blog/archive/2013/11/11.rss

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   3         <channel>
   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from November 2013</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from November 2013</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
   7
   8
   9         <item>
  10                 <title>All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Thu, 21 Nov 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
  14                 <description>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
  15 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
  16 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
  17 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
  18 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
  19 is just a question of time before &quot;bad drones&quot; are in the hands of
  20 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
  21 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
  22 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
  23 TED talk
  24 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_suarez_the_kill_decision_shouldn_t_belong_to_a_robot.html&quot;&gt;The
  25 kill decision shouldn&#39;t belong to a robot&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, where he suggested this
  26 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:&lt;/p&gt;
  27
  28 &lt;blockquote&gt;
  29
  30 &lt;p&gt;Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
  31 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
  32 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
  33 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
  34 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
  35 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
  36 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
  37 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
  38 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
  39 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
  40 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.&lt;/p&gt;
  41
  42 &lt;p&gt;But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
  43 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
  44 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.&lt;/p&gt;
  45
  46 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
  47
  48 &lt;p&gt;The key is that &lt;em&gt;every citizen&lt;/em&gt; should be able to read the
  49 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
  50 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
  51 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
  52 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
  53 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
  54 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
  55 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
  56 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.&lt;/p&gt;
  57 </description>
  58         </item>
  59
  60         <item>
  61                 <title>Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</title>
  62                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html</link>
  63                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html</guid>
  64                 <pubDate>Wed, 13 Nov 2013 21:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
  65                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
  66 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml&quot;&gt;our
  67 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
  68 Oslo&lt;/a&gt;.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
  69 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
  70 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
  71 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson&quot;&gt;9
  72 locations plotted on the map&lt;/a&gt;, but we will need more before we have
  73 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
  74 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
  75 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
  76 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug&quot;&gt;#nuug on irc.freenode.net&lt;/a&gt;
  77 right away. :)&lt;/p&gt;
  78 </description>
  79         </item>
  80
  81         <item>
  82                 <title>Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</title>
  83                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html</link>
  84                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html</guid>
  85                 <pubDate>Sun, 10 Nov 2013 23:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
  86                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
  87 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
  88 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
  89 MR3040 as a mesh node using
  90 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openwrt.org/&quot;&gt;OpenWrt&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  91
  92 &lt;p&gt;I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
  93 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040&quot;&gt;TL-MR3040&lt;/a&gt;,
  94 and downloaded
  95 &lt;a href=&quot;http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin&quot;&gt;the
  96 recommended firmware image&lt;/a&gt;
  97 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
  98 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
  99 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
 100 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
 101 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.&lt;/p&gt;
 102
 103 &lt;p&gt;I started off by reading the instructions from
 104 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine&#39;s_Research&quot;&gt;Wireless
 105 Africa&lt;/a&gt;, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
 106 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
 107 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config&quot;&gt;using
 108 batman-adv on OpenWrt&lt;/a&gt;.  A small snag was the fact that the
 109 &lt;tt&gt;opkg install kmod-batman-adv&lt;/tt&gt; command did not work as it
 110 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
 111 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
 112 &lt;a href=&quot;https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452&quot;&gt;reported the bug&lt;/a&gt; to
 113 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
 114 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
 115 seem to work when booting from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;
 116
 117 &lt;p&gt;The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
 118 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
 119 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
 120 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
 121 them:&lt;/p&gt;
 122
 123 &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/config/network&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 124
 125 &lt;pre&gt;
 126
 127 config interface &#39;loopback&#39;
 128         option ifname &#39;lo&#39;
 129         option proto &#39;static&#39;
 130         option ipaddr &#39;127.0.0.1&#39;
 131         option netmask &#39;255.0.0.0&#39;
 132
 133 config globals &#39;globals&#39;
 134         option ula_prefix &#39;fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48&#39;
 135
 136 config interface &#39;lan&#39;
 137         option ifname &#39;eth0&#39;
 138         option type &#39;bridge&#39;
 139         option proto &#39;dhcp&#39;
 140         option ipaddr &#39;192.168.1.1&#39;
 141         option netmask &#39;255.255.255.0&#39;
 142         option hostname &#39;tl-mr3040&#39;
 143         option ip6assign &#39;60&#39;
 144
 145 config interface &#39;mesh&#39;
 146         option ifname &#39;adhoc0&#39;
 147         option mtu &#39;1528&#39;
 148         option proto &#39;batadv&#39;
 149         option mesh &#39;bat0&#39;
 150 &lt;/pre&gt;
 151
 152 &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/config/wireless&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 153 &lt;pre&gt;
 154
 155 config wifi-device &#39;radio0&#39;
 156         option type &#39;mac80211&#39;
 157         option channel &#39;11&#39;
 158         option hwmode &#39;11ng&#39;
 159         option path &#39;platform/ar933x_wmac&#39;
 160         option htmode &#39;HT20&#39;
 161         list ht_capab &#39;SHORT-GI-20&#39;
 162         list ht_capab &#39;SHORT-GI-40&#39;
 163         list ht_capab &#39;RX-STBC1&#39;
 164         list ht_capab &#39;DSSS_CCK-40&#39;
 165         option disabled &#39;0&#39;
 166
 167 config wifi-iface &#39;wmesh&#39;
 168         option device &#39;radio0&#39;
 169         option ifname &#39;adhoc0&#39;
 170         option network &#39;mesh&#39;
 171         option encryption &#39;none&#39;
 172         option mode &#39;adhoc&#39;
 173         option bssid &#39;02:BA:00:00:00:01&#39;
 174         option ssid &#39;meshfx@hackeriet&#39;
 175 &lt;/pre&gt;
 176 &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/config/batman-adv&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 177 &lt;pre&gt;
 178
 179 config &#39;mesh&#39; &#39;bat0&#39;
 180         option interfaces &#39;adhoc0&#39;
 181         option &#39;aggregated_ogms&#39;
 182         option &#39;ap_isolation&#39;
 183         option &#39;bonding&#39;
 184         option &#39;fragmentation&#39;
 185         option &#39;gw_bandwidth&#39;
 186         option &#39;gw_mode&#39;
 187         option &#39;gw_sel_class&#39;
 188         option &#39;log_level&#39;
 189         option &#39;orig_interval&#39;
 190         option &#39;vis_mode&#39;
 191         option &#39;bridge_loop_avoidance&#39;
 192         option &#39;distributed_arp_table&#39;
 193         option &#39;network_coding&#39;
 194         option &#39;hop_penalty&#39;
 195
 196 # yet another batX instance
 197 # config &#39;mesh&#39; &#39;bat5&#39;
 198 #       option &#39;interfaces&#39; &#39;second_mesh&#39;
 199 &lt;/pre&gt;
 200
 201 &lt;p&gt;The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
 202 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
 203 still wrapped up in plastic.&lt;/p&gt;
 204 </description>
 205         </item>
 206
 207         <item>
 208                 <title>Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</title>
 209                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html</link>
 210                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html</guid>
 211                 <pubDate>Sat, 2 Nov 2013 22:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
 212                 <description>&lt;p&gt;If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
 213 &lt;a href=&quot;http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147&quot;&gt;to get rid of huge
 214 init.d scripts&lt;/a&gt;, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
 215 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
 216 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:&lt;/p&gt;
 217
 218 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 219 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
 220 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
 221 # Provides:          rsyslog
 222 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
 223 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
 224 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
 225 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
 226 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
 227 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
 228 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
 229 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
 230 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
 231 ### END INIT INFO
 232 DESC=&quot;enhanced syslogd&quot;
 233 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
 234 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 235
 236 &lt;p&gt;Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
 237 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
 238 info/comments.&lt;/p&gt;
 239
 240 &lt;p&gt;How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
 241 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
 242
 243 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 244 #!/bin/sh
 245
 246 # Define LSB log_* functions.
 247 # Depend on lsb-base (&gt;= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
 248 # and status_of_proc is working.
 249 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
 250
 251 #
 252 # Function that starts the daemon/service
 253
 254 #
 255 do_start()
 256 {
 257         # Return
 258         #   0 if daemon has been started
 259         #   1 if daemon was already running
 260         #   2 if daemon could not be started
 261         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test &gt; /dev/null \
 262                 || return 1
 263         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
 264                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
 265                 || return 2
 266         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
 267         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
 268         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
 269 }
 270
 271 #
 272 # Function that stops the daemon/service
 273 #
 274 do_stop()
 275 {
 276         # Return
 277         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
 278         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
 279         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
 280         #   other if a failure occurred
 281         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
 282         RETVAL=&quot;$?&quot;
 283         [ &quot;$RETVAL&quot; = 2 ] &amp;&amp; return 2
 284         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
 285         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
 286         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
 287         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
 288         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
 289         # sleep for some time.
 290         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
 291         [ &quot;$?&quot; = 2 ] &amp;&amp; return 2
 292         # Many daemons don&#39;t delete their pidfiles when they exit.
 293         rm -f $PIDFILE
 294         return &quot;$RETVAL&quot;
 295 }
 296
 297 #
 298 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
 299 #
 300 do_reload() {
 301         #
 302         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
 303         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
 304         # then implement that here.
 305         #
 306         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
 307         return 0
 308 }
 309
 310 SCRIPTNAME=$1
 311 scriptbasename=&quot;$(basename $1)&quot;
 312 echo &quot;SN: $scriptbasename&quot;
 313 if [ &quot;$scriptbasename&quot; != &quot;init-d-library&quot; ] ; then
 314     script=&quot;$1&quot;
 315     shift
 316     . $script
 317 else
 318     exit 0
 319 fi
 320
 321 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
 322 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
 323
 324 # Exit if the package is not installed
 325 #[ -x &quot;$DAEMON&quot; ] || exit 0
 326
 327 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
 328 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] &amp;&amp; . /etc/default/$NAME
 329
 330 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
 331 . /lib/init/vars.sh
 332
 333 case &quot;$1&quot; in
 334   start)
 335         [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_daemon_msg &quot;Starting $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
 336         do_start
 337         case &quot;$?&quot; in
 338                 0|1) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 0 ;;
 339                 2) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 1 ;;
 340         esac
 341         ;;
 342   stop)
 343         [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_daemon_msg &quot;Stopping $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
 344         do_stop
 345         case &quot;$?&quot; in
 346                 0|1) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 0 ;;
 347                 2) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 1 ;;
 348         esac
 349         ;;
 350   status)
 351         status_of_proc &quot;$DAEMON&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot; &amp;&amp; exit 0 || exit $?
 352         ;;
 353   #reload|force-reload)
 354         #
 355         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
 356         # and leave &#39;force-reload&#39; as an alias for &#39;restart&#39;.
 357         #
 358         #log_daemon_msg &quot;Reloading $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
 359         #do_reload
 360         #log_end_msg $?
 361         #;;
 362   restart|force-reload)
 363         #
 364         # If the &quot;reload&quot; option is implemented then remove the
 365         # &#39;force-reload&#39; alias
 366         #
 367         log_daemon_msg &quot;Restarting $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
 368         do_stop
 369         case &quot;$?&quot; in
 370           0|1)
 371                 do_start
 372                 case &quot;$?&quot; in
 373                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
 374                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
 375                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
 376                 esac
 377                 ;;
 378           *)
 379                 # Failed to stop
 380                 log_end_msg 1
 381                 ;;
 382         esac
 383         ;;
 384   *)
 385         echo &quot;Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}&quot; &gt;&amp;2
 386         exit 3
 387         ;;
 388 esac
 389
 390 :
 391 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 392
 393 &lt;p&gt;It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
 394 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
 395 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
 396 optimize it nor make it more robust either.&lt;/p&gt;
 397
 398 &lt;p&gt;A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
 399 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
 400 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
 401 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
 402 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.&lt;/p&gt;
 403 </description>
 404         </item>
 405
 406         <item>
 407                 <title>Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</title>
 408                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html</link>
 409                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html</guid>
 410                 <pubDate>Fri, 1 Nov 2013 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
 411                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spice-space.org/&quot;&gt;The SPICE protocol&lt;/a&gt; for
 412 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
 413 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
 414 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
 415 missing in Debian.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/668284&quot;&gt;request
 416 for a package&lt;/a&gt; was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
 417 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
 418 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
 419 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
 420 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
 421 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
 422 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.&lt;/p&gt;
 423
 424 &lt;p&gt;The source is now available from
 425 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary&quot;&gt;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 426 </description>
 427         </item>
 428
 429         </channel>
 430 </rss>