3146         NAME 'dhcpHost'
3147         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
3148 -       SUP top
3149 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
3150         MUST cn
3151         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
3152         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
3153 </pre>
3154
3155 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
3156 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
3157 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
3158
3159 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
3160 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
3161
3162       </div>
3163       <div class="tags">
3164
3165
3166         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>.
3167
3168
3169       </div>
3170     </div>
3171     <div class="padding"></div>
3172
3173     <div class="entry">
3174       <div class="title">
3175         <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>
3176       </div>
3177       <div class="date">
3178         16th June 2010
3179       </div>
3180       <div class="body">
3181         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
3182 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
3183 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
3184 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
3185 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
3186 this:
3187
3188 <blockquote><pre>
3189 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
3190 tasksel --new-install
3191 </pre></blockquote>
3192
3193 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
3194 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
3195 any output what so ever.
3196
3197 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
3198 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
3199 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
3200 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
3201 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
3202 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
3203 code like this:
3204
3205 <blockquote><pre>
3206 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
3207 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
3208 $cmd
3209 </pre></blockquote>
3210
3211 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
3212 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
3213 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
3214 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
3215 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
3216 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
3217 installation.</p>
3218
3219 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
3220 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
3221 like this.</p>
3222
3223       </div>
3224       <div class="tags">
3225
3226
3227         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>.
3228
3229
3230       </div>
3231     </div>
3232     <div class="padding"></div>
3233
3234     <div class="entry">
3235       <div class="title">
3236         <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>
3237       </div>
3238       <div class="date">
3239         13th June 2010
3240       </div>
3241       <div class="body">
3242         <p>My
3243 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
3244 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
3245 finally made the upgrade logs available from
3246 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
3247 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
3248 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
3249 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
3250
3251 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
3252 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
3253 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
3254 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
3255 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
3256 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
3257 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
3258 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
3259
3260 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
3261 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
3262 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
3263 too surprising.</p>
3264
3265 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
3266 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
3267 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
3268 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
3269 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
3270 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
3271 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
3272 continue.</p>
3273
3274 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
3275 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
3276   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
3277   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
3278   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
3279   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
3280   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
3281   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
3282   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
3283   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
3284   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
3285   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
3286   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
3287   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
3288   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
3289   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
3290   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
3291   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
3292   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
3293   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
3294   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
3295   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
3296   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
3297   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
3298   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
3299   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
3300   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
3301   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
3302   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
3303   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
3304
3305 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
3306
3307 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
3308   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
3309   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
3310   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
3311   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
3312   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
3313   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
3314   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
3315   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
3316   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
3317   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
3318   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
3319   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
3320   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
3321   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
3322   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
3323   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
3324   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
3325   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
3326   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
3327   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
3328   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
3329   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
3330   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
3331   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
3332   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
3333   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
3334   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
3335   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
3336   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
3337   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
3338   zip</p>
3339
3340 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
3341
3342 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
3343   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
3344   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
3345   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
3346   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
3347   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
3348   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
3349   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
3350   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
3351   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
3352   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
3353   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
3354   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
3355   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
3356   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
3357   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
3358   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
3359   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
3360   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
3361   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
3362   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
3363   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
3364   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
3365   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
3366   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
3367   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
3368   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
3369   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
3370
3371 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
3372 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
3373   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
3374   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
3375   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
3376   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
3377   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
3378   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
3379   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
3380   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
3381   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
3382   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
3383   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
3384   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
3385   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
3386   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
3387   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
3388   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
3389   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
3390   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
3391   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
3392   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
3393   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
3394   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
3395   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
3396   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
3397   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
3398   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
3399   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
3400   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
3401   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
3402   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
3403   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
3404   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
3405   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
3406   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
3407   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
3408   xulrunner-1.9</p>
3409
3410
3411       </div>
3412       <div class="tags">
3413
3414
3415         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>.
3416
3417
3418       </div>
3419     </div>
3420     <div class="padding"></div>
3421
3422     <div class="entry">
3423       <div class="title">
3424         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
3425       </div>
3426       <div class="date">
3427         11th June 2010
3428       </div>
3429       <div class="body">
3430         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
3431 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
3432 have been discovered and reported in the process
3433 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
3434 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
3435 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
3436 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
3437 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
3438
3439 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
3440 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
3441 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
3442 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
3443 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
3444 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
3445
3446 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
3447 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
3448 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
3449 is created.  The bug report
3450 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
3451 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
3452 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
3453 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
3454 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
3455 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
3456 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
3457 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
3458 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
3459 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
3460 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
3461 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
3462 Debian Squeeze.</p>
3463
3464 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
3465 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
3466 trick:</p>
3467
3468 <blockquote><pre>
3469 #!/bin/sh
3470 set -ex
3471
3472 if [ "$1" ] ; then
3473     desktop=$1
3474 else
3475     desktop=gnome
3476 fi
3477
3478 from=lenny
3479 to=squeeze
3480
3481 exec &lt; /dev/null
3482 unset LANG
3483 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
3484 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
3485 fuser -mv .
3486 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
3487 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
3488 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
3489 #!/bin/sh
3490 exit 101
3491 EOF
3492 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
3493 exit_cleanup() {
3494     umount $tmpdir/proc
3495 }
3496 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
3497 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
3498 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
3499
3500 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
3501
3502 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
3503 # to return the correct answers.
3504 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
3505     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
3506
3507 # Include the desktop and laptop task
3508 for test in desktop laptop ; do
3509     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
3510 #!/bin/sh
3511 exit 2
3512 EOF
3513     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
3514 done
3515
3516 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
3517 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
3518 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
3519 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
3520
3521 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
3522 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
3523 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
3524 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
3525 fuser -mv
3526 </pre></blockquote>
3527
3528 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
3529 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
3530 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
3531 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
3532 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
3533 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
3534
3535 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
3536 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
3537 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
3538 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
3539 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
3540 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
3541 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
3542
3543 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
3544 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
3545 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
3546 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
3547 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
3548 packages.</p>
3549
3550       </div>
3551       <div class="tags">
3552
3553
3554         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>.
3555
3556
3557       </div>
3558     </div>
3559     <div class="padding"></div>
3560
3561     <div class="entry">
3562       <div class="title">
3563         <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>
3564       </div>
3565       <div class="date">
3566          6th June 2010
3567       </div>
3568       <div class="body">
3569         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
3570 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
3571 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
3572 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
3573 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
3574 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
3575 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
3576
3577 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
3578 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
3579 COLUMNS):</p>
3580
3581 <blockquote><pre>
3582 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
3583 previous=N
3584 PREVLEVEL=
3585 RUNLEVEL=
3586 runlevel=S
3587 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
3588 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
3589 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
3590 </pre></blockquote>
3591
3592 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
3593 script.</p>
3594
3595 <blockquote><pre>
3596 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
3597 previous=N
3598 PREVLEVEL=N
3599 RUNLEVEL=S
3600 runlevel=S
3601 </pre></blockquote>
3602
3603 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
3604 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
3605 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
3606
3607 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
3608 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
3609 choice.</p>
3610
3611       </div>
3612       <div class="tags">
3613
3614
3615         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>.
3616
3617
3618       </div>
3619     </div>
3620     <div class="padding"></div>
3621
3622     <div class="entry">
3623       <div class="title">
3624         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
3625       </div>
3626       <div class="date">
3627          6th June 2010
3628       </div>
3629       <div class="body">
3630         <p>Via the
3631 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
3632 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
3633 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
3634 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
3635 following the standards wars of today.</p>
3636
3637       </div>
3638       <div class="tags">
3639
3640
3641         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>.
3642
3643
3644       </div>
3645     </div>
3646     <div class="padding"></div>
3647
3648     <div class="entry">
3649       <div class="title">
3650         <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>
3651       </div>
3652       <div class="date">
3653          3rd June 2010
3654       </div>
3655       <div class="body">
3656         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
3657 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
3658 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
3659 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
3660 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
3661
3662 <blockquote><pre>
3663 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
3664   vendor                    count
3665   Dell Computer Corporation     1
3666     PowerEdge 1750              1
3667   IBM                           1
3668     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
3669   Intel                         2
3670   [no-dmi-info]                 3
3671 maintainer:~#
3672 </pre></blockquote>
3673
3674 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
3675 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
3676 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
3677 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
3678 option to list the individual machines.</p>
3679
3680 <p>A larger list is
3681 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
3682 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
3683 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
3684 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
3685 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
3686 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
3687 collector.</p>
3688
3689       </div>
3690       <div class="tags">
3691
3692
3693         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>.
3694
3695
3696       </div>
3697     </div>
3698     <div class="padding"></div>
3699
3700     <div class="entry">
3701       <div class="title">
3702         <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>
3703       </div>
3704       <div class="date">
3705          1st June 2010
3706       </div>
3707       <div class="body">
3708         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
3709 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
3710 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
3711 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
3712 wait.</p>
3713
3714 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
3715 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
3716 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
3717 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
3718 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
3719 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
3720
3721 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
3722 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
3723 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
3724 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
3725 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
3726 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
3727 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
3728 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
3729
3730 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
3731
3732       </div>
3733       <div class="tags">
3734
3735
3736         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>.
3737
3738
3739       </div>
3740     </div>
3741     <div class="padding"></div>
3742
3743     <div class="entry">
3744       <div class="title">
3745         <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>
3746       </div>
3747       <div class="date">
3748         27th May 2010
3749       </div>
3750       <div class="body">
3751         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
3752 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
3753 issues are known and should be solved:
3754
3755 <p><ul>
3756
3757 <li>The wicd package seen to
3758 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
3759 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
3760 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
3761 seem to be on the case.</li>
3762
3763 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
3764 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
3765 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
3766 maintainer is on the case.</li>
3767
3768 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
3769 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
3770 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
3771 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
3772 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
3773 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
3774 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
3775 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
3776
3777 </ul></p>
3778
3779 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
3780 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
3781 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
3782 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
3783
3784 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
3785 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
3786 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
3787 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
3788
3789 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
3790
3791       </div>
3792       <div class="tags">
3793
3794
3795         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>.
3796
3797
3798       </div>
3799     </div>
3800     <div class="padding"></div>
3801
3802     <div class="entry">
3803       <div class="title">
3804         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
3805       </div>
3806       <div class="date">
3807         22nd May 2010
3808       </div>
3809       <div class="body">
3810         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
3811 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
3812 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
3813 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
3814
3815 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
3816 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
3817 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
3818 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
3819 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
3820 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
3821 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
3822 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
3823 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
3824 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
3825 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
3826 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
3827 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
3828 going to work.</p>
3829
3830 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
3831 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
3832 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
3833 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
3834 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
3835 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
3836 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
3837 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
3838 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
3839 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
3840 Edu.</p>
3841
3842 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
3843 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
3844 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
3845 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
3846 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
3847 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
3848
3849 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
3850 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
3851
3852       </div>
3853       <div class="tags">
3854
3855
3856         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>.
3857
3858
3859       </div>
3860     </div>
3861     <div class="padding"></div>
3862
3863     <div class="entry">
3864       <div class="title">
3865         <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>
3866       </div>
3867       <div class="date">
3868         14th May 2010
3869       </div>
3870       <div class="body">
3871         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
3872 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
3873 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
3874 expected, if I am to believe the
3875 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
3876 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
3877 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
3878 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
3879 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
3880 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
3881 version.</p>
3882
3883 More information about
3884 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
3885 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
3886 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
3887 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
3888
3889 <blockquote><pre>
3890 CONCURRENCY=none
3891 </pre></blockquote>
3892
3893 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
3894 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
3895 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
3896 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
3897
3898       </div>
3899       <div class="tags">
3900
3901
3902         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>.
3903
3904
3905       </div>
3906     </div>
3907     <div class="padding"></div>
3908
3909     <div class="entry">
3910       <div class="title">
3911         <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>
3912       </div>
3913       <div class="date">
3914         14th May 2010
3915       </div>
3916       <div class="body">
3917         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
3918 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
3919 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
3920 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
3921 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
3922 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
3923 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
3924 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
3925
3926 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
3927 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
3928 this on the collector host:</p>
3929
3930 <blockquote><pre>
3931 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
3932 </pre></blockquote>
3933
3934 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
3935 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
3936
3937 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
3938 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
3939 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
3940 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
3941 written yet.</p>
3942
3943       </div>
3944       <div class="tags">
3945
3946
3947         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>.
3948
3949
3950       </div>
3951     </div>
3952     <div class="padding"></div>
3953
3954     <div class="entry">
3955       <div class="title">
3956         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
3957       </div>
3958       <div class="date">
3959         13th May 2010
3960       </div>
3961       <div class="body">
3962         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
3963 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
3964 has been
3965 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
3966
3967 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
3968 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
3969 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
3970 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
3971 based boot system.  Tollef is
3972 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
3973 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
3974 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
3975 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
3976 at the moment do not.</p>
3977
3978 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
3979 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
3980 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
3981 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
3982 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
3983 way forward.</p>
3984
3985 <p>In the mean time, based on the
3986 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
3987 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
3988 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
3989 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
3990 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
3991 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
3992 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
3993 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
3994
3995       </div>
3996       <div class="tags">
3997
3998
3999         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>.
4000
4001
4002       </div>
4003     </div>
4004     <div class="padding"></div>
4005
4006     <div class="entry">
4007       <div class="title">
4008         <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>
4009       </div>
4010       <div class="date">
4011          6th May 2010
4012       </div>
4013       <div class="body">
4014         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
4015 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
4016 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
4017 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
4018 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
4019 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
4020 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
4021
4022 <blockquote><pre>
4023 CONCURRENCY=makefile
4024 </pre></blockquote>
4025
4026 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
4027 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
4028 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
4029 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
4030 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
4031 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
4032 make this happen.</p>
4033
4034 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
4035 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
4036 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
4037 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
4038 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
4039
4040 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
4041 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
4042 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
4043 fix the remaining issues.</p>
4044
4045 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
4046 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
4047 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
4048 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
4049
4050       </div>
4051       <div class="tags">
4052
4053
4054         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>.
4055
4056
4057       </div>
4058     </div>
4059     <div class="padding"></div>
4060
4061     <div class="entry">
4062       <div class="title">
4063         <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>
4064       </div>
4065       <div class="date">
4066         27th July 2009
4067       </div>
4068       <div class="body">
4069         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
4070 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
4071 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
4072 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
4073 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
4074 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
4075 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
4076
4077 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
4078 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
4079 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
4080
4081       </div>
4082       <div class="tags">
4083
4084
4085         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>.
4086
4087
4088       </div>
4089     </div>
4090     <div class="padding"></div>
4091
4092     <div class="entry">
4093       <div class="title">
4094         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
4095       </div>
4096       <div class="date">
4097         22nd July 2009
4098       </div>
4099       <div class="body">
4100         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
4101 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
4102 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
4103 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
4104 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
4105 the package up to date.</p>
4106
4107 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
4108 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
4109 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
4110 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
4111 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
4112 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
4113 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
4114 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
4115 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
4116 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
4117 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
4118 working on the future release.</p>
4119
4120 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
4121 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
4122
4123       </div>
4124       <div class="tags">
4125
4126
4127         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>.
4128
4129
4130       </div>
4131     </div>
4132     <div class="padding"></div>
4133
4134     <div class="entry">
4135       <div class="title">
4136         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
4137       </div>
4138       <div class="date">
4139         24th June 2009
4140       </div>
4141       <div class="body">
4142         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
4143 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
4144 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
4145 funded
4146 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
4147 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
4148 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
4149 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
4150 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
4151 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
4152
4153 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
4154 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
4155 boot:</p>
4156
4157 <ul>
4158
4159 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
4160
4161 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
4162    clock is in UTC.</li>
4163
4164 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
4165    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
4166    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
4167
4168 </ul>
4169
4170 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
4171 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
4172 Villegas</a>.
4173
4174 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
4175 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
4176 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
4177 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
4178 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
4179 using this.</p>
4180
4181 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
4182 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
4183 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
4184 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
4185 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
4186 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
4187 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
4188
4189       </div>
4190       <div class="tags">
4191
4192
4193         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>.
4194
4195
4196       </div>
4197     </div>
4198     <div class="padding"></div>
4199
4200     <div class="entry">
4201       <div class="title">
4202         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
4203       </div>
4204       <div class="date">
4205         17th May 2009
4206       </div>
4207       <div class="body">
4208         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
4209 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
4210 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
4211 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
4212 dager siden kom
4213 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
4214 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
4215 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
4216 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
4217 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
4218
4219 <blockquote>
4220 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
4221 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
4222 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
4223 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
4224 </blockquote>
4225
4226 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
4227 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
4228 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
4229 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
4230 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
4231
4232 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
4233 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
4234 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
4235
4236       </div>
4237       <div class="tags">
4238
4239
4240         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
4241
4242
4243       </div>
4244     </div>
4245     <div class="padding"></div>
4246
4247     <div class="entry">
4248       <div class="title">
4249         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
4250       </div>
4251       <div class="date">
4252          7th May 2009
4253       </div>
4254       <div class="body">
4255         <p>Kom over
4256 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
4257 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
4258 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
4259 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
4260 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
4261 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
4262 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
4263
4264       </div>
4265       <div class="tags">
4266
4267
4268         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4269
4270
4271       </div>
4272     </div>
4273     <div class="padding"></div>
4274
4275     <div class="entry">
4276       <div class="title">
4277         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
4278       </div>
4279       <div class="date">
4280          2nd May 2009
4281       </div>
4282       <div class="body">
4283         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
4284 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
4285 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
4286 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
4287 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
4288 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
4289 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
4290 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
4291 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
4292 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
4293 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
4294 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
4295 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
4296 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
4297 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
4298 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
4299 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
4300 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
4301 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
4302 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
4303
4304 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
4305 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
4306 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
4307 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
4308 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
4309 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
4310 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
4311 betydelige.</p>
4312
4313       </div>
4314       <div class="tags">
4315
4316
4317         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
4318
4319
4320       </div>
4321     </div>
4322     <div class="padding"></div>
4323
4324     <div class="entry">
4325       <div class="title">
4326         <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>
4327       </div>
4328       <div class="date">
4329          2nd May 2009
4330       </div>
4331       <div class="body">
4332         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
4333 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
4334 do not yet know them.</p>
4335
4336 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
4337 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
4338 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
4339 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
4340 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
4341 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
4342 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
4343 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
4344 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
4345 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
4346 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
4347
4348 <p>The second one is
4349 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
4350 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
4351 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
4352 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
4353 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
4354 and the company behind it is running
4355 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
4356 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
4357 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
4358 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
4359 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
4360 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
4361 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
4362 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
4363
4364 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
4365 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
4366 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
4367 surrounded by today.</p>
4368
4369       </div>
4370       <div class="tags">
4371
4372
4373         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>.
4374
4375
4376       </div>
4377     </div>
4378     <div class="padding"></div>
4379
4380     <div class="entry">
4381       <div class="title">
4382         <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>
4383       </div>
4384       <div class="date">
4385         28th April 2009
4386       </div>
4387       <div class="body">
4388         <p>Julien Blache
4389 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
4390 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
4391 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
4392 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
4393 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
4394 properties.</p>
4395
4396       </div>
4397       <div class="tags">
4398
4399
4400         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>.
4401
4402
4403       </div>
4404     </div>
4405     <div class="padding"></div>
4406
4407     <div class="entry">
4408       <div class="title">
4409         <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>
4410       </div>
4411       <div class="date">
4412         30th March 2009
4413       </div>
4414       <div class="body">
4415         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
4416 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
4417 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
4418 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
4419 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
4420 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
4421 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
4422 application.</p>
4423
4424 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
4425 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
4426 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
4427 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
4428 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
4429 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
4430 blocked from doing so.</p>
4431
4432 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
4433 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
4434 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
4435 requirements change.</p>
4436
4437 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
4438 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
4439 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
4440
4441       </div>
4442       <div class="tags">
4443
4444
4445         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>.
4446
4447
4448       </div>
4449     </div>
4450     <div class="padding"></div>
4451
4452     <div class="entry">
4453       <div class="title">
4454         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
4455       </div>
4456       <div class="date">
4457         29th March 2009
4458       </div>
4459       <div class="body">
4460         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
4461 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
4462 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
4463 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
4464 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
4465 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
4466 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
4467 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
4468 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
4469 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
4470 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
4471 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
4472 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
4473 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
4474 now. :)</p>
4475
4476       </div>
4477       <div class="tags">
4478
4479
4480         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>.
4481
4482
4483       </div>
4484     </div>
4485     <div class="padding"></div>
4486
4487     <div class="entry">
4488       <div class="title">
4489         <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>
4490       </div>
4491       <div class="date">
4492         29th March 2009
4493       </div>
4494       <div class="body">
4495         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
4496 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
4497 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
4498 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
4499 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
4500 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
4501
4502 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
4503 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
4504 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
4505 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
4506 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
4507 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
4508 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
4509 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
4510 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
4511 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
4512 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
4513 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
4514 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
4515
4516 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
4517 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
4518 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
4519 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
4520
4521 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
4522 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
4523
4524 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
4525 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
4526 new IETF work group?</p>
4527
4528       </div>
4529       <div class="tags">
4530
4531
4532         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>.
4533
4534
4535       </div>
4536     </div>
4537     <div class="padding"></div>
4538
4539     <div class="entry">
4540       <div class="title">
4541         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
4542       </div>
4543       <div class="date">
4544         15th February 2009
4545       </div>
4546       <div class="body">
4547         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
4548 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
4549 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
4550 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
4551 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
4552 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
4553 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
4554 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
4555 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
4556 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
4557 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
4558 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
4559
4560       </div>
4561       <div class="tags">
4562
4563
4564         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
4565
4566
4567       </div>
4568     </div>
4569     <div class="padding"></div>
4570
4571     <div class="entry">
4572       <div class="title">
4573         <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>
4574       </div>
4575       <div class="date">
4576          7th December 2008
4577       </div>
4578       <div class="body">
4579         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
4580 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
4581 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
4582 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
4583 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
4584 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
4585 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
4586 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
4587
4588 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
4589 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
4590 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
4591 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
4592 of these cards.</p>
4593
4594       </div>
4595       <div class="tags">
4596
4597
4598         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>.
4599
4600
4601       </div>
4602     </div>
4603     <div class="padding"></div>
4604
4605     <div class="entry">
4606       <div class="title">
4607         <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>
4608       </div>
4609       <div class="date">
4610         25th November 2008
4611       </div>
4612       <div class="body">
4613         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
4614 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
4615 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
4616 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
4617 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
4618 notes are available on
4619 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
4620 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
4621 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
4622 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
4623 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
4624 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
4625 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
4626 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
4627 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
4628
4629 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
4630 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
4631
4632       </div>
4633       <div class="tags">
4634
4635
4636         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>.
4637
4638
4639       </div>
4640     </div>
4641     <div class="padding"></div>
4642
4643     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
4644     <div id="sidebar">
4645
4646
4647
4648 <h2>Archive</h2>
4649 <ul>
4650
4651 <li>2013
4652 <ul>
4653
4654 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (3)</a></li>
4655
4656 </ul></li>
4657
4658 <li>2012
4659 <ul>
4660
4661 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
4662
4663 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
4664
4665 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
4666
4667 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
4668
4669 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
4670
4671 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
4672
4673 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
4674
4675 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
4676
4677 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
4678
4679 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
4680
4681 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
4682
4683 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
4684
4685 </ul></li>
4686
4687 <li>2011
4688 <ul>
4689
4690 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
4691
4692 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
4693
4694 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
4695
4696 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
4697
4698 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
4699
4700 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
4701
4702 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
4703
4704 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
4705
4706 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
4707
4708 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
4709
4710 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
4711
4712 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
4713
4714 </ul></li>
4715
4716 <li>2010
4717 <ul>
4718
4719 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
4720
4721 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
4722
4723 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
4724
4725 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
4726
4727 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
4728
4729 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
4730
4731 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
4732
4733 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
4734
4735 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
4736
4737 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
4738
4739 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
4740
4741 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
4742
4743 </ul></li>
4744
4745 <li>2009
4746 <ul>
4747
4748 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
4749
4750 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
4751
4752 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
4753
4754 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
4755
4756 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
4757
4758 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
4759
4760 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
4761
4762 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
4763
4764 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
4765
4766 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
4767
4768 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
4769
4770 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
4771
4772 </ul></li>
4773
4774 <li>2008
4775 <ul>
4776
4777 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
4778
4779 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
4780
4781 </ul></li>
4782
4783 </ul>
4784
4785
4786
4787 <h2>Tags</h2>
4788 <ul>
4789
4790  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
4791
4792  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
4793
4794  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
4795
4796  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
4797
4798  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (5)</a></li>
4799
4800  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
4801
4802  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
4803
4804  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (60)</a></li>
4805
4806  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (118)</a></li>
4807
4808  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (9)</a></li>
4809
4810  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (7)</a></li>
4811
4812  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
4813
4814  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (167)</a></li>
4815
4816  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
4817
4818  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
4819
4820  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (10)</a></li>
4821
4822  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (9)</a></li>
4823
4824  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (32)</a></li>
4825
4826  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (17)</a></li>
4827
4828  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
4829
4830  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (6)</a></li>
4831
4832  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
4833
4834  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
4835
4836  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (219)</a></li>
4837
4838  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (148)</a></li>
4839
4840  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (6)</a></li>
4841
4842  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
4843
4844  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (41)</a></li>
4845
4846  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (61)</a></li>
4847
4848  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
4849
4850  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
4851
4852  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
4853
4854  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (5)</a></li>
4855
4856  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
4857
4858  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
4859
4860  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
4861
4862  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (28)</a></li>
4863
4864  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
4865
4866  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
4867
4868  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (39)</a></li>
4869
4870  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
4871
4872  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (5)</a></li>
4873
4874  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (12)</a></li>
4875
4876  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
4877
4878  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (7)</a></li>
4879
4880  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (35)</a></li>
4881
4882  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
4883
4884  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (26)</a></li>
4885
4886 </ul>
4887
4888
4889     </div>
4890     <p style="text-align: right">
4891  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.4</a>
4892 </p>
4893
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4895 </html>