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<rss version='2.0' xmlns:lj='http://www.livejournal.org/rss/lj/1.0/' xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
        <channel>
                <title>Petter Reinholdtsen</title>
                <description></description>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
                <atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
        
        <item>
                <title>Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
this:

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
tasksel --new-install
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
any output what so ever.

Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
code like this:

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
cmd=&quot;$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed &#39;s/debconf-apt-progress -- //&#39;)&quot;
$cmd
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The content of $cmd is typically something like &quot;&lt;tt&gt;aptitude -q
--without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
~pimportant&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;, which will install the gnome desktop task, the
laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
important, just like tasksel would have done it during
installation.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
like this.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Vinmonopolet bryter loven åpenlyst - og flere planlegger å gjøre det samme</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Vinmonopolet_bryter_loven___penlyst___og_flere_planlegger____gj__re_det_samme.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Vinmonopolet_bryter_loven___penlyst___og_flere_planlegger____gj__re_det_samme.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 11:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/06/16/nyheter/innenriks/streik/arbeidsliv/12157858/&quot;&gt;Dagbladet
melder&lt;/a&gt; at Vinmonopolet med bakgrunn i vekterstreiken som pågår i
Norge for tiden, har bestemt seg for med vitende og vilje å bryte
sentralbanklovens paragraf 14 ved å nekte folk å betale med
kontanter, og at flere butikker planlegger å følge deres eksempel.
Jeg synes det er hårreisende hvis de slipper unna med et slikt
soleklart lovbrudd, og lurer på hva slags muligheter jeg vil ha hvis
jeg blir nektet å handle med kontanter.  Jeg handler i hovedsak med
kontanter selv, da jeg anser det som en borgerrett å kunne handle
anonymt uten at det blir registrert.  For meg er det et angrep på mitt
personvern å nekte å ta imot kontant betaling.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lovdata.no/all/tl-19850524-028-003.html#14&quot;&gt;Paragrafen
i sentralbankloven&lt;/a&gt; lyder:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;§ 14. Tvungent betalingsmiddel&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Bankens sedler og mynter er tvungent betalingsmiddel i Norge. Ingen
er pliktig til i én betaling å ta imot mer enn femogtyve mynter av
hver enhet.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Sterkt skadde sedler og mynter er ikke tvungent
betalingsmiddel. Banken gir nærmere forskrifter om erstatning for
bortkomne, brente eller skadde sedler og mynter.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Selv om en avtale inneholder klausul om betaling av en
pengeforpliktelse i gullverdi, kan skyldneren frigjøre seg med tvungne
betalingsmidler uten hensyn til denne klausul.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Det er med bakgrunn i denne lovet ikke tillatt å nekte å ta imot
kontakt betaling.  Det er en lov jeg har sans for, og som jeg mener må
håndheves strengt.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Officeshots taking shape</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;For those of us caring about document exchange and
interoperability, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.officeshots.org/&quot;&gt;OfficeShots&lt;/a&gt;
is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
&lt;a href=&quot;http://browsershots.org/&quot;&gt;BrowserShots&lt;/a&gt; is for web
pages.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
see how the project is doing.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
Windows.  This is great.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 13 Jun 2010 09:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;My
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;testing
of Debian upgrades&lt;/a&gt; from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I&#39;ve
finally made the upgrade logs available from
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&lt;/a&gt;.
I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
I will only focus on their removal plans.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
too surprising.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
&#39;&lt;tt&gt;echo &gt;&gt; /proc/&lt;em&gt;pidofdpkg&lt;/em&gt;/fd/0&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; to tell dpkg to
continue.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;apt-get gnome 72&lt;/b&gt;
&lt;br&gt;bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
  gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
  iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
  libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
  nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
  serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
  xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
  xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
  xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
  xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
  xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
  xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
  xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
  xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
  xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
  xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
  xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
  xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
  xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
  xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
  xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
  xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
  xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
  xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
  xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
  xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
  xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
  xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
  xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;aptitude gnome 129&lt;/b&gt;

&lt;br&gt;bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
  djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
  gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
  gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
  libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
  libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
  libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
  libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
  libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
  libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
  libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
  libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
  libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
  libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
  libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
  libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
  libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
  libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
  libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
  libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
  libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
  libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
  libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
  libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
  openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
  python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
  python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
  python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
  swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
  xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
  xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
  zip&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;apt-get kde 82&lt;/b&gt;

&lt;br&gt;cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
  kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
  kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
  kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
  kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
  libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
  xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
  xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
  xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
  xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
  xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
  xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
  xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
  xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
  xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
  xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
  xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
  xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
  xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
  xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
  xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
  xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
  xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
  xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
  xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
  xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
  xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
  xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;aptitude kde 192&lt;/b&gt;
&lt;br&gt;bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
  djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
  ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
  kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
  kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
  kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
  kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
  kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
  kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
  kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
  kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
  klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
  kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
  krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
  ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
  kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
  kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
  libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
  libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
  libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
  libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
  libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
  libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
  libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
  libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
  libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
  libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
  libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
  libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
  libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
  libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
  openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
  superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
  texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
  xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
  xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
  xulrunner-1.9&lt;/p&gt;

</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Åpne trådløsnett er et samfunnsgode</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/__pne_tr__dl__snett_er_et_samfunnsgode.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/__pne_tr__dl__snett_er_et_samfunnsgode.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 12 Jun 2010 12:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;Veldig glad for å oppdage via
&lt;a href=&quot;http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/06/11/1841256/Finland-To-Legalize-Use-of-Unsecured-Wi-Fi&quot;&gt;Slashdot&lt;/a&gt;
at folk i Finland har forstått at åpne trådløsnett er et samfunnsgode.
Jeg ser på åpne trådløsnett som et fellesgode på linje med retten til
ferdsel i utmark og retten til å bevege seg i strandsonen.  Jeg har
glede av åpne trådløsnett når jeg finner dem, og deler gladelig nett
med andre så lenge de ikke forstyrrer min bruk av eget nett.
Nettkapasiteten er sjelden en begrensning ved normal browsing og enkel
SSH-innlogging (som er min vanligste nettbruk), og nett kan brukes til
så mye positivt og nyttig (som nyhetslesing, sjekke været, kontakte
slekt og venner, holde seg oppdatert om politiske saker, kontakte
organisasjoner og politikere, etc), at det for meg er helt urimelig å
blokkere dette for alle som ikke gjør en flue fortred.  De som mener
at potensialet for misbruk er grunn nok til å hindre all den positive
og lovlydige bruken av et åpent trådløsnett har jeg dermed ingen
forståelse for.  En kan ikke eksistensen av forbrytere styre hvordan
samfunnet skal organiseres.  Da får en et kontrollsamfunn de færreste
ønsker å leve i, og det at vi har et samfunn i Norge der tilliten til
hverandre er høy gjør at samfunnet fungerer ganske godt.  Det bør vi
anstrenge oss for å beholde.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
have been discovered and reported in the process
(&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/585410&quot;&gt;#585410&lt;/a&gt; in nagios3-cgi,
&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584879&quot;&gt;#584879&lt;/a&gt; already fixed in
enscript and &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584861&quot;&gt;#584861&lt;/a&gt; in
kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
am working on a script to automate the test.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
(only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
is created.  The bug report
&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/566000&quot;&gt;#566000&lt;/a&gt; make me suspect
this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/&quot;&gt;known
issue&lt;/a&gt; and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
Debian Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
script, which I call &lt;tt&gt;upgrade-test&lt;/tt&gt; for now, is doing the
trick:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
#!/bin/sh
set -ex

if [ &quot;$1&quot; ] ; then
    desktop=$1
else
    desktop=gnome
fi

from=lenny
to=squeeze

exec &amp;lt; /dev/null
unset LANG
mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
fuser -mv .
debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
cat &gt; $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
#!/bin/sh
exit 101
EOF
chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
exit_cleanup() {
    umount $tmpdir/proc
}
mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
# Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT

chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils

# Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
# to return the correct answers.
echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
    chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections

# Include the desktop and laptop task
for test in desktop laptop ; do
    echo &gt; $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
#!/bin/sh
exit 2
EOF
    chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
done

DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install

echo deb $mirror $to main &gt; $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
fuser -mv
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
kdebase-workspace-data&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
(KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
packages.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Skolelinux er laget for sentraldrifting, naturligvis</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_er_laget_for_sentraldrifting__naturligvis.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_er_laget_for_sentraldrifting__naturligvis.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 9 Jun 2010 12:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;Det er merkelig hvordan myter om Skolelinux overlever.  En slik
myte er at Skolelinux ikke kan sentraldriftes og ha sentralt plasserte
tjenermaskiner.  I siste Computerworld Norge er
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article169432.ece&quot;&gt;IT-sjef
Viggo Billdal i Steinkjer intervjuet&lt;/a&gt;, og forteller uten
blygsel:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Vi hadde Skolelinux, men det har vi sluttet med. Vi testet
om det lønte seg med Microsoft eller en åpen plattform. Vi fant ut at
Microsoft egentlig var totalt sett bedre egnet. Det var store
driftskostnader med Skolelinux, blant annet på grunn av
desentraliserte servere. Det var komplisert, så vi gikk vekk fra det
og bruker nå bare Windows.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;En &lt;a
href=&quot;https://init.linpro.no/pipermail/skolelinux.no/bruker/2010-June/009101.html&quot;&gt;rask
sjekk&lt;/a&gt; mot den norske brukerlista i Skolelinuxprosjektet forteller
at Steinkjers forsøk foregikk fram til 2004/2005, og at Røysing skole
i Steinkjer skal ha vært svært fornøyd med Skolelinux men at kommunen
overkjørte skolen og krevde at de gikk over til Windows.  Et søk på
nettet sendte meg til
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dn.no/multimedia/archive/00090/Dagens_it_nr__18_90826a.pdf&quot;&gt;Dagens
IT nr. 18 2005&lt;/a&gt; hvor en kan lese på side 18:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Inge Tømmerås ved Røysing skole i Steinkjer kjører ennå
Microsoft, men forteller at kompetanseutfordringen med Skolelinux ikke
var så stor.  ­ Jeg syntes Skolelinux var utrolig lett å drifte uten
forkunnskaper. Men man må jo selvsagt ha tilgang på ekstern kompetanse
til installasjoner og maskinvarefeil, sier Tømmerås.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Som systemarkitekten bak Skolelinux, kan jeg bare riste på hodet
over påstanden om at Skolelinux krever desentraliserte tjenere.
Skolelinux-arkitekturen er laget for sentralisert drift og plassering
av tjenerne lokalt eller sentralt alt etter behov og nettkapasitet.
Den er modellert på nettverks- og tjenerløsningen som brukes på
Universitetet i Tromsø og Oslo, der jeg jobber med utvikling av
driftstjenester.  Dette er det heldigvis noen som har fått med seg, og
jeg er glad for å kunne sitere fra en kommentar på den overnevnte
artikkelen.  Min venn og gamle kollega Sturle Sunde forteller der:

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I Flora kommune køyrer vi Skulelinux på skular med alt frå 15 til
meir enn 500 elevar. Dei store skulane har eigen tenar, for det er
mest praktisk. Eg, som er driftsansvarleg for heile nettet, ser
sjeldan dei tenarane fysisk, men at dei står der gjer skulane mindre
avhengige av eksterne linjer som er trege eller dyre. Dei minste
skulane har ikkje eigen tenar. Å bruke sentral tenar er heller ikkje
noko problem. Småskulane klarar seg fint med 1 mbit-linje til ein
sentral tenar eller tenaren på ein større skule.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Det beste med Skulelinux er halvtjukke klientar. Dei treng ikkje
harddisk og brukar minimalt med ressursar på tenaren fordi dei køyrer
programma lokalt. Eit klasserom med 30 sju-åtte år gamle maskiner har
mykje meir CPU og RAM totalt enn nokon moderne tenar til under
millionen. Det trengst to kommandoar på den sentrale tenaren for å
oppdatere alle klientane, både tynne og halvtjukke. Vi har ingen
problem med diskar som ryk heller, som var eit problem før fordi
elevane sat og sparka i maskinene. Og dei krev lite bandbreidde i
nettet, so det er fullt mogleg å køyre slike på småskular med trege
linjer mot tenaren på ein større skule.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Flora kommune har nesten 800 Linux-maskiner i sitt skulenett, og
ein person som tek seg av drift av heile nettet, inkludert tenarar,
klientar, operativsystem, programvare, heimekontorløysing og
administrasjon av brukarar.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;No skal det seiast at vi ikkje køyrer rein Skulelinux ut av
boksen. Vi har gjort ein del tilpassingar mot noko Novell-greier som
var der frå før, og som har komplisert installasjonen vår. Etter at
oppsettet var gjort har løysinga vore stabil og kravd minimalt med
arbeid.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Jeg vet at Narvik, Harstad og Oslo er kommuner der Skolelinux
sentraldriftes med sentrale tjenere.  Det forteller meg at Steinkjers
IT-sjef neppe bør skylde på Skolelinux-løsningen for sine 5 år gamle
minner.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
script is running under upstart, and when it is not.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
COLUMNS):&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
previous=N
PREVLEVEL=
RUNLEVEL=
runlevel=S
UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
UPSTART_INSTANCE=
UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
script.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
previous=N
PREVLEVEL=N
RUNLEVEL=S
runlevel=S
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
choice.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>A manual for standards wars...</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 14:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;Via the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html&quot;&gt;blog
of Rob Weir&lt;/a&gt; I came across the very interesting essay named
&lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf&quot;&gt;The Art of
Standards Wars&lt;/a&gt; (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
following the standards wars of today.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 3 Jun 2010 12:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
the Skolelinux build servers:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
  vendor                    count
  Dell Computer Corporation     1
    PowerEdge 1750              1
  IBM                           1
    eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
  Intel                         2
  [no-dmi-info]                 3
maintainer:~#
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
information listed with Intel as vendor and mo model, and virtual Xen
machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
option to list the individual machines.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A larger list is
&lt;a href=&quot;http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/&quot;&gt;available from the the
city of Narvik&lt;/a&gt;, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
collector.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        </channel>
</rss>