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14 <a href=
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</a>
21 <h3>Entries tagged "debian edu".
</h3>
25 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License__is_not_magic_pixie_dust_.html">The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust"
</a>
31 <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
32 "
<a href=
"http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
33 GPL is not magic pixie dust
</a>" explain the importance of making sure
34 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
>GPL
</a> is enforced.
35 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:
<p>
39 <p><a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/"><img src=
"https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png" width=
"194" height=
"90" alt=
"Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!" align=
"right" border=
"0" /></a></p>
42 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.
<br/>
44 The first step is to choose a
45 <a href=
"https://copyleft.org/">copyleft
</a> license for your
48 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
49 <b>it must be enforced
</b><br/>
51 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
54 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
57 <p><small>--
<a href=
"http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn
</a>, in
58 <a href=
"http://faif.us/" title=
"Free as in Freedom">FaiF
</a>
59 <a href=
"http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
62 <p>As the Debian Website
63 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used
</a>
64 <a href=
"https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&r2=1.25">to
</a>
65 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
66 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
67 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
68 software products. Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
69 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
70 such licenses are not enough. With the ongoing adoption of Free
71 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
72 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
73 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always. As Karen
74 and Bradley explained in
<a href=
"http://faif.us/" title=
"Free as in
76 <a href=
"http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
0x57</a>,
77 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
78 to protect it. The reality of today's world is that legal
79 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming. With
80 <a href=
"http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org
</a> in hiatus
81 <a href=
"http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until
</a>
82 some time in
2016, the
<a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
83 Freedom Conservancy
</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
84 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
85 In March the SFC supported a
86 <a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
87 by Christoph Hellwig
</a> against VMware for refusing to
88 <a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
89 with the GPL
</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
90 kernel. Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
92 <a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
93 or cancelled their talks
</a>. As a result they have decided to rely
94 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
95 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft. So the SFC has
96 <a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched
</a>
97 a
<a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign
</a> to create
98 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
99 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
102 <p>If you support Free Software,
103 <a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like
</a>
104 what the SFC do, agree with their
105 <a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
106 principles
</a>, are happy about their
107 <a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes
</a> in
2015,
108 work on a project that is an SFC
109 <a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member
</a> and or
110 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
111 <a href=
"https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
113 <a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
115 <a href=
"http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
116 Bacon
</a>, myself and
117 <a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others
</a> in
119 <a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter
</a>. For the
120 next week your donation will be
121 <a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched
</a>
122 by an anonymous donor. Please also consider asking your employer to
123 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC. Don't forget to
124 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
125 social media accounts.
</p>
129 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
130 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself. Perhaps you should be a
137 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/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>.
142 <div class=
"padding"></div>
146 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_beta_release.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu beta release
</a>
152 <p>I am happy to report that the Debian Edu team sent out
153 <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2015/04/msg00000.html">this
154 announcement today
</a>:
</p>
157 the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is pleased to announce the first
158 *beta* release of Debian Edu "Jessie"
8.0+edu0~b1, which for the first
159 time is composed entirely of packages from the current Debian stable
160 release, Debian
8 "Jessie".
162 (As most reading this will know, Debian "Jessie" hasn't actually been
163 released by now. The release is still in progress but should finish
166 We expect to make a final release of Debian Edu "Jessie" in the coming
167 weeks, timed with the first point release of Debian Jessie. Upgrades
168 from this beta release of Debian Edu Jessie to the final release will
169 be possible and encouraged!
171 Please report feedback to debian-edu@lists.debian.org and/or submit
172 bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
174 Debian Edu - sometimes also known as "Skolelinux" - is a complete
175 operating system for schools, universities and other
176 organisations. Through its pre- prepared installation profiles
177 administrators can install servers, workstations and laptops which
178 will work in harmony on the school network. With Debian Edu, the
179 teachers themselves or their technical support staff can roll out a
180 complete multi-user, multi-machine study environment within hours or
183 Debian Edu is already in use at several hundred schools all over the
184 world, particularly in Germany, Spain and Norway. Installations come
185 with hundreds of applications pre-installed, plus the whole Debian
186 archive of thousands of compatible packages within easy reach.
188 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
189 installation instructions are available, including detailed
190 instructions in the manual explaining the first steps, such as setting
191 up a network or adding users. Please note that the password for the
192 user your prompted for during installation must have a length of at
195 == Where to download ==
197 A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (
649 MiB) for network booting
198 can be downloaded at the following locations:
200 http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-
8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso
201 rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-
8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
203 The SHA1SUM of this image is:
54a524d16246cddd8d2cfd6ea52f2dd78c47ee0a
205 Alternatively an extended DVD / usbstick image (
4.9 GiB) is also
206 available, with more software included (saving additional download
209 http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-
8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
210 rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-
8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
212 The SHA1SUM of this image is: fb1f1504a490c077a48653898f9d6a461cb3c636
214 Sources are available from the Debian archive, see
215 http://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/
8.0.0/source/ for some download
218 == Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages ==
220 Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for
221 the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
223 This manual has been fully translated to German, French, Italian,
224 Danish, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. A partly translated version exists
225 for Spanish. See http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/ for
226 online version of the translated manual.
228 More information about Debian
8 "Jessie" itself is provided in the
229 release notes and the installation manual:
230 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
231 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
234 == Errata / known problems ==
236 It takes up to
15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via
239 The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (#
783087).
241 Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the client to update the
242 hostname immediately.
244 Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly
245 more current and complete list.
247 == Some more details about Debian Edu
8.0+edu0~b1 Codename Jessie released
2015-
04-
25 ==
249 === Software updates ===
251 Everything which is new in Debian
8 Jessie, e.g.:
253 * Linux kernel
3.16.7-ctk9; for the i386 architecture, support for
254 i486 processors has been dropped; oldest supported ones: i586 (like
255 Intel Pentium and AMD K5).
257 * Desktop environments KDE Plasma Workspaces
4.11.13, GNOME
3.14,
258 Xfce
4.12, LXDE
0.5.6
259 * new optional desktop environment: MATE
1.8
260 * KDE Plasma Workspaces is installed by default; to choose one of
261 the others see the manual.
262 * the browsers Iceweasel
31 ESR and Chromium
41
266 * CUPS print system
1.7.5
267 * new boot framework: systemd
268 * Educational toolbox GCompris
14.12
269 * Music creator Rosegarden
14.02
270 * Image editor Gimp
2.8.14
271 * Virtual stargazer Stellarium
0.13.1
274 * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
275 * Debian Jessie includes about
43000 packages available for installation.
276 * More information about Debian
8 Jessie is provided in its release
277 notes and the installation manual, see the link above.
279 === Installation changes ===
281 Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically
282 for the hardware present.
286 A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable
287 from a user perspective:
289 * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
290 DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
291 information is corrected (
710362)
293 * shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (
775608).
295 === Sugar desktop removed ===
297 As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not
298 available in Debian Edu jessie.
301 == About Debian Edu / Skolelinux ==
303 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on
304 Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
305 configured school network. Directly after installation a school server
306 running all services needed for a school network is set up just
307 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
308 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
309 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
310 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
311 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
312 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
313 services. The desktop contains more than
60 educational software
314 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
315 can choose between KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
320 The Debian Project was founded in
1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
321 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
322 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
323 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
324 maintain Debian software. Available in
70 languages, and supporting a
325 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
330 Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen!
338 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
343 <div class=
"padding"></div>
347 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Shirish_Agarwal.html">Debian Edu interview: Shirish Agarwal
</a>
353 <p>It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
354 computer system for schools I've involved in,
355 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>, was
356 being used in India. But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
357 interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
360 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
362 <p>My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
363 historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
364 My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
365 installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
366 fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
367 few software start-ups as well.
</p>
369 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
370 project?
</strong></p>
372 <p>It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
373 years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
374 anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
375 educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
376 nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
377 it was known then. Since then I have started using the various
378 education meta-packages provided by the project.
</p>
380 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
383 <p>It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
384 software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
385 figuratively). Even if I take the simplest software which is
386 gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
387 the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
388 pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
389 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/781841">#
781841</a> and
390 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/781842">#
781842</a>.
</p>
392 <p>I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
393 as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
394 possibility of a larger life span. Of course with both it's more a
395 question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
396 for the developer per-se.
</p>
398 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
401 <p>I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
402 think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
403 help from people and the larger community wherever possible.
</p>
405 <p>I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
406 that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
407 However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
408 pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
409 but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
410 Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
411 still) I have had for a long time :
</p>
413 <p>1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
414 each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
415 far would each travel and similar questions like these.
417 <p>The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
418 be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
419 interactive manner. While sites such as the
420 <a href=
"http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.two.trains.html">Ask
421 Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem
</a> (as an example or point of
422 inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done. I dunno
423 if there is a free software which does something like this. The idea
424 being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
425 this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
426 colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
427 or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
428 This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
429 the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
430 psychics and everything in-between.
</p>
432 <p>One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
433 one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
434 meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
437 <p>2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
438 enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary. I don't think it
439 should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
440 sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
441 from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
442 the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
443 the user's input.
</p>
445 <p>3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
446 palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
447 needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
448 copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
449 nature, history etc. and let it loose. This could turn to be really
450 huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
451 commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
452 stock photos. Potential is immense.
</p>
454 <p>Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
455 both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
456 lot. This is more so in educational software as these applications
457 need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
458 immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
459 maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
460 of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
461 maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.
</p>
463 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
465 <p>That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
466 aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
467 quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
468 between kpat and Aiselriot. In desktops it's a tie between
469 gnome-flashback and mate.
</p>
471 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
472 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
474 <p>I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
475 whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
476 Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
477 school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
478 people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
479 various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.
</p>
481 <p>What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
482 passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
483 then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
486 <p>I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
487 instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
488 there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
489 Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.
</p>
491 <p>One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
492 and upgrades. People have this myth that each update and upgrade
493 means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
494 innumerable times. That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
495 like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
496 it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
497 changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
498 the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
501 <p>The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
502 is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
505 <p>Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
507 <a href=
"https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/sharings/">gathered
508 some experience
</a> there. Some of the things we learnt/discovered
513 <li>Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects
514 and they do not want you to teach anything out of the
515 portion/syllabus given.
</li>
517 <li>They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever
518 is in the syllabus.
</li>
520 <li>There are huge barriers both with the English language and at
521 times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris
522 you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's
523 say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be
524 as recognizable as say a
525 <a href=
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puneri_Pagadi">Puneri
526 Pagdi
</a> so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever
527 possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words
528 which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in
529 parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or
530 something but that is something for upstream to do.
</li>
538 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
543 <div class=
"padding"></div>
547 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)
</a>
553 <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
555 <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
556 announcement
</a>:
</p>
559 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
560 Jessie
8.0+edu0~alpha0
562 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
563 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
564 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
565 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
566 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
567 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
568 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
570 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
571 installation instructions are available, including detailed
572 instructions in the manual[
1] explaining the first steps, such as
573 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
574 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
575 of at least
5 characters!
577 [
1]
<URL:
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie
</a> >
579 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
580 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
581 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
582 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
583 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
585 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
586 mostly in Germany and Norway.
588 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
589 ===============================
591 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[
2], is a Linux distribution based
592 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
593 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
594 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
595 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
596 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
597 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
598 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
599 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
600 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
601 services. The desktop contains more than
60 educational software
602 packages[
3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
603 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
606 [
2]
<URL:
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/
</a> >
607 [
3]
<URL:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html
</a> >
609 Full release notes and manual
610 =============================
612 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
613 and bugfixes of Debian Edu
8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
614 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[
4] for
615 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
616 available, see the manual translation overview[
5].
618 [
4]
<URL:
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features
</a> >
619 [
5]
<URL:
<a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/
</a> >
624 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (
624 MiB) you can use
626 *
<a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-
8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso
</a>
627 *
<a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-
8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso
</a>
628 * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-
8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
630 The SHA1SUM of this image is:
361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
632 New features for Debian Edu
8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released
2014-
10-
27
633 ===============================================================================
639 * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
644 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie
8.0, eg:
646 * Linux kernel
3.16.x
647 * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma"
4.11.12, GNOME
3.14, Xfce
4.10,
648 LXDE
0.5.6 and MATE
1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
649 choose one of the others see manual.)
650 * the browsers Iceweasel
31 ESR and Chromium
38
654 * CUPS print system
1.7.5
655 * new boot framework: systemd
656 * Educational toolbox GCompris
14.07
657 * Music creator Rosegarden
14.02
658 * Image editor Gimp
2.8.14
659 * Virtual stargazer Stellarium
0.13.0
662 * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
663 * Debian Jessie includes about
42000 packages available for
665 * More information about Debian Jessie
8.0 is provided in the release
666 notes[
6] and the installation manual[
7].
668 [
6]
<URL:
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
</a> >
669 [
7]
<URL:
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
</a> >
674 * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
675 DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
676 information is corrected (Debian bug #
710362)
679 Documentation and translation updates
680 -------------------------------------
682 * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
683 Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
684 Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
689 * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
690 server takes more time.
691 * To manage printers localhost:
631 has to be used, currently www:
631
694 Regressions / known problems
695 ----------------------------
697 * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
698 exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #
765694
699 and Debian bug #
762103).
700 * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
701 #
764594). The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
702 * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
703 work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
704 Will be fixed when Debian bug #
766960 is fixed in Jessie.
706 See the status page[
8] for the complete list.
708 [
8]
<URL:
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie
</a> >
713 <URL:
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a> >
718 The Debian Project was founded in
1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
719 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
720 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
721 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
722 maintain Debian software. Available in
70 languages, and supporting a
723 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
727 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[
9] or send
728 mail to press@debian.org.
730 [
9]
<URL:
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/
</a> >
737 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
742 <div class=
"padding"></div>
746 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer
</a>
752 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
753 project
</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
754 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
755 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
756 boot of both clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
757 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
758 to mention here). We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
759 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
760 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
762 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
763 status
</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
764 work left. Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
765 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway. Here is a
766 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.
</p>
768 <p>First, download the test ISO via
769 <a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp
</a>,
770 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http
</a>
772 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-
1.iso).
773 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
774 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
775 install with some tweaking.
</p>
777 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
778 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run
</p>
781 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
782 </pre></blockquote></p>
784 <p>and add 'exit
0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
785 optimization. Return to the installation, select the profile you want
786 and continue. Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
787 due to a known bug in eatmydata.
</p>
789 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
790 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be. All my
791 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
794 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
795 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
796 education-desktop-XXX metapackage. XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
797 or mate. If you want several desktop options, install more than one
798 metapackage. Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
799 graphical login screen. This workaround should no longer be needed
800 once the education-tasks package version
1.801 enter testing in two
803 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
804 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
805 update the debian-cd git repository. The eatmydata, grub and desktop
806 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
807 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again. Well the
808 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled. The proper fix
809 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
810 provided in bug
<a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#
702711</a>.
811 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.
</p>
813 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
814 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
815 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.
</p>
821 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>.
826 <div class=
"padding"></div>
830 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert
</a>
836 <p>The
<a href=
"https://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a> installer could be
837 a lot quicker. When we install more than
2000 packages in
838 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a> using
839 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
840 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
841 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #
613428</a> about too
842 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
843 responsible for unpacking the binary packages. Other parts (like code
844 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
845 installation. All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
846 me. If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
847 to salvage the half installed system. So the failure sync-ing is
848 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
849 relevant while the installer is running.
</p>
851 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
852 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
853 change the code in several packages. The idea is not new, but I have
854 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before. It
855 depend on the small and clever package
856 <a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata
</a>, which
857 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
858 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
859 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly. Instead of
860 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
861 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
862 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
863 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
864 "eatmydata
$program
$@", to get the same effect.
865 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
866 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.
</p>
868 <p>The effect was stunning. In my first test it reduced the running
869 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from
64 to less than
44
870 minutes (
20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
871 Latitude D505 machine. I am not quite sure what the optimised time
872 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
873 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
874 installation. As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
875 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
876 installation. I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
877 and got these results. The time measured is the time stamp in
878 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
879 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
880 yourself. In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
881 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
887 <th>Machine/setup
</th>
888 <th>Original tasksel
</th>
889 <th>Optimised tasksel
</th>
894 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE
</td>
895 <td>64 min (
07:
46-
08:
50)
</td>
896 <td><44 min (
11:
27-
12:
11)
</td>
901 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE
</td>
902 <td>57 min (
08:
48-
09:
45)
</td>
903 <td>34 min (
07:
43-
08:
17)
</td>
908 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal
</td>
909 <td>22 min (
10:
37-
10:
59)
</td>
910 <td>11 min (
11:
16-
11:
27)
</td>
915 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal
</td>
916 <td>6 min (
08:
19-
08:
25)
</td>
917 <td>4 min (
08:
04-
08:
08)
</td>
922 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE
</td>
923 <td>19 min (
09:
21-
09:
40)
</td>
924 <td>15 min (
10:
25-
10:
40)
</td>
930 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
931 time is spent downloading packages. The connection to the Internet
932 was
100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
933 significant factor in the measurement. Download typically took a few
934 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
937 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
938 <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
939 Installer
</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
940 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
941 installation. I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
942 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
943 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
944 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO. The
945 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
946 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i. If the code is
947 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
948 for the entire installation.
</p>
950 <p>I've implemented this in the
951 <a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install
</a>
952 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
953 Debian Edu installation. If you want to test this yourself, you can
954 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb). One shell script
955 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:
</p>
960 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
962 logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
965 logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
968 apt-install eatmydata || true
969 if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
970 for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
972 # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
973 if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
974 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
975 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
977 chmod
755 /target$file.edu
978 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
979 --rename --quiet --add $file
980 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
982 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
986 error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
991 </pre></blockquote></p>
993 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
994 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
998 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1000 logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
1002 remove_install_override() {
1003 for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1005 if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
1007 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1008 --rename --quiet --remove $file
1011 error "Missing divert for $file."
1014 sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
1017 remove_install_override
1018 </pre></blockquote></p>
1020 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
1021 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
1022 finish-install.d scripts.
</p>
1024 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
1025 Debian installer too? I suspect it should, but am not sure the
1026 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough. It also
1027 depend on the side effects of the change. I'm not aware of any, but I
1028 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
1029 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
1030 fsync() having effect? Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
1031 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
1034 <p>Update
2014-
09-
24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
1035 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
1036 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #
702711</a>. An updated
1037 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.
</p>
1039 <p>Update
2014-
10-
17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
1040 the optimization work again. And I have discovered that the
1041 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
1042 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package. See
1043 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.
</p>
1045 <p>Update
2014-
11-
11: Unfortunately, a new
1046 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #
765738</a> in eatmydata only
1047 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
1048 optimization again. If
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
1049 request
768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.
</p>
1055 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>.
1060 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1064 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen
</a>
1070 <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
1071 schools,
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1072 Skolelinux
</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
1073 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
1074 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
1075 the setup. I managed to interview him this summer.
</p>
1077 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
1079 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
1080 employed physiotherapist. My former profession is tool maker, but I
1081 haven't worked for
30 years in this job.
30 years ago I started to
1082 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
1083 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
1084 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
1085 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
1086 works with Windows . :-(
</p>
1088 <p>In
1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
1089 Windows
98,
2000, XP, …,
8, Ubuntu, MacOSX. Today we are running a
1090 Linux server with
6 Windows clients and
10 persons (teacher of
1091 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
1092 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
1093 work with the documentations of our patients.
</p>
1095 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1096 project?
</strong></p>
1098 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
1099 his school (
<a href=
"http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
1100 Harsewinkel
</a>). They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
1101 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
1102 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
1103 computer skills in optional lessons. I'm spending
4-
6 hours a week
1106 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1109 <p>The independence.
</p>
1111 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
1112 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
1113 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.
</p>
1115 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
1116 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices. The
1117 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
1118 working reliable.
</p>
1120 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server),
45
1121 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
1122 solution for all classrooms. These machines are all booting from the
1123 terminal server. In the moment we are installing
30 laptops as mobile
1124 workstations. Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
1125 machines in their classrooms. Internet access is realized by a WLAN
1126 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
1127 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.
</p>
1129 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1132 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.
<Irony on
> And Linux
1133 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line.
<Irony
1134 off
> They don't realize the stability of the system.
</p>
1136 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
1138 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server
12.04 (Samba,
1139 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)
</p>
1141 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1142 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
1144 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
1145 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
1146 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
1147 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
1148 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
1149 instead. Another problem are the publisher of school books. They
1150 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.
</p>
1156 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
1161 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1165 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook
</a>
1171 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1172 project
</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
1173 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
1174 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation. This text is about how the
1175 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.
</p>
1177 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
1178 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
1179 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
1180 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
1181 in sync. And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
1182 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
1183 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
1184 edit the documentation using a web browser. We also want it to be
1185 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
1186 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
1187 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
1190 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
1191 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
1192 wiki
</a>, as several wiki pages written in English. It consist of one
1193 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
1194 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
1195 chapters together into one large web page (aka
1196 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
1197 AllInOne page
</a>). The AllInOne page is the one used for further
1198 processing and translations. Thanks to the fact that the
1199 <a href=
"http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin
</a> installation on
1200 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
1201 <a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format
</a>, we can fetch
1202 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
1203 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
1204 manual. This process also download images and transform image
1205 references to use the locally downloaded images. The generated
1206 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
1207 using the
<tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual
</tt> program, and the
1208 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
1209 a handfull of images. The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
1210 and epub versions of the English manual. This is the basic step of
1211 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
1212 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
1213 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.
</p>
1215 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us. We want translated
1216 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
1217 track the English original. For this we use the
1218 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml
</a> package,
1219 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
1220 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
1221 translation tools used by those translating free software. The pot
1222 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
1223 files), which the translations update with the native language
1224 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
1225 original. The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
1226 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
1227 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
1228 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml). This translated (or partly
1229 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
1230 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
1231 of the documentation.
</p>
1233 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files. We
1235 <a href=
"http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize
</a>,
1236 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
1237 <a href=
"http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle
</a> or
1238 <a href=
"https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex
</a>. All we care about
1239 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository. Updated
1240 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
1241 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
1242 against the debian-edu-doc package
</a>.
</p>
1244 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
1245 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
1246 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
1247 this regard). For this we transform the original PNG images to the
1248 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
1249 translated images by storing translated versions in
1250 images/$LANGUAGECODE/. I am a bit unsure about the details here. The
1251 package maintainers know more.
</p>
1253 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
1254 <a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
1255 of the documentation packages on the web
</a>. See for example the
1256 <a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
1257 PDF version
</a> or the
1258 <a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
1259 HTML version
</a>. We do not yet build the epub version by default,
1260 but perhaps it will be done in the future.
</p>
1262 <p>To learn more, check out
1263 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
1264 debian-edu-doc package
</a>,
1265 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
1266 manual on the wiki
</a> and
1267 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
1268 translation instructions
</a> in the manual.
</p>
1274 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/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
1279 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1283 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal
</a>
1289 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>
1290 keep gaining new users. Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
1291 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu
</a>, with a
1292 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
1293 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.
</p>
1295 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
1297 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm
27 years old (
1986 generation) and I
1298 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
1299 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent. Additionally,
1300 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
1301 last development phase of a new social networking concept.
</p>
1303 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
1304 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
1305 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.
</p>
1307 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
1308 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
1311 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1312 project?
</strong></p>
1314 <p>I discovered the
<a href=
"http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP
</a> advantages
1315 with "Ubuntu
12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
1316 started looking for an alternative. Even though I highly value and
1317 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
1318 change to a more robust and stable alternative. As far as I was using
1319 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
1320 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself. Surprised, I discovered
1321 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
1322 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
1323 running. I just loved it.
</p>
1325 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1328 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
1329 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
1330 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
1331 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
1332 be made of steel.
</p>
1334 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1337 <p>I found two main disadvantages.
</p>
1339 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
1340 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
1341 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
1342 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
1345 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
1346 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
1347 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
1348 discourage many people too.
</p>
1350 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
1352 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
1356 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1357 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
1359 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
1360 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
1361 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
1362 the
<a href=
"http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language
</a>; a
1363 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
1364 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
1365 different level of studies. I believe free and open software will
1366 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
1367 first scenarios where this will happen.
</p>
1373 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
1378 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1382 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>
1388 <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
1389 storing user home directories and data. The design for handling this
1390 in
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>, is
1391 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
1392 the clients take care of the rest. I was reminded about the need to
1393 document this better when one of the customers of
1394 <a href=
"http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS
</a>, where I am
1395 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this. The steps to
1396 get this working are the following:
</p>
1400 <li>Add new storage server in DNS. I use nas-server.intern as the
1401 example host here.
</li>
1403 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
1404 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.
</li>
1406 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
1407 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.
</li>
1411 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here. Follow the
1412 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
1413 in the manual
</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
1416 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
1417 relevant subnets or machines:
</p>
1419 <p><blockquote><pre>
1420 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
1421 Export list for nas-server:
1424 </pre></blockquote></p>
1426 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
1427 /storage export. With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
1428 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
1431 <p>The next step is to update LDAP. This can not be done using GOsa²,
1432 because it lack a module for automount. Instead, use ldapvi and add
1433 the required LDAP objects using an editor.
</p>
1435 <p><blockquote><pre>
1436 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1437 </pre></blockquote></p>
1439 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
1440 bottom of the document. The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
1441 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
1442 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.
</p>
1444 <p><blockquote><pre>
1445 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1446 objectClass: automount
1448 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=
60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1450 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1452 objectClass: automountMap
1455 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1456 objectClass: automount
1458 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=
32768,wsize=
32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
1459 </pre></blockquote></p>
1461 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
1462 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
1463 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.
</p>
1465 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
1466 the storage server directly by just visiting the
1467 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
1468 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.
</p>
1474 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap
</a>.
1479 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1483 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George
</a>
1489 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1490 project
</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
1491 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
1492 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
1493 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School. Say hello
1494 to
<a href=
"https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
1497 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
1499 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
1501 <p>I am a
23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
1502 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
1503 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
1504 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
1505 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
1506 a bit vacant right now however.
</p>
1508 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
1509 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
1510 around
2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
1511 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
1512 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
1513 talented students in the age of
11 to
15 years, who took the chance to
1514 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
1515 to help building another school's informational education concept from
1518 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
1519 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
1520 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.
</p>
1522 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
1525 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1526 project?
</strong></p>
1528 <p>I think that happened some time around
2009 when I first attended
1529 <a href=
"http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon
</a> and visited the project
1530 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
1531 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
1532 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
1533 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).
</p>
1535 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
1536 <a href=
"http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr
</a> 2011 when the
1537 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
1538 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
1539 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
1540 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
1541 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
1542 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
1543 seemed rather uninterested.
</p>
1545 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
1546 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
1547 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
1548 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!
</p>
1550 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1553 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
1554 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
1555 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
1556 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
1557 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
1558 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
1559 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
1560 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
1561 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
1562 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
1563 it. I could use
8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
1564 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
1567 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
1568 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
1569 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
1570 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
1571 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
1572 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
1573 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).
</p>
1575 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1578 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
1579 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
1580 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
1581 can list a few points about that:
</p>
1585 <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
1586 <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
1587 <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
1591 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!
</p>
1593 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
1595 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
1596 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
1599 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
1600 run text tools. I use
1601 <a href=
"https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh
</a> as shell,
1602 <a href=
"https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp
</a> as very advanced
1603 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
1604 based full-featured student management software with the two),
1605 <a href=
"http://mcabber.com/">mcabber
</a> for XMPP and
1606 <a href=
"http://www.irssi.org/">irssi
</a> for IRC. For that overly
1607 coloured world called the WWW, I use
1608 <a href=
"https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
1609 (Firefox)
</a>. Oh, and
<a href=
"http://www.mutt.org/">mutt
</a> for
1612 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
1613 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
1614 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
1615 kids. One of these things is
<a href=
"http://jappix.org/">Jappix
</a>,
1616 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
1617 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
1618 Facebook now ;).
</p>
1620 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1621 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
1623 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
1624 side is what I have experienced.
</p>
1626 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
1627 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
1628 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
1629 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
1630 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
1631 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
1632 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
1633 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
1634 that makes the council of our city spend around
600000 € to buy
1635 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
1636 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
1637 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
1638 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
1639 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
1640 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
1643 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
1644 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
1645 founded an association named
1646 <a href=
"https://www.teckids.org">Teckids
</a> here in Germany that does
1647 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
1648 area of free and open source software, for example the
1649 <a href=
"http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs
</a>, which share staff with
1650 Teckids and are the youth programme of
1651 <a href=
"http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
1652 Conference (FrOSCon)
</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
1653 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
1654 aged
10 to
16. It was a huge success, with approx.
30 kids taking part
1655 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
1656 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.
</p>
1658 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
1659 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
1660 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
1661 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
1662 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
1663 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
1664 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
1665 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
1666 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
1667 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
1668 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
1669 Skolelinux in the future ;)!
</p>
1671 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
1672 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
1673 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
1674 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.
</p>
1678 > * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
1680 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
1681 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
1683 <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
1684 free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
1685 of the decision makers above;
1686 <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
1687 knowledge about free software
1689 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
1697 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
1702 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1706 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper
</a>
1712 <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
1713 but the
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1714 Skolelinux
</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
1715 had a new school administrator show up on
1716 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu
</a> to share
1717 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school. This
1718 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
1719 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
1720 Germany a few years ago.
</p>
1722 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
1724 <p>I am Klaus Knopper. I have a master degree in electrical
1725 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
1726 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
1727 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.
</p>
1729 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
1730 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
1731 projects like the
<a href=
"http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
1732 system
</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
1733 <a href=
"http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE
</a>
1734 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
1735 <a href=
"http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO
</a>
1736 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
1737 system supporting various operating systems).
</p>
1739 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1740 project?
</strong></p>
1742 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
1743 coordinator for Skolelinux. We were looking for an all-in-one open
1744 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
1745 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.
</p>
1747 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1751 <li>Quick installation,
</li>
1752 <li>works (almost) out of the box,
</li>
1753 <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,
</li>
1754 <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
1755 single company,
</li>
1756 <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
1757 experience and problem solutions.
</li>
1760 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1764 <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
1765 the next version. Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
1766 a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
1767 working again reliably.
1769 <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
1770 little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
1771 similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
1774 <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
1775 configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
1776 not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
1777 configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
1778 and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
1779 network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
1781 <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
1782 contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
1783 distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
1784 Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
1785 future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
1788 <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
1789 compared to Debian.
</li>
1793 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
1794 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
1795 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
1796 upgradeable without reinstallation.
</p>
1798 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
1800 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
1801 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
1802 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
1803 programming languages for teaching.
</p>
1805 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1806 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
1808 <p>Strong arguments are
</p>
1812 <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
1813 teaching and learning.
</li>
1815 <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
1816 home, and at their working place without running into license or
1817 conversion problems.
</li>
1819 <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
1820 than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
1821 customers to certain products. But teachers need to teach
1822 science, not products.
</li>
1824 <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
1825 would you need proprietary software for?
</li>
1833 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
1838 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1842 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador
</a>
1848 <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
1849 Salvador had published a
1850 <a href=
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
1851 Youtube
</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
1852 Skolelinux profile. This is the profile intended for use at home or
1853 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
1854 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
1855 in other word a single user machine). The result is
11 minutes long,
1856 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
1857 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
1858 showing the
<a href=
"http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body
3D model
1859 of the human body
</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
1860 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
1861 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
1862 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
1863 computers without hard drives by installing one central
1864 <a href=
"http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server
</a>.
</p>
1866 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:
</p>
1868 <iframe width=
"420" height=
"315" src=
"http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder=
"0" allowfullscreen
></iframe>
1870 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux? Please let
1877 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
1882 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1886 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!
</a>
1892 <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
1893 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team. The
1894 complete announcement text can be found at
1895 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
1896 section
</a>, translated to several languages. Please check it out.
</p>
1898 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon. One
1899 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
1900 partition is too small. A workaround is to extend the partition (use
1901 lvresize + resize2fs in tty
2 while installing).
</p>
1907 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
1912 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1916 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy
</a>
1922 <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
1923 today. This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:
</p>
1928 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta
2 for
1929 short) of
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1930 Skolelinux
</a> based on Debian Wheezy!
</p>
1932 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
1933 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
1934 weekend. We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
1935 if you find something, please notify us immediately!
</p>
1937 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
1938 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)
</p>
1940 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu
7.1+edu0~b2
1941 compared to beta1:
</p>
1945 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
1946 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.
</li>
1947 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
1948 understand ical/dav sources.
</li>
1949 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
1951 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.
</li>
1952 <li>Updates for chromium (
29.0.1547.57-
1~deb7u1), imagemagick
1953 (
6.7.7.10-
5+deb7u2), php5 (
5.4.4-
14+deb7u4), libmodplug
1954 (
0.8.8.4-
3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (
4.0.2-
6+deb7u2), linux-image
1955 (
3.2.0-
4-
486_3.2
.46-
1+deb7u1).
</li>
1959 <p>Where to get it:
</p>
1961 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
</p>
1964 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso
</a></li>
1965 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso
</a></li>
1966 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .
</li>
1969 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f
</p>
1971 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
1973 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso
</a></li>
1974 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso
</a></li>
1975 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .
</li>
1978 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e
</p>
1980 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
1981 debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
1982 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
1983 as the other isos.
</p>
1985 <p>How to report bugs
</p>
1987 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
1988 <br><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a></p>
1991 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</p>
1993 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
1994 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
1995 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
1996 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
1997 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
1998 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
1999 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
2000 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
2001 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
2002 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
2003 services. The desktop contains more than
60 educational software
2004 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
2005 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.
</p>
2007 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2008 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2009 Squeeze release.
</p>
2011 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases
</p>
2013 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
2014 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
2015 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
2016 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (
1) Keep
2017 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (
2)
2018 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
2019 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
2020 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
2021 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
2033 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
2038 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2042 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta
1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy
</a>
2048 <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2049 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
2050 integration fixes . This is the release announcement:
</p>
2052 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu
7.1+edu0~b1 released
2013-
08-
22</strong></p>
2054 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2055 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".
</p>
2057 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</strong></p>
2059 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2060 Skolelinux
</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2061 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2062 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2063 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2064 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2065 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2066 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
2067 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2068 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2069 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2071 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2072 than
60 educational software packages
</a> and more are available from
2073 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2074 and Xfce desktop environment.
</p>
2076 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
2077 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
2080 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
2081 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
2082 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
2083 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (
1) Keep
2084 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
2085 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
2086 the mailing list
</a>. (
2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
2087 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
2088 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
2089 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
2090 CIFS access to their home directory.
</p>
2092 <p><strong>Software updates
</strong></p>
2096 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
2097 work also without a attached tty.
</li>
2098 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
2099 make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
2100 tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
2101 has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
2106 <p><strong>Other changes
</strong></p>
2110 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
2111 needed for desktop=xfce installations.
</li>
2112 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
2113 stick ISO image.
</li>
2114 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).
</li>
2115 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.
</li>
2116 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
2117 during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
2118 cope with this.
</li>
2119 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².
</li>
2120 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
2121 empty password hashes.
</li>
2122 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
2123 smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
2124 from joining the Samba domain.
</li>
2128 <p><strong>Known issues
</strong></p>
2132 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
2133 not use the http proxy as it should.
</li>
2134 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
2135 (using the KDE configuration).
</li>
2139 <p><strong>Where to get it
</strong></p>
2141 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
</p>
2145 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso
</a></li>
2147 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso
</a></li>
2149 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
</li>
2153 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
2154 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2
</p>
2156 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
</p>
2160 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso
</a></li>
2161 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso
</a></li>
2162 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .
</li>
2166 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
2167 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119
</p>
2170 <p><strong>How to report bugs
</strong></p>
2172 <p><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a>
2178 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
2183 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2187 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy
</a>
2193 <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2194 today. This is the release announcement:
</p>
2196 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu
7.1+edu0~b0 released
2197 2013-
07-
27</strong></p>
2199 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2200 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".
</p>
2202 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</strong></p>
2204 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2205 Skolelinux
</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2206 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2207 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2208 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2209 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2210 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2211 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
2212 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2213 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2214 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2216 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2217 than
60 educational software packages
</a> and more are available from
2218 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2219 and Xfce desktop environment.
</p>
2221 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2222 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2223 Squeeze release.
</p>
2225 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
2226 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
2229 <p><strong>Software updates
</strong></p>
2233 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
2234 for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.
</li>
2235 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
2236 packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
2237 by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
2238 installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
2239 and libpam-mklocaluser.
</li>
2240 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).
</li>
2241 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).
</li>
2242 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
2247 <p><strong>Other changes
</strong></p>
2251 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
2252 desktop=gnome installations.
</li>
2253 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
2255 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
2256 setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.
</li>
2257 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
2258 install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
2259 with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.
</li>
2260 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
2261 exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
2262 name setting at run time to work again.
</li>
2263 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
2264 fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
2265 updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.
</li>
2266 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
2267 (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.
</li>
2268 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.
</li>
2272 <p><strong>Known issues
</strong></p>
2276 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.
</li>
2277 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
2278 not use the http proxy as it should.
</li>
2279 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.
</li>
2283 <p><strong>Where to get it
</strong></p>
2285 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
</p>
2289 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso
</a></li>
2291 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso
</a></li>
2293 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .
</li>
2297 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
2298 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f
</p>
2300 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
</p>
2304 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso
</a></li>
2305 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso
</a></li>
2306 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .
</li>
2310 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
2311 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733
</p>
2314 <p><strong>How to report bugs
</strong></p>
2316 <p><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a>
2322 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
2327 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2331 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July
13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo
</a>
2337 <p>The upcoming Saturday,
2013-
07-
13, we are organising a combined
2338 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
2339 party in Oslo. It is organised by
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">the
2340 member assosiation NUUG
</a> and
2341 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2342 project
</a> together with
<a href=
"http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
2345 <p>It starts
10:
00 and continue until late evening. Everyone is
2346 welcome, and there is no fee to participate. There is on the other
2347 hand limited space, and only room for
30 people. Please put your name
2348 on
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
2349 wiki page
</a> if you plan to join us.
</p>
2355 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>.
2360 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2364 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy
</a>
2370 <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2371 today. This is the release announcement:
</p>
2373 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu
7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
2374 2013-
07-
03</strong></p>
2376 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2377 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".
</p>
2379 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</strong></p>
2381 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2382 Skolelinux
</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2383 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2384 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2385 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2386 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2387 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2388 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
2389 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2390 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2391 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2393 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2394 than
60 educational software packages
</a> and more are available from
2395 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2396 and Xfce desktop environment.
</p>
2398 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2399 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2400 Squeeze release.
</p>
2402 <p><strong>Software updates
</strong></p>
2404 <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.
</li>
2405 <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
2406 submenu. It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
2407 brings KDE in line with the others.
</li>
2408 <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
2409 they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
2410 menu now that menu-xdg was removed.
</li>
2411 <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
2412 multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
2413 X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
2415 <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
2416 are too few to make the package useful.
</li>
2418 <p><strong>Other changes
</strong></p>
2420 <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
2421 <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.
</li>
2422 <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
2423 up for some language options.
</li>
2424 <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.
</li>
2425 <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.
</li>
2426 <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
2427 d-i is doing it.
</li>
2428 <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
2429 debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.
</li>
2430 <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
2431 script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
2432 Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.
</li>
2433 <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
2434 installation, to work properly in Wheezy.
</li>
2435 <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).
</li>
2436 <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
2437 and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.
</li>
2438 <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
2439 work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.
</li>
2441 <p><strong>Known issues
</strong></p>
2443 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
2444 available yet (
698840).
</li>
2445 <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.
</li>
2447 <p><strong>Where to get it
</strong></p>
2449 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
</p>
2451 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso
</a></li>
2452 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso
</a></li>
2453 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .
</li>
2456 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
2457 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8
</p>
2459 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
</p>
2461 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso
</a></li>
2462 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso
</a></li>
2463 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .
</li>
2466 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
2467 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721
</p>
2469 <p><strong>How to report bugs
</strong></p>
2471 <p><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a></p>
2477 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
2482 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2486 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...
</a>
2492 <p>In the
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2493 Skolelinux
</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
2494 which check that services are running, working, and return the
2495 expected results. It runs automatically just after the first boot on
2496 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
2497 installations (using non-test ISOs). It test that the LDAP service is
2498 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
2499 online resizable, etc, etc. And it check that the PXE service is
2500 configured, which is the topic of this post.
</p>
2502 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
2503 Edu Wheezy release. These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
2504 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
2505 happen all the needed packages need to be on them. Thanks to our test
2506 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
2507 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
2508 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
2509 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
2510 working packages to get it working. And the packages changed name
2511 from debian-installer-
6.0-netboot-$arch to
2512 debian-installer-
7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
2513 packages during installation. Without our test suite, I suspect we
2514 would never have discovered this before release. Now it is fixed
2515 right after we got the ISOs operational.
</p>
2517 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
2518 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
2519 test suite using
<tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install
</tt> and see if
2520 any errors are detected. This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
2523 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
2525 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
2526 irc.debian.org
</a> and the
2527 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@
</a> mailing
2534 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
2539 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2543 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu
</a>
2549 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
2550 Skolelinux
</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
2551 globe. And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
2552 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
2553 #debian-edu
</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
2554 worked. We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
2555 help us with translations. And today I managed to get an interview
2556 with him, to learn more about him.
</p>
2558 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
2560 <p>I'm a
25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
2561 which is also my country of origin. Back in
2009, at a New Year's Eve
2562 party, I had a very nice
<strike>beer
</strike> discussion with a
2563 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
2564 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
2565 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
2566 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
2567 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
2570 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
2571 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
2572 activities. For the last
13 months, I have been the Technical Director
2573 of
<a href=
"http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata
</a>, which is a free
2574 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
2575 the only one we have in our country.
</p>
2577 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2578 project?
</strong></p>
2580 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
2581 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
2582 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
2583 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
2584 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
2585 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
2586 ways to contribute.
</p>
2588 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
2589 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
2590 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
2591 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
2592 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
2593 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
2594 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
2595 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
2596 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
2597 have a pretty consistent starting point.
</p>
2599 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2602 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
2603 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
2604 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
2605 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
2606 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
2607 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
2608 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
2609 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.
</p>
2611 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
2612 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
2613 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
2614 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
2615 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
2618 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2621 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
2622 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
2623 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
2624 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story. I'd like to see
2625 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
2626 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
2627 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
2628 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
2629 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!
</p>
2631 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
2632 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
2633 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
2636 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
2638 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
2639 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
2640 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
2641 Enlightenment project a lot!),
2642 <a href=
"http://www.claws-mail.org/">Claws Mail
</a> due to its ease of
2643 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
2644 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift
</a>, which helps me
2645 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
2646 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!
</p>
2648 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2649 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
2651 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
2652 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
2657 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software
</li>
2659 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
2660 experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
2661 of teenagers more?
</li>
2663 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
2664 be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
2665 other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
2668 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
2669 lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
2670 person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)
</li>
2674 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
2675 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
2676 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
2677 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
2678 very hard to convert against their will.
</p>
2684 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
2689 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2693 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter
</a>
2699 <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
2700 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2701 project
</a> and
<a href=
"http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
2702 project
</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
2703 effort between the projects. One person with a foot in both camps is
2704 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.
</p>
2706 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
2708 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
2709 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
2710 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)
</p>
2712 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
2713 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
2716 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2717 project?
</strong></p>
2719 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
2720 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
2721 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in
2005 in
2722 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
2723 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
2724 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
2725 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
2726 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
2727 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
2728 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
2729 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
2730 we'll get there one day.
</p>
2732 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2735 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
2736 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
2737 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
2738 very high quality work.
</p>
2740 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
2741 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
2742 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
2743 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
2744 community members and commercial suppliers to support.
</p>
2746 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2749 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
2750 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
2751 what I originally rambled on about)
</p>
2753 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
2754 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
2755 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
2756 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
2757 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
2758 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
2759 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
2760 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
2761 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
2764 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
2765 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
2766 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
2767 educational institutions spend on
3rd party solutions that they don't
2768 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
2769 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
2772 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
2774 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows
7. I was
2775 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
2776 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
2777 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
2778 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)
</p>
2780 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
2781 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
2782 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
2783 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
2784 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
2785 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
2786 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
2789 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
2790 using Norton Commander in the early
90's and it stuck (I think the
2791 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
2794 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2795 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
2797 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
2798 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
2799 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
2802 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
2803 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
2804 advantage of that.
</p>
2806 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
2807 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
2808 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
2809 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
2810 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
2811 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
2812 best solution for them.
</p>
2814 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
2815 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
2816 make a decision that would work for them.
</p>
2822 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
2827 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2831 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy
</a>
2837 <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2838 today. This is the release announcement:
</p>
2840 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu
7.0.0 alpha2 released
2841 2013-
06-
10</strong></p>
2843 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7.0.0 edu
2844 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".
</p>
2846 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</strong></p>
2848 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2849 Skolelinux
</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2850 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2851 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2852 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2853 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2854 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2855 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
2856 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2857 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2858 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2860 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2861 than
60 educational software packages
</a> and more are available from
2862 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2863 and Xfce desktop environment.
</p>
2865 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2866 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2867 Squeeze release.
</p>
2869 <p><strong>Software updates
</strong></p>
2873 <li>Iceweasel was updated from
10 to
17. (DSA
2699-
1)
2874 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-
2674), libxvmc (DSA-
2675), libxfixes (DSA-
2676), libxrender (DSA-
2677), mesa (DSA-
2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-
2679), libxt (DSA-
2680), libxcursor (DSA-
2681), libxext (DSA-
2682), libxi (DSA-
2683), libxrandr (DSA-
2684), libxp (DSA-
2685), libxcb (DSA-
2686), libfs (DSA-
2687), libxres (DSA-
2688), libxtst (DSA-
2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-
2690), libxinerama (DSA-
2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-
2692), libx11 (DSA-
2693), chromium-browser (DSA-
2695), gnutls26 (DSA-
2697), wireshark (DSA-
2700), krb5 (DSA-
2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-
2702) and subversion (DSA-
2703).
2875 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
2876 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
2877 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
2881 <p><strong>Other changes
</strong></p>
2885 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
2886 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
2887 <li>New Romanian translation.
2888 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
2889 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/
0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/
0.8~deb7u1: #
706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
2890 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
2891 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
2892 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
2893 <li>More testsuite tests.
2894 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
2895 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
2897 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
2898 LTSP in Wheezy.
</li>
2900 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
2901 them up with GOsa².
</li>
2903 <li>Update IMAP server setup.
</li>
2905 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
2906 slbackup-php/
0.4.4-
1: #
700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
2907 entered password).
</li>
2911 <p><strong>Known issues
</strong></p>
2915 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.
</li>
2917 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
2918 available yet (Open in gosa/
2.7.4-
4: #
698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
2919 missing import feature).
</li>
2921 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).
</li>
2923 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #
502192: menu-xdg: invents
2924 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
2929 <p><strong>Where to get it
</strong></p>
2931 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
</p>
2935 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso
</a></li>
2937 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso
</a></li>
2939 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .
</li>
2943 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
2944 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419
</p>
2946 <p><strong>How to report bugs
</strong></p>
2948 <p><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a>
2954 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
2959 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2963 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building? Debian Edu need help!
</a>
2969 <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
2970 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
2971 hope to get released soon. The two problems require some with PHP
2972 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
2977 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
2978 (slbackup-php) using the root user and password. This is
2979 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #
700257</a>.
2980 This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
2981 Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?
</li>
2983 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
2984 using ldif nor using CSV files. The feature was disabled after a
2985 major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
2986 This is
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
2991 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
2992 (
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
2993 irc.debian.org
</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.
</p>
2999 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3004 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3008 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier
</a>
3014 <p>It has been a while since my last English
3015 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
3016 interview last November. But the developers and translators are still
3017 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
3018 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
3019 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.
</p>
3021 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
3023 <p>I am
34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
3024 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
3025 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
3026 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.
</p>
3028 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
3029 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
3030 packaging, publicity and translation.
</p>
3032 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3033 project?
</strong></p>
3035 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
3036 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
3037 Debian Edu manual
</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
3038 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
3041 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
3042 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
3043 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
3044 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.
</p>
3046 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
3047 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
3048 by
<a href=
"https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²
</a>. What pleased
3049 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
3050 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
3051 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
3052 artistic skills with music (
<a href=
"http://ardour.org/">Ardour
</a>,
3053 <a href=
"http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity
</a>) and
3054 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
3055 <a href=
"http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion
</a>).
</p>
3057 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
3058 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu
</a>.
3059 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
3060 beautiful project.
</p>
3062 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3065 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
3066 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
3067 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.
</p>
3069 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
3070 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
3071 of educational free software.
</p>
3073 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3076 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
3077 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
3078 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
3079 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
3080 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.
</p>
3082 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
3083 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
3084 wiki dokumentation
</a>, where some countries already have a number of
3085 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
3086 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
3087 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
3088 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
3089 support for Debian Edu as well.
</p>
3091 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
3093 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
3094 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
3095 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice. I am
3096 also using the mathematical software
3097 <a href=
"http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about">Scilab
</a> and
3098 <a href=
"http://www.sagemath.org/index.html">Sage
</a> (built from
3099 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
3101 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
3102 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
3103 statistics?
</strong></p>
3105 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
3106 university, we use both
<a href=
"http://www.r-project.org/">R
</a> and
3107 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
3108 geometry, there are nice programs:
</p>
3112 <li><a href=
"http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo
</a> and
3113 <a href=
"http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig">kig
</a> to do
3114 constructions in planar geometry
3116 <li><a href=
"http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali
</a>
3117 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
3118 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.
</li>
3123 <a href=
"http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor
</a>, which
3124 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
3125 <a href=
"http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave">Octave
</a>, etc...
</p>
3127 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3128 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
3130 <p>My suggestions would be to
</p>
3134 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.
</li>
3136 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
3137 well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
3138 OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.
</li>
3140 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.
</li>
3142 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
3151 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
3156 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3160 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)
</a>
3166 <p>Included in
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3167 Skolelinux
</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
3168 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn. We have tried to
3169 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
3170 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
3171 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
3172 debtag field. Here it is. Click on a image to learn more about the
3175 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>"; ( for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi; done; ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
3177 <p><strong>field::arts
</strong></p>
3179 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=audacity'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'
></a>
3180 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=childsplay'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'
></a>
3181 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=denemo'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'
></a>
3182 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=freebirth'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'
></a>
3183 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gcompris'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'
></a>
3184 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gimp'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'
></a>
3185 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=hydrogen'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'
></a>
3186 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=lilypond'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'
></a>
3187 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=lmms'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'
></a>
3188 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=rosegarden'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'
></a>
3189 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=scribus'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'
></a>
3190 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=solfege'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'
></a>
3191 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=stopmotion'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'
></a>
3192 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=tuxpaint'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'
></a>
3195 <p><strong>field::astronomy
</strong></p>
3197 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'
></a>
3198 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gpredict'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'
></a>
3199 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kstars'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'
></a>
3200 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=planets'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'
></a>
3201 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=stellarium'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'
></a>
3202 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=xplanet'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'
></a>
3205 <p><strong>field::biology:structural
</strong></p>
3207 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=pymol'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'
></a>
3210 <p><strong>field::chemistry
</strong></p>
3212 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=atomix'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'
></a>
3213 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=chemtool'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'
></a>
3214 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=easychem'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'
></a>
3215 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gchempaint'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'
></a>
3216 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gdis'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'
></a>
3217 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=ghemical'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'
></a>
3218 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gperiodic'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'
></a>
3219 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kalzium'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'
></a>
3220 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=pymol'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'
></a>
3221 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=viewmol'
>[viewmol]
</a>
3222 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=xdrawchem'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'
></a>
3225 <p><strong>field::electronics
</strong></p>
3227 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gcompris'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'
></a>
3228 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gpsim'
>[gpsim]
</a>
3231 <p><strong>field::geography
</strong></p>
3233 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kgeography'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'
></a>
3234 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=marble'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'
></a>
3235 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=xplanet'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'
></a>
3238 <p><strong>field::linguistics
</strong></p>
3240 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gcompris'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'
></a>
3241 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kanagram'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'
></a>
3242 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=khangman'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'
></a>
3243 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=klettres'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'
></a>
3244 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=parley'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'
></a>
3247 <p><strong>field::mathematics
</strong></p>
3249 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=childsplay'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'
></a>
3250 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=drgeo'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'
></a>
3251 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gcompris'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'
></a>
3252 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=geogebra'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'
></a>
3253 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=geomview'
>[geomview]
</a>
3254 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=grace'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'
></a>
3255 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=graphmonkey'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'
></a>
3256 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=graphthing'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'
></a>
3257 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kalgebra'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'
></a>
3258 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kbruch'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'
></a>
3259 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kig'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'
></a>
3260 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kmplot'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'
></a>
3261 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=mathwar'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'
></a>
3262 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=rocs'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'
></a>
3263 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=scratch'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'
></a>
3264 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=tuxmath'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'
></a>
3265 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=xabacus'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'
></a>
3268 <p><strong>field::physics
</strong></p>
3270 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gcompris'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'
></a>
3271 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=step'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'
></a>
3274 <p><strong>field::TODO
</strong></p>
3276 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=blinken'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'
></a>
3277 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=cgoban'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'
></a>
3278 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=childsplay'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'
></a>
3279 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gcompris'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'
></a>
3280 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gnuchess'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'
></a>
3281 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gnugo'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'
></a>
3282 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gtans'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'
></a>
3283 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=ktouch'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'
></a>
3284 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=librecad'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'
></a>
3285 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=scratch'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'
></a>
3288 <p>In total,
61 applications.
3 of them lacked screen shots on
3289 <a href=
"http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net
</a>. If
3290 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
3291 know on
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
3292 on irc.debian.org
</a>, or our
3293 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
3294 debian-edu@
</a>.
</p>
3300 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3305 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3309 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Nirosan_Thiyagalingam.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Nirosan Thiyagalingam
</a>
3316 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux-prosjektet
</a> har
3317 hatt mye glede av er studentprosjekter. F.eks. er
3318 <a href=
"http://linuxstopmotion.org/">stillbildeanimasjonssystemet
3319 Stopmotion
</a> resultat av et studentprosjekt i Skolelinux. De siste
3320 månedene har en ivrig student veiledet av Marius Kotsbak i
3321 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">FRiSK
</a> testet hva en
3322 kan få til med en datamaskin til NOK
400,- (antagelig
1700,- med
3323 skjerm, tastatur og mus) når det brukes i Skolelinux. Jeg spurte han
3326 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?
</strong></p>
3328 <p>Jeg heter Nirosan Thiyagalingam. Jeg er
24 år og studerer
3329 dataingeniør studiet ved Høgskolen i Sør Trøndelag. Interessen for
3330 data har siden ung alder vært tilstede og jeg har i tillegg alltid
3331 vært glad i å lære nye ting. Med teknologi som endres svært hurtig er
3332 det alltid noe nytt å lære. Noe som igjen har gjort det svært
3333 interessant å følge med på utviklingen. Jeg valgte dataingeniør
3334 studiet grunnet ønske om å lære enda mer om programmering og utvikling
3335 av store systemer.
</p>
3337 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?
</strong></p>
3339 <p>Skolelinux prosjektet hørte jeg først om i media. Men det var først
3340 når jeg skulle velge bacheloroppgave at jeg fattet mer interesse for
3341 prosjektet. Et enkelt søk på nettet førte meg til skolelinux sine
3342 hjemmesider. Informasjonen jeg fant der gjorde meg enda nysgjerrig og
3343 jeg valgte derfor en oppgave som gikk ut på å få en
3344 <a href=
"http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry PI
</a>. Altså en
3345 ultra-billig datamaskin til å kjøre Debian Edu på lik linje med
3346 vanlige datamaskiner. I løpet av prosjektet ble det gjort mye
3347 forskning på nettet. Det var mye jeg måtte forstå rundt hvordan
3348 operativsystemet Linux fungerte før jeg kunne angripe
3349 problemet. Prøvde først å finne ut hvordan man kunne transformere en
3350 vanlig installasjon av Skolelinux til Raspberry PI, men dette var
3351 altfor vanskelig å jeg endte opp med mer spørsmål enn svar. Det ble
3352 videre opprettet kontakt med Skolelinux utviklere på IRC der jeg fikk
3353 diskutert hvilken retning jeg burde gå for å få til en fullverdig
3354 løsning. Det ble bestemt at jeg skulle gå for å først installere
3355 <a href=
"http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspian
</a>. Dette er et
3356 operativsystem basert på Debian spesiallaget for Raspberry Pi sin
3357 maskinvare. Nå som Debian var installert på datamaskinen gjenstod det
3358 å installere de nødvendige Skolelinux pakkene for å få til et
3359 fullverdig system. Disse pakkene ble installert manuelt i første
3360 omgang, men ble senere installert automatisk via et script som Petter
3361 Reinholdtsen laget. Dette scriptet er så enkel å bruke at man er i
3362 gang med installasjonen i løpet av bare
5 minutter. Ikke nok med det,
3363 alt skjer helt automatisk. Alt i alt er jeg veldig fornøyd med
3364 resultatet av installasjonsprosessen. Raspberry Pi er en veldig svak
3365 maskin og det merkes godt når man har installert Skolelinux på
3366 den. Video og
3D-rendering fungerer utrolig dårlig, men nettsurfing og
3367 kontorprogrammer fungerer godt. Det kan derfor konkluderes med at
3368 datamaskinen er egnet for enkle oppgaver.
3370 <p>Jeg syns det er viktig påpeke at dette kun er startfasen av en slik
3371 løsning. På markedet finnes det nå maskiner som har bedre hardware enn
3372 Raspberry Pi. Det er store muligheter for at man kan klare å
3373 installere Skolelinux på disse også, og da forsvinner nok mest
3374 sannsynlig ytelsesproblemene med Video og
3D rendering også.
</p>
3376 <p>Det ble også prøvd med en løsning som gjorde at Raspberry Pi
3377 fungerte som en tynnklient. Denne løsningen hadde langt bedre ytelse
3378 med tanke på hastighet og brukeropplevelse. Men også her var video og
3379 3D rendering dårlig. Det ble brukt en liten Linux distribusjon kalt
3380 <a href=
"http://www.berryterminal.com/">BerryTerminal
</a> for å få til
3383 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
3385 <p>Fordelen med Skolelinux er mange. At det er gratis er en stor
3386 fordel, men at det er så mange som er med på å utvikle det og
3387 vedlikeholde det er en enda større fordel. Allerede før jeg startet
3388 med prosjektet så jeg mange fordeler, og når jeg nærmet meg sluttfasen
3389 så jeg langt flere. At prosjektet skulle inneha en så høy kvalitet
3390 hadde jeg aldri trodd. En vanlig Skolelinux installasjon har de
3391 nødvendige programmene og funksjonen som både små og store skoler i
3392 tillegg til organisasjoner kan klare seg med. At prosjektet tilbyr en
3393 så komplett løsning er en kjempefordel. Installasjonen er knirkefri
3394 og det er svært enkelt å installere og komme i gang.
</p>
3396 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
3398 <p>Ulempene jeg ser med prosjektet er ryddigheten av websidene. Selv
3399 om websidene er enkle og konsise er det allikevel ikke appellerende i
3400 like stor grad som for eksempel
3401 <a href=
"http://www.ubuntu.com">Ubuntu
</a> sine sider. Deres side
3402 tilbyr, i tillegg til godt design og presentasjon, en nettbasert
3403 emulator av deres operativsystem. Dette er en stor fordel slik jeg ser
3404 det. Bortsett fra dette ser jeg absolutt ingen ulemper med
3405 Skolelinux-prosjektet.
</p>
3407 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
3409 <p>Til daglig er jeg en flittig bruker av det åpne media
3410 sentersystemet
<a href=
"http://xbmc.org/">XBMC
</a>. Det enorme
3411 samfunnet rundt dette prosjektet har gjort dette til et program som
3412 dekker alles behov. Man kan tilpasse det akkurat slik man vil både med
3413 tanke på utseende og funksjoner ved installere plug-ins eller
3416 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
3417 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?
</strong></p>
3419 <p>Strategien som burde brukes sett fra mine øyne er
3420 markedsføring. Jeg er sikker på at om flere skoler fikk et lite innsyn
3421 i hvor bra Skolelinux er så ville de ikke nølt med å gå over fra noe
3422 annet som koster de store summer. At skolelinux til de grader tilbyr
3423 en så komplett løsning bure komme frem. Enten via reklamekampanjer
3424 eller ved å sende ut folk til skoler for så å la skolenettverk
3425 ansvarlige få teste ut hvordan Skolelinux fungerer i praksis. Om det
3426 i tillegg ble utviklet gode websider og en emulator for å la brukere
3427 prøve operativsystemet ville nok dette ha styrket inntrykket
3434 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
3439 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3443 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation
</a>
3449 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> is
3450 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools. It
3451 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
3452 pupils in the primary schools. It provide both the central server,
3453 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
3454 educational software. The project was founded almost
12 years ago,
3455 2001-
07-
02. If you want to support the project, which is in need for
3456 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
3457 <a href=
"http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
3458 donate some money
</a>.
3460 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
3461 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
3462 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation. It isn't very
3463 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
3464 the Debian Edu installer.
</p>
3467 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless
<a/>
3468 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
3469 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
3470 into a Debian Edu Workstation:
</p>
3474 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.
</li>
3475 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.
</li>
3476 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
3477 our configuration.
</li>
3478 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
3479 /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
3480 according to the profile specified in the config above,
3481 overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.
</li>
3482 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
3483 that could not be done using preseeding.
</li>
3484 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.
</li>
3488 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
3489 replicated like this. Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
3490 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
3491 the needed packages.
</p>
3493 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
3494 setting up
<a href=
"http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi
</a> as a
3495 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
3496 <a href=
"http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage">Raspbian
</a> installation and
3497 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
3498 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).
</p>
3500 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
3501 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
3502 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:
</p>
3505 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
3509 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
3510 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
3511 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
3518 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>.
3523 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3527 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy
</a>
3533 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3534 project
</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
3535 release today. This is the release announcement:
</p>
3537 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu
7.0.0 alpha1 released
3538 2013-
05-
14</strong></p>
3540 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7.0.0 edu
3541 alpha1, based on
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org">Debian
</a> with
3542 codename "Wheezy".
</p>
3544 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</strong></p>
3546 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
3547 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
3548 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
3549 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
3550 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
3551 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
3552 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
3553 other machines can be installed via the network.
</p>
3555 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
3556 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
3557 version compared to the Squeeze release.
</p>
3559 <p><strong>Software updates
</strong></p>
3561 <li>Install freemind (
0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
3563 <li>Install chromium (
26.0.1410.43) by default.
</li>
3564 <li>Install goplay (
0.5-
1.1) to make golearn available by default.
</li>
3565 <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
3569 <p><strong>Other changes
</strong></p>
3572 <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
3573 reliability improvements.
</li>
3574 <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
3575 of
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.
</li>
3576 <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
3578 <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
3580 <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.
</li>
3581 <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.
</li>
3582 <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.
</li>
3583 <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
3584 servers, to make room for all the software installed.
</li>
3585 <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
3586 log in (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).
</li>
3589 <p><strong>Known issues
</strong></p>
3592 <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
3593 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>). Only install
3594 libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.
</li>
3595 <li>DVD images are not yet ready.
</li>
3596 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
3597 available yet (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).
</li>
3598 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).
</li>
3599 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.
</li>
3600 <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
3601 (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.
</li>
3602 <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
3603 password submission problem
3604 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).
</li>
3608 <p><strong>Where to get it
</strong></p>
3610 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
</p>
3613 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~
7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso
</a></li>
3614 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~
7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso
</a></li>
3615 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~
7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~
7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso
</li>
3619 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b
</p>
3621 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c
</p>
3623 <p><strong>How to report bugs
</strong></p>
3625 <p><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a></p>
3631 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3636 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3640 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Narvik_sparer_minst_9_millioner_p____bruke_Skolelinux.html">Narvik sparer minst
9 millioner på å bruke Skolelinux
</a>
3646 <p>I fjor sommer ble jeg
3647 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gladoppslag_om_Skolelinux_i_avisen_Fremover.html">gledelig
3648 overrasket
</a> over et oppslag i avisen Fremover om Narvik kommunes
3649 bruk av
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>. Oppslaget
3650 var basert på et notat som besvarte spørsmål fra ordfører Tor Nysæter
3651 og rådgiver for skolesektoren, Petter Falkbu, om bruken av Skolelinux
3652 i Narvikskolene og konstnaden ved å gå over til Windows. For litt
3653 over en uke siden siden fikk jeg endelig bedt kommunen om å få innsyn
3654 i dette notatet, og det ble oversendt på epost tirsdag. Jeg fikk
3655 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/pub/offentliginnsyn/from-Narvik-kommune/2013-04-29-09:12-skolelinux-notat/PetterFalkbuogwindowsfornarvikskolen%20(L)351310.pdf">lagt
3656 ut notatet
</a> samme dag, og fikk i dag sjekket postlista til Narvik,
3657 der jeg fant notatet som
3658 <a href=
"https://www.narvik.kommune.no/innsyn.aspx?response=arkivsak_detaljer&arkivsakid=2013001023&scripturi=/innsyn.aspx&skin=infolink&Mid1=301&">sak
3661 <p>Notatet forteller at Narvik ville måtte betalt minst
9 millioner
3662 for å gå over til Windows på skolene. I tillegg dokumenterer notatet
3663 at læreplanens krav oppfylles uten problemer ved bruk av Skolelinux.
3664 Jeg anbefaler alle å lese de
10 sidene med gode argumenter for å kutte
3665 unødige utgifter på IT i skoleverket. :)
</p>
3671 Tags:
<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>.
3676 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3680 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy
</a>
3686 <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
3687 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
3688 for Debian Wheezy
</a> was waiting in my mail box. This is a great
3689 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
3692 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
3693 in particular make me very happy to see included. The
3694 <a href=
"http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch
</a> program, made famous by
3695 the
<a href=
"http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code
</a> movement, is
3696 included for the first time. Alongside similar programs like
3697 <a href=
"http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle
</a> and
3698 <a href=
"http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart
</a>,
3699 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
3700 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
3701 computer. Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
3704 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
3705 Edu/Skolelinux release too. The
3706 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
3707 alpha release
</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
3714 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>.
3719 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3723 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy
</a>
3729 <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
3730 its first Wheezy based release today. This is the release
3733 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~
7.0.0 alpha0 released
3734 2013-
04-
26</strong></p>
3736 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~
7.0.0
3737 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".
</p>
3739 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</strong></p>
3741 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
3742 Skolelinux
</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
3743 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
3744 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
3745 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
3746 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
3747 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
3748 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
3749 installed via the network.
</p>
3751 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
3752 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
3753 version compared to the Squeeze release.
</p>
3755 <p><strong>Software updates
</strong></p>
3758 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
3760 <li>Linux kernel
3.2.x
</li>
3761 <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma"
4.8.4, GNOME
3.4, and LXDE
4
3762 (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
3764 <li>Web browser Iceweasel
10 ESR
</li>
3765 <li>LibreOffice
3.5.4</li>
3768 <li>CUPS print system
1.5.3</li>
3769 <li>Educational toolbox GCompris
12.01</li>
3770 <li>Music creator Rosegarden
12.04</li>
3771 <li>Image editor Gimp
2.8.2</li>
3772 <li>Virtual universe Celestia
1.6.1</li>
3773 <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium
0.11.3</li>
3774 <li>Scratch visual programming environment
1.4.0.6</li>
3775 <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
3776 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
3777 manual
</a> for more details.
</li>
3778 <li>Debian Wheezy includes about
37000 packages available for
3780 <li>More information about Debian Wheezy
7.0 is provided in the
3781 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes
</a> and the
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual
</a>.
</li>
3785 <p><strong>Documentation
</strong></p>
3787 <li>The (
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English
</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
3788 German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
3789 for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
</li>
3792 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes
</strong></p>
3794 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
3795 choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
3796 server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.
</li>
3799 <p><strong>Other changes
</strong></p>
3801 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
3802 configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
3803 entry in lts.conf or LDAP.
<li>
3804 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
3805 functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
3806 completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.
</li>
3809 <p><strong>Regressions
</strong></p>
3811 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
3815 <p><strong>No updated artwork
</strong></p>
3818 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
3819 screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
3820 had for our Squeeze based release.
</li>
3823 <p><strong>Where to get it
</strong></p>
3825 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
3827 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/
</a></li>
3828 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/
</a></li>
3829 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/
</li>
3832 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c
</p>
3834 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2
</p>
3836 <p><strong>How to report bugs
</strong></p>
3838 <p><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a></p>
3844 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3849 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3853 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in
2013 take place in Trondheim
</a>
3859 <p>This years first
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
3860 Debian Edu
</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
3861 Details about the gathering can be found
3862 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
3863 the FRiSK wiki
</a>. The dates are
19-
21th of April
2013, and online
3864 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
3865 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
3868 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
3869 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
3872 <p>See you on
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,
</a> then?
</p>
3878 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3883 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3887 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux
6 got a video review from Pcwizz
</a>
3894 <a href=
"https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter
</a>
3895 I just discovered that
<a href=
"http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz
</a> have
3896 done a
<a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
3897 review
</a> on Youtube of
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
3898 / Debian Edu
</a> version
6. He installed the standalone profile and
3899 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
3900 a few programs and his view of our distribution.
</p>
3902 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
3903 have heard wrong). While looking thought the Graphics menu:
</p>
3906 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
3909 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:
</p>
3912 "So, yeah, a bit bloated. It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
3913 to keep it nice and GNU. So, I do not want to go on about it, but
3914 lets give it
7 out of
10. I am not going to use it. That is because
3915 I am not deploying a school network. There may be some mythical
3916 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
3919 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
3920 installation option. It make it possible to install only the main
3921 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
3922 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)
</p>
3924 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
3925 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
3928 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
3929 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
3930 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
3931 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
3934 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
3935 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
3936 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
3937 consistent menu system
</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
3938 inconsistent menu systems.
</p>
3940 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
3943 <iframe width=
"560" height=
"315" src=
"http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder=
"0" allowfullscreen
></iframe>
3949 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
3954 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3958 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released
</a>
3964 <p>Last Sunday,
2013-
03-
03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
3965 of
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a>
3966 based on Debian Squeeze. This is the first update since
3967 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
3968 initial release
2012-
03-
11</a>. This is the
3969 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
3970 announcement email from Holger
</a>:
</p>
3972 <blockquote><p>Hi,
</p>
3974 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
3975 Edu
6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").
</p>
3977 <p>Debian Edu
6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
3978 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian
6.0.4 and
6.0.7 as
3979 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
3980 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes. Please see
3981 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/
2012/
20120311</a>
3982 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".
</p>
3984 <p>Images are available for download at
3985 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/
</a></p>
3988 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
3989 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
3990 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso
</p>
3993 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3 debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
3994 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
3995 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso
</p>
3997 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.
</p>
3999 <p>Changes for Debian Edu
6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
4003 <li>sitesummary was updated from
0.1.3 to
0.1.8
4005 <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient
</li>
4006 <li>Comply with
3.X kernel
</li>
4008 <li>debian-edu-doc from
1.4~
20120310~
6.0.4+r0 to
1.4~
20130228~
6.0.7+r1
4010 <li>Minor updates from the wiki
</li>
4011 <li>Danish translation now complete
</li>
4013 <li>debian-edu-config from
1.453 to
1.455
4015 <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #
699880</li>
4016 <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.
</li>
4017 <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after
2 days.
4018 Closes: #
664596</li>
4019 <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
4020 Closes: #
664976</li>
4021 <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
4023 <li>Don't fail if password contains "
</li>
4024 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog
</li>
4026 <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
4028 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes
</li>
4029 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²
</li>
4030 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
4031 "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #
687256</li>
4032 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users
</li>
4034 <li>Add Danish web page
</li>
4036 <li>debian-edu-install from
1.528 to
1.530
4038 <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation
</li>
4042 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
4043 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/
</a>
4044 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
4045 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)
</p>
4047 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
4049 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org
</a>!
4052 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)
</p>
4058 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4063 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4067 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Helge_Tore_H_yland.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Helge Tore Høyland
</a>
4073 <p>Etter en lang pause og travle uker har jeg endelig klart å få
4074 samlet et nytt intervju med en av folkene i
4075 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>-miljøet.
4076 Denne gang er det Helge Tore Høyland, en mangeårig bidragsyter på
4077 epostlistene og ellers i prosjektet.
</p>
4079 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?
</strong></p>
4081 <p>Eg er IT-konsulent/teknikker hjå eit firma i Steinkjer med navn
4082 <a href=
"http://unoit.no/">Uno IT
</a>. Uno IT er eit lite firma som
4083 drifter nettverk og maskiner for små og mellomstore firma
4084 Steinkjer-området. Per dags dato er me
2 ansatte. Min faglege bakgrunn
4085 er Fagbrev som it-teknikker, samt nokre fag innen nettverk- og
4086 server-drift frå HiST og NTNU. Dagleg arbeid består i oppsett av nye
4087 maskiner og hjelp til sluttbrukere, samt oppsett og vedlikehold av eit
4088 vidt spekter av fagsystemer ute hjå kunder. Erfaring med Skolelinux
4089 har eg hatt i forbindelse med drifting av
4090 <a href=
"http://www.bjorkly.no/">Bjørkly skule
</a>, ein privat
4091 grunnskule i Namsos-området. I dag har skulen
65 elever,
15 lærere,
1
4092 hovedserver og ca
60 klienter som kjører halvtjukt. Eg har bygd og
4093 driftet systemet sidan summaren
2006.
</p>
4095 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?
</strong></p>
4097 <p>Eg kom i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet via ein artikkel i eit
4098 fagblad, som eg ikkje lenger hugsar namnet på. I og med at eg allereie
4099 hadde pusla med nettverk for ein annan skule, fatta eg straks
4100 interesse for prosjektet.
</p>
4102 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
4104 <p>Fordelane med Skolelinux er sentralisert administrasjon og svært
4105 mange gode verktøy «ut av boksen». Veldig kjekt å kunne drifte
60
4106 klientar med berre å «bry» seg med ein server. Levetid for systemets
4107 hardware er og ein veldig fin effekt. I tillegg kjem fordelar som økt
4108 sikkerhet og mindre lisenskostnader. Etter min erfaring er det og
4109 mykje mindre driftskostnader med eit slikt system enn konkurrerande
4110 system, pga enkelhet med sentralisert administrasjon. På grunn av at
4111 Skolelinux er basert på Debian er det òg svært stabilt.
</p>
4113 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
4115 <p>Ulemper er mangel på vilje til å følge standarer ute i markedet,
4116 som fører til mangel på støtte til nokre mykje brukte ting. Flash og
4117 Java er typiske eksempel. Sidan Debian satsar på stabilitet framfor å
4118 ha nyeste pakke av eit program, kan ein i nokre tilfeller kome borti
4119 at program vert «for gamle». Det er spesielt nettlesaren som er
4120 utsett. Mangel på vilje til å utvikle pedagogisk programvare, i Noreg,
4121 for «alle» platformer fører òg til noko hovudbry.
</p>
4123 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
4125 <p>Til dagleg bruker eg svært mange forskjellige «fri programvare»
4126 program. Firefox, Thunderbird, Freecommander, ImgBurn, Clonezilla,
4127 OCS inventory, Icinga, Skolelinux, SystemRescueCD og mykje meir.
</p>
4129 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
4130 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?
</strong></p>
4132 <p>Strategisk må ein fokusere på at sluttbruker eigentleg ikkje er så
4133 fokusert på at det er fri programvare men at det skal «berre fungere».
4134 Gjer det enkelt å bruker og ikkje minst å administrere. For Skolelinux
4135 sin del må ein få eit betre fokus på overganger. Utbytting av servere
4136 må gå meir automatisk, import og eksport av brukerbase og maskinbase
4137 med meir må kunne gå enkelt og oppgradering til neste versjon må bli
4138 mykje meir automatisk og gjennomtesta. Ein må unngå at ein må sette
4139 opp frå start når ein byter ut ein server eller oppgraderer til neste
4140 versjon. For å få Skolelinux til å bli eit betre alternativ for skular
4141 må ein ha fokus på nettlesaren. Denne må bli «up to date» og støtte
4142 dei protokollar og tillegg som vert brukt av forlag med meir. Etter
4143 kvart som meir og meir blir flytta ut i «skya» vert dette viktigare og
4144 viktigare. Ein kunne ynskje og jobbe for at forlag med fleire tar i
4145 bruk opne standarer, men inntil det skjer, må systemet kunne brukast
4146 mot desse fagsystema.
</p>
4148 <p>For meg har prosjektet med Skolelinux vore ein svært artig og
4149 lærerik prosess. Miljøet rundt er ikkje enormt stort, dog stort nok,
4150 men det er svært hjelpevillig og engasjert.
</p>
4156 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
4161 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4165 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a>
4171 <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
4172 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a>
4173 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
4174 Agency in Trondheim. NOK
1000,- showed up on our donation account
4175 December
24th. I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
4176 present. As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
4177 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
4178 gatherings, this donation was most welcome. One developer gathering
4179 cost around NOK
15 000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
4180 development pace we want. Thus, I hope their example this year is
4181 followed by many others. :)
</p>
4183 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
4184 <a href=
"http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
4185 donation page
</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
4186 you want to donate to the project.
</p>
4192 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4197 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4201 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format
</a>
4207 <p>A few days ago I came across
4208 <a href=
"http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
4209 Hess
</a> describing
<a href=
"http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger
</a> and
4210 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting. I found it
4211 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
4212 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
4213 the different web based systems we use. I find it hard to find what I
4214 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
4215 the systems. Ledger seem different. The accounting data is kept in
4216 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
4218 are at least
<a href=
"https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
4219 different implementations
</a> able to read the format. An example
4220 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
4221 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:
</p>
4224 2004-
05-
27 Book Store
4225 Expenses:Books $
20.00
4229 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
4230 look for others using it. I found blog posts from
4231 <a href=
"http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
4233 <a href=
"http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
4235 <a href=
"http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
4237 <a href=
"http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
4238 Ip
</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
4239 <a href=
"https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
4240 M. Kuhn
</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy. All seemed like good
4241 recommendations fitting my need.
</p>
4243 <p>The
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger
</a>
4244 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
4245 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger
</a>
4246 package only is available in Debian Sid. As I use Squeeze, ledger
4247 seemed the best choice to get started.
</p>
4249 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
4250 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper
</a> for
4251 <a href=
"http://www.lodo.no/">LODO
</a>, the accounting system used by
4252 the
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG
</a> association, and started to
4253 play with the data set. I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
4254 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
4255 using the "
<tt>ledger balance
</tt>" command. But I will have to
4256 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
4257 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
4263 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>.
4268 <div class="padding
"></div>
4272 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html
">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
4278 <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
4279 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
4280 community. I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
4281 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
4282 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
4283 the people behind the German
4284 "<a href=
"http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule
</a>"
4285 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview. Give a warm
4286 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
4288 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4290 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
4291 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
4292 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
4294 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
4295 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
4296 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
4297 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
4298 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-). We are also
4299 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.
</p>
4301 <p>In
2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
4302 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there. Besides
4303 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
4304 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
4305 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
4306 relationship management and the communication processes in the
4309 <p>Since
2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
4310 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
4311 and a yoga teacher.
</p>
4313 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4314 project?
</strong></p>
4316 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).
</p>
4318 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
4319 Free Software. At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
4320 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
4321 their IT environment. Often when Mike came home from working at the
4322 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
4323 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
4324 teachers did not work. So we were clear that he would not work for
4325 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
4326 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
4329 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
4330 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
4331 schools. One day before Christmas
2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
4332 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
4333 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
4334 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
4337 <p>For information about our school project you can read
4338 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
4339 interview with Mike Gabriel
</a>.
</p>
4341 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4344 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
4345 answer comes rather from a social point of view.
</p>
4347 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
4348 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
4349 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
4350 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
4351 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
4352 ;-). This is of course a user experience. What I also get as a big
4353 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
4354 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
4355 teachers, parents...
</p>
4357 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4360 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
4361 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.
</p>
4363 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
4364 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
4365 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
4366 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
4367 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.
</p>
4369 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
4370 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
4371 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
4372 and helpful. I am also missing some kind of contact between the
4373 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
4374 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
4375 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.
</p>
4377 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
4379 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu
10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
4380 on. As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
4381 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
4382 my N900 running with Maemo.
</p>
4384 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4385 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
4387 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
4388 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
4389 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
4390 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
4391 strategy has three crucial pillars:
</p>
4395 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
4396 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
4397 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.
</li>
4399 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
4400 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
4401 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
4402 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
4403 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
4404 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
4405 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.
</li>
4407 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
4408 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
4409 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
4410 offer to become more and more independent from us.
</li>
4418 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
4423 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4427 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_noe_for_Ballangen___Leserinnlegg_til_avisen_Fremover_.html">Skolelinux noe for Ballangen? (Leserinnlegg til avisen Fremover)
</a>
4433 <p>Tirsdag
2012-
10-
09 sendte jeg følgende leserinnlegg til avisen
4434 <a href=
"http://www.fremover.no/">Fremover
</a>, etter å ha vært nordpå
4435 noen dager og lest noen gamle aviser. Publiserer den her i sin helhet
4436 for fremtidig referanse. Fremover publiserer dessverre ikke
4437 leserinnlegg på nett.
</p>
4440 <p>To: redaksjon (at) fremover.no
4441 <br>Subject: Leserinnlegg til Fremover: Skolelinux noe for Ballangen?
</p>
4443 <p>Ærede redaktør
</p>
4445 <p>I sommer (
2012-
07-
23) hadde Fremover et oppslag om at Narvik
4446 kommune hadde spart mellom
10 og
20 millioner kroner de siste årene på
4447 å bruke Skolelinux på sine skoler. Harstad har også tatt i bruk
4448 Skolelinux på alle sine skoler. Som tidligere Ballangsværing gledet
4449 det meg stort å se at skoleløsningen vi har utviklet siden
2001 tas i
4450 bruk i området der jeg vokste opp, og dermed bidrar til en bedre og
4451 billigere skolehverdag.
</p>
4453 <p>Skolelinux er en komplett IT-løsning for elevnettverket på en
4454 skole, med både nettverkstjenester og løsning for elevmaskiner med
4455 pedagogisk programvare, som tillater en å øke levetiden på en
4456 datamaskin i skolen med mange år. En undersøkelse publisert i mars
4457 2012 viste at de
56 norske skolene som har offentliggjort at de bruker
4458 Skolelinux eller annen Linuxutgave hadde
36% større PC-tetthet enn
4459 landsgjennomsnittet, når en ser på tall rapportert til Grunnskolens
4460 Informasjonssystem. I følge Paul Reidar Løsnesløkken, IKT-konsulent i
4461 Nord-Odal, fungerer datamaskiner godt til de er
8 til
10 år gamle.
</p>
4463 <p>I høst (
2012-
09-
29) fortalte Fremover hvordan Ballangen kommune har
4464 opparbeidet seg
20 millioner i underskudd og nok havner på Robek-lista
4465 fra nyttår. Kanskje Ballangen også burde ta i bruk Skolelinux for å
4466 spare penger? Hvis kommunen mangler kompetanse lokalt på Linux finnes
4467 det kommersielle selskaper som tilbyr driftstjenester rundt
4468 Skolelinux, og jeg bør vel avsløre at jeg selv er involvert i et av
4469 dem, Skolelinux Drift AS. Kommunen kan dermed få hjelp hvis de ikke
4470 ønsker å bygge opp egen kompetanse.
</p>
4473 <br>Petter Reinholdtsen
4474 <br>Fri programvareutvikler
</p>
4480 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Linux_skoler_har_h_yere_PC_tetthet_enn_landsgjennomsnittet___pressemelding_fra_FRiSK.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Linux_skoler_har_h_yere_PC_tetthet_enn_landsgjennomsnittet___pressemelding_fra_FRiSK.html
</a></li>
4481 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gladoppslag_om_Skolelinux_i_avisen_Fremover.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gladoppslag_om_Skolelinux_i_avisen_Fremover.html
</a></li>
4487 <p>Innlegget ble så vidt jeg vet trykket i papirutgaven et par dager
4488 senere, men jeg har ikke sett det selv.
</p>
4494 Tags:
<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>.
4499 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4503 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trengs_flere_frivillige_til_korrektur_av_den_frie_norske_stavekontrollen.html">Trengs flere frivillige til korrektur av den frie norske stavekontrollen
</a>
4509 <p><a href=
"http://no.speling.org/">Den frie norske stavekontrollen
</a>
4510 består av ca.
1,
3 millioner bokmåls- og nynorskord. Det er mange
4511 kilder til ordene, f.eks. den norske ordbanken, norske nett-aviser,
4512 stavekontrollbrukere og korrekturlesere, og endel feil har sneket seg
4513 inn i databasen over ord. For å finne og fikse feilene trengs det
4514 korrekturlesing. Her kommer frivillige inn.
</p>
4516 <p>Hvis du vil bidra med korrektur av orddatabasen, kan du melde deg
4517 frivillig som bokmåls- eller nynorskkorrekturleser og få tilsendt en
4518 liten bunke ord på epost hver dag, lese over og sende inn på epost
4519 tilbake til korrekturlesing-systemet. Jo flere som sjekker, jo
4520 raskere kommer vi igjennom hele databasen. Så langt har vi oppdaget
4521 341 bokmålsord og
50 nynorskord som ikke skal vært med i databasen.
4522 Det er nok noen flere. I tillegg har korrekturleserne oppdaget flere
4523 ord som manglet, og fått lagt dem inn i stavekontrollen.
</p>
4525 <p>Hvis du vil bidra, følg instruksene på
4526 <a href=
"http://no.speling.org/dokumentasjon.html">prosjektsidene
</a>
4528 for nye bidragsytere, og ta kontakt med Håvard eller epostlisten
4529 <a href=
"https://lister.ping.uio.no/mailman/listinfo/i18n-no">i18n-no
</a>.
4530 Gode norskkunnskaper er en fordel, og vilje til å sjekke
4531 <a href=
"http://www.nob-ordbok.uio.no/perl/ordbok.cgi">ordboka
</a> et
4538 Tags:
<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>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll
</a>.
4543 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4547 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ny_utgave__v2_1__av_den_frie_norske_stavekontrollen_gitt_ut.html">Ny utgave (v2.1) av den frie norske stavekontrollen gitt ut
</a>
4553 <p>I helga fikk jeg endelig pakket sammen en ny versjon av den norske
4554 stavekontrollen, og gikk ut versjon
2.1 etter at det var gått fire og
4555 et halvt år siden sist. I dag fikk vi sendt ut annonseringen. Her er
4556 det vi sendte ut:
</p>
4558 <p>Oslo,
2012-
10-
02</p>
4560 <p><strong>Pressemelding: Ny utgave av norsk stavekontroll med
4561 synonymordliste
</strong></p>
4563 <p>Mer enn fire år etter at forrige utgave av den frie norske
4564 stavekontrollen ble utgitt, er en ny og forbedret versjon klar. Dette er
4565 noe utviklerne er veldig glade for.
</p>
4567 <p>Den største endringen er at byggesystemet for stavekontrollen er
4568 skrevet om til å akseptere ord med bindestrek (f.eks. «e-post»). Litt
4569 over
10.000 slike ordformer er lagt til i orddatabasen. I tillegg er
4570 det kommet en del nye ord og rettelser rapportert inn av de frivillige
4571 som gjennomfører korrektur av orddatabasen i prosjektet. For å få
4572 fortgang i dette korrekturarbeidet er det fint med flere frivillige
4573 som kan bidra i prosjektet.
</p>
4576 - En god og fritt tilgjengelig stavekontroll er en viktig byggestein
4577 for å fremme bruken av korrekt norsk språk, sier prosjektdeltager
4578 Petter Reinholdtsen.
4581 <p>Takket være samarbeidet med synonymordlisteprosjektet er
4582 synonymordlista for bokmål tilgjengelig sammen med ordlista for bokmål
4583 og nynorsk. En synonymordliste for nynorsk er også med, men den er på
4584 prøvestadiet og meget liten.
</p>
4586 <p>Stavekontrollpakken og synonymordlistene brukes i
4587 LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org, Koffice, Mozilla Thunderbird, Firefox og
4588 en rekke andre programmer, og på både Windows, Mac OS X, Linux og
4591 <p>Det hele utgis under den frie lisensen GPL og kan fritt lastes ned
4592 fra prosjektsidene på
4593 <a href=
"http://no.speling.org">no.speling.org
</a>. Ferdige pakker for
4594 LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org er også tilgjengelige fra samme sted.
</p>
4596 <p>Det norske stavekontrollprosjektet er i kontakt med lignende
4597 prosjekter for blant annet å forbedre stavekontrollteknologien, å
4598 utveksle verktøy for vedlikehold av orddatabasen og å få tilgang til
4599 relevante datasett. Et av disse prosjektene er et separat prosjekt ved
4600 Sametinget som er i gang med å utvikle samisk stavekontroll for blant
4601 annet Microsoft Word og OpenOffice.org.
</p>
4603 <p>Et søsterprosjekt for å lage grammatikk-kontroll for
4604 LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org er igangsatt, men har ennå ikke kommet
4605 langt nok til å brukes. Frivillige til å bidra i dette prosjektet er
4606 også svært velkomne.
</p>
4608 <p><strong>Kontaktperson
</strong></p>
4611 Axel Bojer, prosjektdeltager
4612 <br>E-post: fri_programvare (at) bojer.no
4613 <br>Tlf: +
47 954 32 417
4616 <p><strong>Referanser
</strong></p>
4620 <li>Det frie norske stavekontrollprosjektet for bokmål og nynorsk:
4621 <a href=
"http://no.speling.org">http://no.speling.org
</a></li>
4622 <li>Samiske korrekturverktøy:
4623 <a href=
"http://divvun.no/">http://divvun.no/
</a></li>
4624 <li>Ordlistene fra Norsk ordbank:
4625 <a href=
"http://www.edd.uio.no/prosjekt/ordbanken/">http://www.edd.uio.no/prosjekt/ordbanken/
</a></li>
4626 <li>Last ned ordlistene:
4627 <a href=
"http://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=30577">http://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=
30577</a>
4628 (PS: no_NO-pack2 for OOo
2.x))
</li>
4631 <p><strong>Fra NEWS-fila i kildekodepakken
</strong></p>
4633 <p>Release
2.1 (
2012-
09-
30)
</p>
4637 <li>Switch to new version scheme. Make new version
2.1, not
2.0.11. We do not
4638 release often enough to justify three digits.
</li>
4639 <li>Switch build rules to build OOo v2 thesaurus files, as the v1 build rules
4640 no longer work. This require the libmythes-dev package on Debian.
</li>
4641 <li>Introduce new Makefile variables hyphendir and thesdir to make it easier to
4642 control where to install these.
</li>
4643 <li>Change script used to import from no.speling.org, to load new word
4644 boundaries if at least two people believed the boundaries was correct.
</li>
4645 <li>Added word boundaries for several words (around
500 words) using the
4646 updated script.
</li>
4647 <li>Imported thesarus for bokmål from synonymer.merg.net.
</li>
4648 <li>Rewrote build rules to use = instead of - as combined word marker, thus
4649 allowing words like e-post.
</li>
4650 <li>Imported a lot (around
10k words) of new words with dash (-) in them from
4651 no.speling.org now that it is handled by the build system.
</li>
4658 Tags:
<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>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll
</a>.
4663 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4667 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda
</a>
4673 <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
4674 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
4675 community, I finally found time to wrap up another. This time it is
4676 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
4677 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
4678 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
4679 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.
</p>
4681 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
4683 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
4684 in secondary (
15-
18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
4685 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
4686 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
4687 IT.
3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
4688 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
4689 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
4690 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
4691 training is anyway very important
</p>
4693 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
4694 <a href=
"http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school
</a> (secondary) is a very
4695 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
4696 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
4697 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
4699 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4700 project?
</strong></p>
4702 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
4703 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
4704 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
4705 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
4706 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
4709 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4712 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
4713 very generous for help and hints. Chat help is crucial, together with
4714 the mailing list. Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
4715 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
4716 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
4717 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
4718 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
4719 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
4722 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4725 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
4726 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
4727 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
4728 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
4729 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
4730 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
4731 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
4732 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)
</p>
4734 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
4736 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
4737 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
4738 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
4739 <a href=
"http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus
</a>
4742 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
4743 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
4744 something breaks. Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
4745 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.
</p>
4747 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4748 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
4750 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
4751 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
4752 just because they are normally not open to change.
</p>
4754 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
4755 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
4758 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
4759 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
4760 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had
20
4761 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
4762 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
4763 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
4764 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.
</p>
4770 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
4775 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4779 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gladoppslag_om_Skolelinux_i_avisen_Fremover.html">Gladoppslag om Skolelinux i avisen Fremover
</a>
4785 <p>I sommer hadde avisen
<a href=
"http://www.fremover.no/">Fremover
</a>
4786 et flott oppslag om bruken av
4787 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> på alle skolene
4788 der. Artikkelen var på trykk på side
4 og
5 i papirutgaven
4789 2012-
07-
23, men mangler dessverre i nettutgaven av avisen. Mine
4790 henvendelser til avisen for å få artikkelen på nett har så langt ikke
4793 <p>Artikkelen med tittelen "Narvik kommune bruker gratisprogram i
4794 skolen - Har spart millioner", forteller om hvordan bruken av
4795 Skolelinux er en stor suksess i Narvik siden det ble tatt i bruk i
4796 2004. Her er noen fine sitater:
</p>
4799 "- Skolelinux har spart kommunen for store pengesummer, millionbeløp,
4800 som de heller kan bruke på andre ting, sier IKT-konsulent Viggo
4804 <p>Avisen forteller at de har fått tilgang til beregninger som viser
4805 at Narvik kommune har spart noe mellom
10 og
20 millioner kroner de
4806 siste
8 årene på å bruke Skolelinux, og fortsetter:
</p>
4810 "Regnestykket tar høyde for sparte kostnader til lisenser som medfølger
4811 de alternative operativsystemene, lavere driftskostnader og lengre
4812 levetid på datautstyret. Totalt har Narvikskolen en maskinpark på
4813 1600 maskiner fordelt på de
11 skolene fra Skjomen i sør til Bjerkvik
4818 <p>Viggo Fedreheim sier dette om hvor noe av gevinsten kommer fra:
</p>
4821 "- Vi kan gjenbruke gamle maskiner i skolen som er for dårlig andre
4822 steder i kommunen der de ikke bruker Skolelinux. Levetiden på en
4823 datamaskin blir
3-
5 år lenger med Skolelinux. Vi kaller det for
4824 grønn IT, miljøvennlig IT."
4827 <p>Her er det mulighet for flere kommuner å få et godt IT-system på
4828 skolene, hvis de er villige til å forsøke. De som ikke har kompetanse
4829 innomhus kan kjøpe det fra en av de kommersielle leverandørene av
4830 Skolelinux-tjenester, som
<a href=
"http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux
4831 Drift AS
</a> (der jeg er styremedlem). Komplett liste er tilgjengelig
4833 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">wikien
</a>.
</p>
4835 <p>Update
2012-
08-
16: Today I was allowed by Fremover to put the PDF I
4836 received from them with a copy of the article on the Internet. It is
4837 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/2012-07-23-fremover-narvik.pdf">now
4838 available
</a> in the Skolelinux press archive.
</p>
4844 Tags:
<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>.
4849 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4853 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Tips_for___bli_med_i_Skolelinux_prosjektet__som_faktisk_er_aktivt_.html">Tips for å bli med i Skolelinux-prosjektet (som faktisk er aktivt)
</a>
4859 <p>Jeg fikk nettopp spørsmål på epost om Skolelinux-prosjektet lever
4860 fra en som var interessert i å bidra, og måtte jo konstatere at i og
4861 med at spørsmålet ble stilt har prosjektet ikke lyktes med å formidle
4862 sin aktivitet. Her er det jeg svarte:
</p>
4865 <p>Jada,
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux-prosjektet
</a>
4866 lever, men det meste av utvikling foregår nå under paraplyen
4867 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu
</a> som er det
4868 internasjonale navnet på prosjektet. Dugnaden i Norge organiseres av
4870 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">Fri programvare i
4871 Skolen
</a>, og det finnes minst ett selskap som selger kommersiell
4872 support på løsningen (
<a href=
"http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux
4873 Drift AS
</a>, der jeg er styremedlem). Anbefaler at du melder deg på
4875 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org
</a>
4876 (og debian-edu-announce) og
4877 <a href=
"http://medlem.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">melder deg inn i
4878 foreningen
</a> for å få beskjed om aktivitet som planlegges. Det
4880 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering">utviklersamlinger
4881 i august
</a> og utover høsten.
</p>
4883 <p>Bidra gjerne med å spre ordet om Skolelinux. Det er alt for få som
4884 bidrar til pressedekning, bloggposter, twittermeldinger, etc. :)
</p>
4886 <p>Jeg antar du har funnet
4887 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju/">bloggserien
4888 min med intervjuer
</a>. Det er antagelig også interessant for deg å
4889 følge med på
<a href=
"http://planet.skolelinux.org/">Planet
4892 <p>Hm, jeg burde vel blogge alle disse lenkene slik at de blir enklere
4895 <p>Herved gjort. :)
</p>
4901 Tags:
<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>.
4906 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4910 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg
</a>
4916 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4917 Skolelinux
</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
4918 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
4919 country Sweden. This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
4920 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
4921 to adjust and scale the just released
4922 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
4923 Wheezy
</a> setup to his liking. He granted me an interview, and I am
4924 happy to share his answers with you here.
</p>
4926 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
4928 <p>I'm a
44 year old country guy that have been working
12 years at
4929 the same school as
50% IT-manager and
50% Teacher. My educational
4930 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
4931 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups. In
4932 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
4933 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
4934 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
4935 perspective when working with IT.
</p>
4937 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4938 project?
</strong></p>
4940 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
4941 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
4942 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
4943 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
4944 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
4945 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
4947 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4950 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
4951 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
4952 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
4953 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
4954 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
4955 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
4956 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
4957 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
4958 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
4959 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
4960 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
4961 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
4962 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
4963 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
4964 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
4965 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
4966 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
4967 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time. Our
4968 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
4969 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
4970 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
4971 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
4974 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4977 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
4978 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
4979 year (
2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
4980 sound from working with them. It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
4981 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
4982 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.
</p>
4984 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
4985 install time. In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
4986 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
4987 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
4988 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
4989 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
4990 support for single-sign on. That will make the transition to free
4991 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
4992 need. No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
4993 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
4994 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes. We run a journalist
4995 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
4996 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association). Our
4997 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
4998 are done. This is important if you want to get a job.
</p>
5000 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
5001 magazines. We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
5002 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
5003 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
5004 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
5005 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
5006 edit and compile a newspaper. But politically at our school we are not
5007 there yet. And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.
</p>
5009 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
5010 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
5011 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
5012 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
5013 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
5014 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
5015 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
5016 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise. Those
5017 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
5018 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
5019 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
5020 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
5021 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
5024 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
5025 will try. The problem is the students have certain expectations when
5026 they start an education towards a profession. So the programs has to
5027 look and feel professional. Good thing with radio, there are many
5028 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
5029 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
5030 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
5031 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
5032 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.
</p>
5034 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
5036 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days. I use almost
5037 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
5038 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
5041 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5042 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
5044 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
5045 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
5046 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
5047 flawlessly. The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
5048 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
5049 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
5050 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
5051 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
5052 the administration. It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
5053 open source, if the principal has to run Windows. It also creates a
5054 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
5055 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
5056 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
5057 desktop is essential. At least at our school, where we have mixed
5058 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.
</p>
5060 <p>Update
2012-
07-
09 08:
30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
5061 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
5062 article
<a href=
"https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
5063 management with Airtime
</a>,
5064 <a href=
"http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime
</a> which
5065 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
5066 <a href=
"http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell
</a> which claim to
5067 be complete radio broadcast automation solution. All of them seem
5068 useful to the aspiring radio producer.
</p>
5074 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
5079 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5083 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?
</a>
5089 <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
5090 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
5091 in schools and municipalities. We provide what the happy users of
5092 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
5093 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution. I
5094 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
5095 Steinberg in his blog post
5096 "
<a href=
"http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
5097 you recognize the million pound chair?
</a>". Read it and weep for the
5098 spending of your tax money.</p>
5100 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
5101 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
5102 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
5103 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
5104 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
5111 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
5116 <div class="padding
"></div>
5120 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html
">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
5126 <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu /
5127 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
5128 software. It is one of the packages not installed by default but
5129 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
5130 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
5131 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
5132 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
5133 receive. The software is
5135 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/
">named FET</a>, and it provide a
5136 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
5137 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
5138 both teachers and students. It is available both for
5139 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html
">Linux, MacOSX and
5142 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html
">the
5143 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
5147 <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
5148 You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
5150 <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
5151 (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
5152 (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
5153 (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
5154 (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
5155 (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
5156 sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
5157 (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
5160 <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
5161 semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
5163 <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
5164 GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
5166 <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
5167 with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
5169 <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
5171 <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
5174 <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
5175 and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
5176 non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
5177 (as separate sets)</li>
5179 <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
5180 (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
5183 <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
5184 demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
5187 <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
5188 <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
5189 <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
5190 <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
5191 <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
5192 <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
5193 <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
5194 <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
5195 <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
5196 <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
5197 students sets for each activity. (it is possible
5198 also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
5200 <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
5201 <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
5204 <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
5206 <li>Break periods</li>
5209 <li>Not available periods</li>
5210 <li>Max/min days per week</li>
5211 <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
5212 <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
5213 <li>Min hours daily</li>
5214 <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
5216 <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
5219 <li>For students (sets):
5221 <li>Not available periods</li>
5222 <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
5223 <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
5224 <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
5225 <li>Min hours daily</li>
5226 <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
5228 <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
5231 <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
5233 <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
5234 <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
5235 <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
5236 <li>Min/max days between them</li>
5237 <li>End(s) students day</li>
5238 <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
5239 <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
5240 flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
5241 <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
5242 <li>Not overlapping</li>
5243 <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
5244 <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
5248 <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
5250 <li>Room not available periods</li>
5253 <li>Home room(s)</li>
5254 <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
5255 <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
5259 <li>For students (sets):
5261 <li>Home room(s)</li>
5262 <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
5263 <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
5266 <li>Preferred room(s):
5268 <li>For a subject</li>
5269 <li>For an activity tag</li>
5270 <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
5271 <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
5275 <li>For a set of activities:
5277 <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
5284 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
5285 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it. If you
5286 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
5287 manually, check it out.
5289 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
5290 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/
2012/
03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/
">a
5291 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>. If you find FET useful, please provide
5292 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
5293 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos
">Debian Edu HowTo
5300 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
5305 <div class="padding
"></div>
5309 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Markus_Gamenius.html
">Skolelinux-intervju: Markus Gamenius</a>
5315 <p>Tidligere leder av
5316 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no
">foreningen som
5317 organiserer Skolelinux-dugnaden</a>, Markus Gamenius , har i vår vært
5319 <a href="http://www.dn.no/privatokonomi/article2345489.ece
">debattert
5320 skattepolitikk</a>, og det fikk meg til å høre om han kunne lokkes til
5321 å fortelle om hans inntrykk nå, etter at han ble lokket bort fra
5322 Linux- og <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Skolelinux</a>-verden
5323 for å overta familiebedriften. Her har vi hans betraktninger i dag,
5324 noen måneder etter at
5325 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/
2012/
20120311.html
">Skolelinux
5326 Squeeze</a>-utgaven ble gitt ut.</p>
5328 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
5330 <p>Jeg heter Markus Gamenius og er 40 år. Utdannet biolog med ymse
5331 fag på siden. Har jobbet som lærer der jeg var driftsansvarlig på
5332 Ulsrud VGS i Oslo. Senere eide og jobbet jeg flere år i Linuxlabs AS,
5333 som jeg solgte til Redpill Linpro AS (den gangen Linpro AS). I dag
5334 jobber jeg med ulike investeringer, hovedsaklig i eiendom, men også i
5335 en del ulike IT-relaterte bedrifter.</p>
5337 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
5339 <p>Fruen og jeg dro på en lengre seiltur i 2000, der jeg måtte ha "noe
5340 å gjøre" under hjemturen over Atlanteren. Jeg kjøpte et par bøker om
5341 Linux i en bokhandel i New York og ble veldig fascinert. Etter
5342 hjemkomsten begynte jeg å jobbe på Ulsrud VGS, som naturfagslærer, men
5343 som IT-interessert ble jeg fort en del av den nye IT-satsningen som
5344 skulle løfte Ulsrud og gi skolen en bedre rykte. Vi hadde ganske
5345 mange maskiner, som gikk på Win98 og to servere som ble oppgradert til
5346 Win2000. Systemene var ustabil og dårlige. På leting etter noe
5347 bedre, uten å knekke ryggen økonomisk, kom jeg over "Linux i Skolen"
5348 og Skolelinux. Jeg tok kontakt med miljøet og en gjeng møtte opp på
5349 skolen, der vi gjorde en liten testinstallasjon. Etter et par år var
5350 ryggraden på skolen Linux (Skolelinux) og vi hadde flere hundre
5351 maskiner, både tynne klienter (gamle og nye), bærbare (Debian) og noen
5352 stasjonære (Win2000). På et tidspunkt var Ulsrud den råeste IT-skolen
5353 og det irriterte skolesjefen i Oslo, da de satset hardt på
5356 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
5358 <p>Det som gjorde at vi fikk inn Skolelinux var ene og alene
5359 økonomiske. Det faktum at vi slapp å kjøpe masse nye lisenser og at
5360 vi kunne bruke gammel hardware. Alt i alt gjorde dette at vi sparte
5361 mye, men i stede for å bruke mindre på IT brukte vi det vi sparte på å
5362 skaffe mer hardware og på den måten gi det beste tilbudet i landet til
5363 våre elever. For oss som driftet var det himmel å ha et system som
5364 gikk å administrere sentralt og effektivt. Det var heller ikke så
5365 dumt at vi kunne "låse" maskinene mer effektivt enn vi kunne med
5366 Microsoft Windows, slik at vi slapp mye feil og problemer som ble
5367 forårsaket av "kreative" elever.
</p>
5369 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
5371 <p>Det vi slet med var mangelen av en del programmer lærerne ville ha.
5372 Husker ikke alle, men det var et knippe med pedagogiske programmer de
5373 ikke fikk. I dag tror jeg det problemet er langt mindre da det meste
5374 av disse kjøres gjennom nettleseren.
</p>
5376 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
5378 <p>Jeg bruker mye Apple i dag og er ikke så stolt av det, men jeg har
5379 både OpenOffice, Firefox og en del andre programmer på den bærbare.
5380 Firefox brukes mest av disse. På Apple-serveren hjemme bruker jeg
5381 HandBrake mye, og jeg har installert OpenWRT på flere av
5382 basestasjonene både hjemme og på jobben. I tillegg til det har jeg i
5383 flere år finansiert et prosjekt som heter
5384 <a href=
"http://www.found.no/">Found IT
</a>. Dette er et prosjekt der
5385 vi lager et rammeverk for søk, der alt vi bruker fri programvare. Det
5386 er Alex Brasetvik som er daglig leder i Found IT.
</p>
5388 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
5389 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?
</strong></p>
5391 <p>Når det gjelder IT og skole er fortsatt økonomi veldig viktig. Så
5392 man må oppfylle minimumskravene (ikke være best, men bra nok) og selge
5393 seg inn på hvor mye man sparer. Det betyr selvsagt at man sparer på
5394 lisenser, men også på driftsinnsats. Men nå når jeg ikke er en aktiv
5395 del av miljøet lenger hører jeg nesten ingen ting om fri programvare.
5396 Jeg stiller meg da spørsmålet om det har blitt stille rundt miljøet,
5397 eller om jeg kun så det tydeligere før når jeg var aktiv? Uansett er
5398 det for stille rundt Skolelinux-prosjektet nå.
</p>
5404 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
5409 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5413 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez
</a>
5419 <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
5420 another interview with the people behind
5421 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>.
5422 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
5423 helpers from Spain. His effort was the reason we added support for
5424 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
5425 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
5426 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
5427 Squeeze
</a> version.
</p>
5429 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
5431 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
5432 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
5435 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5436 project?
</strong></p>
5438 <p>At
2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
5439 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
5440 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
5441 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.
</p>
5443 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5446 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
5447 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
5448 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
5449 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.
</p>
5451 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5454 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
5455 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
5456 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
5457 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
5458 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
5459 technologies in school.
</p>
5461 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
5463 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
5464 between Iceweasel,
<a href=
"http://www.geany.org/">Geany
</a> and
5465 <a href=
"http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator
</a>.
</p>
5467 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5468 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
5470 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
5471 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
5472 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
5473 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.
</p>
5475 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
5476 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
5477 universities. So different strategies are needed.
</p>
5479 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
5480 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
5481 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
5482 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
5483 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
5484 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
5485 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
5486 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
5493 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
5498 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5502 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions
</a>
5508 <p>During my work on
5509 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
5510 based on Squeeze
</a>, I came across some issues that should be
5511 addressed in the Wheezy release. I finally found time to wrap up my
5512 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
5517 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
5518 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
5519 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
5520 system depend on tasksel tasks in
5521 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
5524 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services. Now with the Kerberos
5525 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
5526 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions. We should
5527 at least try to enable it for these services:
5530 <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
5532 <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.
</li>
5533 <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.
</li>
5534 <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.
</li>
5535 <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.
</li>
5536 <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.
</li>
5540 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
5541 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
5542 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
5543 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind
</li>
5545 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install. The split made
5546 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
5547 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.
</li>
5549 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
5550 touching the disk if the disk is too small. This is
5551 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #
653305</a> and the
5552 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
5553 it and upload. After this is done we need to adjust
5554 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.
</li>
5556 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
5557 time config). LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
5558 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
5561 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
5562 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
5563 up KDE login on slow networks.
</li>
5565 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
5566 change on first login. This is useful when handing out password on
5567 paper, to make sure only the user know the password. This require
5568 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.
</li>
5570 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
5571 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
5572 familiar with GUIs. This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
5573 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..
</li>
5575 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
5576 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses). None of the
5577 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.
</li>
5579 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
5580 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
5581 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.
</li>
5583 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
5584 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol. The hook was
5585 requested in
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
5586 #
588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy. We might need to write a
5587 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.
</li>
5589 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
5592 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers
</li>
5593 <li>consider dropping xpaint
</li>
5594 <li>and probably more?
</li>
5597 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly. This is
5598 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
5599 examples too. For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
5600 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
5601 some GUI to do this. Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
5602 could consider using their packages. At the moment we have some
5603 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
5604 for the LTSP chroot).
</li>
5607 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options. We
5608 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
5609 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
5612 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
5613 interesting educational packages. We should work on the package
5614 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
5615 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
5616 new applications with a simple mouse click.
</li>
5618 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
5619 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
5620 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
5621 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled. We should
5622 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
5623 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.
</li>
5625 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
5626 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
5627 There are at least three implementations,
5628 <a href=
"italc.sourceforge.net/">italc
</a>,
5629 <a href=
"http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula
</a> og
5630 <a href=
"http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes
</a> and we should pick one of
5631 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school. The challenges is
5632 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
5633 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
5636 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
5637 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
5638 the Debian Edu network. Not quite sure how. Perhaps we should
5639 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
5640 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
5641 configuration and data with the central server. This should be
5646 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
5653 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5658 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5662 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel
</a>
5668 <p>Back in
2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
5669 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
5670 mailing list. He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
5671 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
5672 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
5673 Squeeze
</a> version.
</p>
5675 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
5677 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am
38 years old and live near Kiel,
5678 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
5679 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
5682 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
5683 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
5684 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
5685 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
5686 becoming an osteopath.
</p>
5688 <p>Starting in
2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
5689 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
5690 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
5691 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
5692 skills with communication skills.
</p>
5694 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5695 project?
</strong></p>
5697 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
5698 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
5699 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
5700 people said. From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
5701 distributions that target being used for school networks.
</p>
5703 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
5704 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
5705 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between
12/
2010 and
03/
2011 we
5706 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
5707 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
5708 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
5709 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
5710 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
5711 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.
</p>
5713 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
5714 people. People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
5715 protection experts, other IT professionals.
</p>
5717 <p>We came to two conclusions:
</p>
5719 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
5720 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
5721 by
100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
5722 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
5723 IT solution. The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
5724 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
5725 possible. In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
5726 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
5727 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
5728 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
5731 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
5732 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
5733 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
5734 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
5735 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
5736 tries to provide an approach for this.
</p>
5738 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
5739 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
5740 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
5741 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
5742 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
5745 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
5746 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
5747 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
5748 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
5749 non-existent until
2010/
2011.
</p>
5751 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
5752 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
5753 avoidance do exist.
</p>
5755 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
5756 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
5757 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
5758 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
5759 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
5760 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
5761 and probably a gain for all.
</p>
5763 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5766 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
5767 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
5768 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
5769 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
5770 project communication, honest communication within the group of
5771 developers, etc.
</p>
5773 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5776 <p>Every coin has two sides:
</p>
5778 <p>Technically:
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
5779 #
311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
5780 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
5781 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
5782 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
5783 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
5786 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
5787 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
5788 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
5789 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
5790 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
5791 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
5792 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
5793 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
5794 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
5795 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.
</p>
5797 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
5799 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.
</p>
5801 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
5802 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
5803 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.
</p>
5805 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In
2010 I started the
5806 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
5807 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
5808 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.
</p>
5810 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
5811 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
5812 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
5813 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
5816 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.
</p>
5818 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5819 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
5821 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
5828 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
5833 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5837 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter
</a>
5843 <p>In
2003, a German teacher showed up on the
5844 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
5845 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
5846 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils. His name was Ralf
5847 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
5848 since then, helping to make sure the
5849 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
5850 Squeeze
</a> release became as good as it is..
</p>
5852 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
5854 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
5855 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past
12
5856 years (since
2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
5857 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
5858 O- or A-level ("Abitur"). For quite as long, I've been taking care of
5859 our computer network.
</p>
5861 <p>Now, in my early
40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
5862 spare time together with my wife, our son (
3 years) and our daughter
5865 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5866 project?
</strong></p>
5868 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
5869 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
5870 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
5871 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
5872 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt,
2005 (IIRC). Few
5873 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
5874 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others. For more
5875 than
7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
5876 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
5877 approximately
50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
5878 locally installed Skolelinux image. As a consequence, I joined quite
5879 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
5880 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
5881 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.
</p>
5883 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5886 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
5887 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
5888 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
5889 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
5890 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
5891 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
5892 labs). Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
5893 administration costs tend towards zero.
</p>
5895 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5898 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
5899 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
5900 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
5901 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
5902 office packages or desktop environments. These schools have the
5903 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
5904 capacity to do so. Another issue is that Debian release cycles
5905 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
5906 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
5907 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
5908 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
5909 i.e. harder to understand for novices.
</p>
5911 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
5913 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
5914 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
5915 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)
</p>
5917 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5918 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
5922 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
5923 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
5924 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
5927 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
5928 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
5929 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
5930 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
5931 share among German Skolelinux schools.
</li>
5933 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
5934 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
5935 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.
</li>
5937 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
5938 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
5939 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
5940 shared world wide (school books e.g.).
</li>
5942 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
5943 office suites is much above
20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
5944 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.
</li>
5946 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.
</li>
5948 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
5949 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
5950 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials. And
5951 keep sending documents in ODF formats.
</li>
5959 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
5964 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5968 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Alf_Tonny_B_tz.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Alf Tonny Bätz
</a>
5974 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux-prosjektets
</a>
5975 musiker og mannen bak
5976 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals/Rosegarden/">opplæringsdokumentene
5978 (
<a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/nb/rosegarden-manual.html">norsk
5979 utgave
</a>) for musikklærere, Alf Tonny Bätz, er neste mann ut i min
5980 intervjurunde av folkene bak Skolelinux-løsningen. Jeg har kjent Alf
5981 Tonny siden vi møttes som barn på påskefjellet i Ofoten, og ble
5982 gledelig overrasket da han dukket opp i Skolelinux-prosjektet etter å
5983 ikke ha sett noe til ham på mange år.
</p>
5985 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?
</strong></p>
5987 <p>Jeg er utdannet kokk av yrke, og har utøvet yrket i
12 år. Men
5988 etter at ryggen sa takk før seg, studerte jeg nettverksadministrasjon
5989 ved Næringsakademiet i Bergen årene
2008-
2009 slik at jeg kunne
5990 forfølge en av mine største interesser - data. Til daglig jobber jeg
5991 ved
<a href=
"http://www.narvikskolen.no/parken/">Parken
5992 ungdomsskole
</a> med å drifte skolens PC-er. Har også litt
5993 musikkundervisning.
</p>
5995 <p>Mitt mål er å bevisstgjøre musikklærene mulighetene med de frie
5996 programmene som finnes i Skolelinux, blant annet Rosegarden.
</p>
5998 <p>Har i mange år drevet med musikk og en av grunnen til at Rosegarden
5999 falt i smak for min del, var fordi denne fungere og ligner mest på
6000 Windows-programmet (cubase) jeg jobbet mye med da jeg i mine yngre
6001 dager var «Windows fanatiker». Ble introdusert til Linux av en kompis
6002 av meg for omtrent
14 år siden, og har bare blitt mer og mer glad i
6003 dette operativsystemet.
</p>
6005 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?
</strong></p>
6007 <p>Da jeg ble sykemeldt fra min gamle jobb, og måtte omskoleres,
6008 havnet jeg i
2007 sammen med Viggo Fedreheim på IKT-avdelingen i
6009 Narvik kommune, der ble jeg for første gang introdusert til
6010 Skolelinuxprosjektet.
</p>
6012 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
6014 <p>Skolelinux er enkelt å holde i drift og masse flotte programmer som
6015 geogebra, ktouch og kgeografi følger med pakken. Man kan ta i bruk
6016 gamle PC-er igjen, slik at skoler med dårlig råd får opp en brukbar
6017 PC-park. PC-er som er ca
6-
9 år gamle fungere tilfredstillende, bare
6018 de har
512 MB RAM eller mer.
</p>
6020 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
6022 <p>Ulempene er at noen av de pedagogiske programmene som lærene ønsker
6023 å bruke fungere dårlig med Linux. Mye pga. av at disse programmene
6024 blir ikke laget til Linuxbaserte operativsystemer.
</p>
6026 <p>Video- og bilde-redigering har dessverre en del mangler, mange av
6027 programmene har en tendens til og krasje. Det gjelder blant annet
6028 <a href=
"http://www.kdenlive.org/">kdenlive
</a> og
6029 <a href=
"http://www.openshotvideo.com/">openshot
</a>, for å nevne
6030 noen. De er ikke stabile nok. Når elevene kommer med filmsnutter de
6031 ønsker og jobbe med, så godtar ikke programmene filene, og når elevene
6032 jobber med redigering bare krasjer programmene uten forvarsel. Det er
6033 for vanskelig å få noe som bare fungerer ut av boksen her. Når en elev
6034 plugger inn et videokamera eller fotoapparat så er det alltid noe som
6035 ikke vil fungere. Programmene godtar ikke format, godtar ikke
6036 kameraet, osv., osv. Det er dessverre med på og dra ned en positiv
6037 opplevelse av bruk av fri programvare.
</p>
6039 <p>Man må ofte bruke flere en et video redigerings program før og få
6040 fullført en ønsket oppgave.
</p>
6044 <p>Hvis det ene programmet ikke vil ta i mot videofilen klarer et
6045 annet det, men det programmet som klarer det kan ikke gjøre de samme
6046 oppgavene som det programmet som ikke ville ta i mot filen,
6047 Tilsvarende er det med foto, man må bruke flere programmer for å få
6048 et ferdig resultat. Til dags dato har jeg enda ikke funnet et video-
6049 og fotoprogram som kan tilfredstillende fullføre en oppgave.
</p>
6051 <p>Så man kan klare og fullføre en oppgave, men i verste fall må man
6052 innom
3-
4 programmer for å få det til. Så jeg har enda ikke til dags
6053 dato sett at et program fungere
100% til alt.
</p>
6055 <p>Det programmet jeg har best erfaring til er
6056 <a href=
"http://cinelerra.org/">cinelerra
</a>, men dessverre har det
6057 også tendenser og krasje av og til uten grunn.
</p>
6059 Lydsystemet kan også være et mareritt. Konkret snakker jeg om når du
6060 bruker for eksempel et smartboard, så følger det med USB-lydkort på
6061 disse. Problemet ligger her i at systemet ikke vil velge rett
6062 lydkort, så man må inn med padevchooser for å sette opp PulseAudio
6063 til og velge at USB-lydkortet skal brukes. Det blir for tungvindt for
6064 lærene, de ønsker at ting skal fungere med en gang. (min løsning på
6065 det problemet ble at jeg måtte deaktivere lydkortet som fantes på
6066 maskinen) men da må man bestandig slå på smartboard-tavla.
6068 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
6070 Programmene jeg bruker mest av er: Rosegarden, jack, qsynth, audacity,
6071 k3b, openttd og libreoffice.
6073 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
6074 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?
</strong></p>
6076 Jeg tror det må bevisstgjøring av Skolene til, dvs. reklamere høylytt
6077 og fortelle og vise de andre skolene at frie programvarer faktisk
6078 fungere. Jeg trur faktisk mange ikke vet at det finnes frie
6085 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
6090 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6094 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner
</a>
6100 <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
6101 publish another interview with the people behind
6102 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>.
6103 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
6104 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
6105 details get right before release.
6107 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
6109 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm
49 years old and living in
6110 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany. I worked nearly
20 years as
6111 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
6112 international company for machinery and equipment. Since
2011 I'm a
6113 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
6114 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer. From April this year
6115 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
6116 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.
</p>
6118 <p>My first contact with linux was around
1993. Since that time I used
6119 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
6120 home since
2006.
</p>
6122 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6123 project?
</strong></p>
6125 <p>Once a day in the early year of
2001 when I wanted to fetch my
6126 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
6127 middle of
20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
6128 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
6129 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
6130 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".
</p>
6132 <p>Some weeks later every of the
10 classrooms had one computer
6133 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
6134 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
6135 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
6136 and with a lot of fun. About one year later the school was connected
6137 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
6138 building. That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
6139 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
6140 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
6141 costs for things like licence and software. So I searched for a
6142 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
6143 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
6144 prerelease
32 I first tried out for being used at the school. I
6145 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
6146 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
6147 Bielefeld in December of
2006.
</p>
6149 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6152 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
6153 for me as today.
</p>
6155 <p>In the past there were advantages like:
</p>
6159 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
6160 they had little money to spent for computers and software.
</li>
6162 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
6165 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
6166 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
6167 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
6168 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
6171 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
6176 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
6177 came up in this way:
</p>
6181 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
6184 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
6185 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
6186 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.
</li>
6188 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
6189 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
6190 interfaces used in the past.
</li>
6192 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
6193 different needs.
</li>
6195 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.
</li>
6197 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
6198 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
6199 is sharing knowledge and minds.
</li>
6201 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
6202 solved today by Debian Edu.
</li>
6206 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6211 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
6212 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
6213 whole municipality areas.
</li>
6215 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
6216 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
6219 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.
</li>
6223 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
6225 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
6226 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
6227 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
6228 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
6229 need from the KDE environment. On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
6230 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.
</p>
6232 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
6233 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
6234 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
6235 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
6236 and the whole family. I probably forgot something.
</p>
6238 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6239 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
6241 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
6242 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
6243 countries and areas all over the world.
</p>
6249 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
6254 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6258 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forskning___GPL_gir_lokal_frihet_og_kontroll_gjennom_omfordeling_av_makt_fra_produsent_til_bruker_.html">Forskning: "GPL gir lokal frihet og kontroll gjennom omfordeling av makt fra produsent til bruker"
</a>
6264 <p>Da jeg googlet etter noe annet kom jeg tilfeldigvis over
6265 <a href=
"http://www.duo.uio.no/sok/work.html?WORKID=58309">en
6266 hovedfagsoppgave
</a> ved Universitetet i Oslo som diskuterer verdien
6267 av GPLs fire friheter for brukerne av IT-systemer. Jeg ble fascinert
6268 over det som presenteres der. Her er sammendraget:
</p>
6272 <p>Motivasjonen til å skrive denne oppgaven er en personlig undring
6273 over hvorfor det primært, og ofte eksklusivt, fokuseres på det
6274 økonomiske aspektet ved utredninger om fri programvare er et godt valg
6275 for det offentlige. Fri og produsenteid programvare bygger på
6276 fundamentalt forskjellige ideologier som kan ha implikasjoner utover
6277 økonomiske kostnader. Kunnskapskulturen som er med på å definere fri
6278 programvare er basert på åpenhet, og er en verdi i seg selv.
</p>
6280 <p>Oppgavens tema er programvarelisensen GPL og frihet. GPL-lisensiert
6281 programvare gir visse friheter i forhold til produsenteid
6282 programvare. Mitt spørsmål er om, og eventuelt i hvilken utstrekning,
6283 disse frihetene blir benyttet av ulike brukere og hvordan de
6284 manifesterer seg for disse brukerne. Sentrale spørsmål i oppgaven
6288 <li>Hvordan fordeles handlekraft gjennom lisensieringen av programvaren?
</li>
6289 <li>Hvilke konsekvenser har programvarelisensen for de ulike brukere?
</li>
6292 <p>Fri programvare gir blant annet brukeren mulighet til å studere og
6293 modifisere kildekoden. Denne formen for frihet erverves gjennom
6294 kunnskap og krever at brukeren også er en ekspert. Hva skjer med
6295 frihetene til GPL når sluttbrukeren er en annen? Dette diskuteres i
6296 dialog med informantene.
</p>
6298 <p>Jeg har i denne oppgaven samlet inn intervjudata fra IKT-ansvarlige
6299 ved grunnskolene i Nittedal kommune, driftsansvarlig og IKT-veilederen
6300 for skolene i kommunen, samt IKT-koordinator for utdanning i Akershus
6301 fylkeskommune og bokmåloversettere av OpenOffice.org. Den empiriske
6302 delen av oppgaven er delt inn i to seksjoner; den første omhandler
6303 operativsystemet Skolelinux, den andre kontorprogrampakken
6306 <p>Som vi vil se gir GPL lokal frihet og kontroll gjennom omfordeling
6307 av makt fra produsent til bruker. Brukerens makt analyseres gjennom
6308 begrepene brukermedvirkning og handlingsfrihet. Det blir også lagt
6309 vekt på strukturelle forhold rundt bruken av teknologi, og spesielt de
6310 økonomiske begrepene nettverkseksternaliteter, innlåsing og
6311 stiavhengighet. Dette er begreper av spesiell nytte når objektet som
6312 omsettes eller distribueres er et kommunikasjonsprodukt, fordi verdien
6313 til et slikt gode for en potensiell bruker avhenger av antall
6314 eksisterende brukere av godet. I tilknytning til denne problematikken
6315 inneholder oppgaven også en diskusjon rundt åpne standarder og
6318 <p>Oppgaven konkluderer med at de «fire frihetene» som GPL-lisensen er
6319 laget for å beskytte er av avgjørende betydning for bruken av
6320 OpenOffice.org og Skolelinux, i Akershus fylkeskommune såvel som i
6321 skolene i Nittedal. Distribusjonen av handlekraft er ikke helt
6322 symmetrisk. Det er først og fremst de profesjonelle utviklerne i
6323 Skolelinux som direkte kan nyttiggjøre seg friheten til å endre kode,
6324 mens en sluttbruker som Nittedal kommune nyttiggjør seg den økonomiske
6325 friheten til å kunne distribuere programmene. Det er imidlertid også
6326 slik at ingen aktør klarer seg uten alle disse «frihetene».
</p>
6329 <p>Jeg fant også en masteroppgave fra
2006, men der ligger ikke
6330 komplett oppgave tilgjengelig. På tide å holde et øye med
6331 <a href=
"http://www.duo.uio.no/sok/search.html?q=skolelinux">Skolelinux-søket
</a>
6339 Tags:
<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>.
6344 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6348 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt
</a>
6354 <p>Behind
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
6355 Skolelinux
</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
6356 setting together all the pieces. This time I present to you Andreas
6357 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
6358 years. He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
6359 up in the recently released
6360 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
6361 Edu Squeeze
</a> version.
</p>
6363 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
6365 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany. After
6366 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
6367 Quantum Optics. After that I worked some years in an optics company.
6368 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
6369 teaching
10 to
19 years old kids at school. I teach math, physics,
6370 information technology and science/technology.
</p>
6372 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6373 project?
</strong></p>
6375 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
6376 project because of my interest in education and Debian. Within the
6377 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
6380 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6383 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
6384 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
6387 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6390 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
6391 downside, too. In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
6392 setup, if you need or want that. Further more, it is not easily
6393 possible to upgrade the system to a new release. It takes much too
6394 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
6395 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
6396 rather small and often busy elsewhere.
</p>
6398 <p>The
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN
</a>
6399 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.
</p>
6401 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
6403 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
6404 on all my machines. For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
6405 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing. At school I
6406 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.
</p>
6408 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6409 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
6411 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
6412 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
6413 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader". The school
6414 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
6415 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats. Even
6416 free browsers do not work for the school administration. Publishers
6417 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.
</p>
6419 <p>To change this, political work is very important. Parts of the
6420 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
6421 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
6422 the system. There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
6423 "Free/Open Standards". I am not sure if all the involved parties have
6424 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
6425 fraction takes them seriously. However it might slowly make free
6426 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.
</p>
6432 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
6437 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6441 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye
</a>
6447 <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
6448 like
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>,
6449 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
6451 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
6452 Edu Squeeze release manual
</a>.
6454 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
6456 <p>I'm a
44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
6457 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.
</p>
6459 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6460 project?
</strong></p>
6462 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user! The only
6463 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
6464 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
6465 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread... So I did a sweep
6466 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
6469 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6472 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6475 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it! In fact I
6476 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
6477 education system.
</p>
6479 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
6480 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
6481 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
6482 money on the latest hardware.
</p>
6484 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
6486 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
6487 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
6488 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).
</p>
6490 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6491 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
6493 <p>Well, I don't know. I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
6494 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
6495 you would hardly need a strategy.
</p>
6501 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
6506 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6510 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround
</a>
6516 <p>Recently I have spent time with
6517 <a href=
"http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS
</a> on speeding
6518 up a
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>
6519 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
6520 process I discovered something very surprising. The reason the KDE
6521 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
6522 due to the way KDE find application icons. I discovered that showing
6523 the Multimedia menu would cause more than
20 000 IP packages to be
6524 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server. Most of these were
6526 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response. Because the
6527 ping times between the client and the server were in the range
2-
20
6528 ms, the menus would be very slow. Looking at the strace of kicker in
6529 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
6530 the source of these NFS calls are access(
2) system calls for
6531 non-existing files. KDE can do hundreds of access(
2) calls to find
6532 one icon file. In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
6533 around
230 access(
2) calls.
</p>
6535 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
6536 directories, and the list of possible directories is large. In
6537 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
6538 and .xpm. The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
6539 mounted. Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
6540 requests. I am not the first one to discover this. I found a
6541 <a href=
"https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
6542 from
2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.
</p>
6544 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
6545 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
6546 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
6547 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
6548 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/. Finally, I add symlinks to
6549 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
6550 for them. This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
6551 one icon from several hundred to less than
5, and make the KDE menu
6552 almost instantaneous. I'm not quite sure where to make the package
6553 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.
</p>
6555 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
6556 and icon handling, but also the login process. Not quite sure how to
6557 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
6558 that is not really an option at the moment.
</p>
6560 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
6561 (at) lists.debian.org.
</p>
6563 <p>Update
2015-
08-
04: The
6564 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-edu/upstream/kde-icon-cache.git/">source
6565 of the scripts and associated Debian package
</a> is available from the
6566 Debian Edu github repository.
</p>
6572 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
6577 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6581 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News
</a>
6587 <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
6588 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a> by
6589 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News. The result was made public for
6590 non-subscribers today. I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
6591 for schools. Check out his article
6592 <a href=
"https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
6593 distribution for education
</a> if you want to learn more.
</p>
6599 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
6604 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6608 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer
</a>
6614 <p>Germany is a core area for the
6615 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
6616 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
6617 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
6619 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
6621 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
6622 Bochum, Germany. Since
1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
6623 "
<a href=
"http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
6624 Dortmund
</a>", a second chance school. Here, young adults is given
6625 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
6626 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
6627 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
6628 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
6630 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
6631 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
6632 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
6633 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
6634 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
6635 the end of April this year.</p>
6637 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6638 project?</strong></p>
6640 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
6641 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
6642 Project). At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
6643 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
6644 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
6645 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
6646 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
6647 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
6648 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
6649 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
6652 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
6653 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
6654 clients. The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
6655 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
6656 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
6657 the admin teachers.</p>
6659 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6662 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
6663 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
6664 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
6666 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
6667 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
6668 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp. It's of
6669 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
6670 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
6672 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6677 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6679 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
6680 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
6681 Annotator). At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
6684 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6685 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6687 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
6688 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
6689 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
6695 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju
">intervju</a>.
6700 <div class="padding
"></div>
6704 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Linux_skoler_har_h_yere_PC_tetthet_enn_landsgjennomsnittet___pressemelding_fra_FRiSK.html
">Linux-skoler har høyere PC-tetthet enn landsgjennomsnittet - pressemelding fra FRiSK</a>
6710 <p>I dag har <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no
">FRiSK</a>
6711 sendt ut følgende pressemelding basert på mine beregninger av
6712 PC-tetthet på Linux-skoler:</p>
6714 <p><strong>Linux-skoler har høyere PC-tetthet enn
6715 landsgjennomsnittet</strong></p>
6717 <p>Oslo, 30 Mars 2012</p>
6719 <p>Det er store forskjeller på skolenes digitale tilstand, viser
6720 undersøkelsen Monitor 2011 som er laget på oppdrag fra
6721 Kunnskapsdepartementet. Dette har ført til debatt om PC-tilgangen i
6722 skolen, og om de med Linux i skolen gjør det bedre bedre eller
6723 dårligere enn snittet i landet.</p>
6725 <p>Nå har vi tallene. Skoler med Linux har 36% større PC-tetthet en
6726 landsgjennomsnittet. På spørsmål hvorfor skoler med Linux har større
6727 PC-tetthet, observerer Paul Reidar Løsnesløkken som er IKT-konsulent i
6730 <p><blockquote>"Vi erfarer at klienter med Skolelinux har god funksjon
6731 til de er
8 til
10 år gamle. Dette er omtrent dobbelt så lenge som
6732 andre løsninger, og skolene får mer datautstyr for
6733 pengene.
"</blockquote></p>
6735 <p>Undersøkelsen baserer seg på 56 skoler som har gjort det offentlig
6736 at de kjører Skolelinux eller annen Linux-utgave. De kan også ha PC-er
6737 med Windows i skolenettet. Når en sammenligner PC-tetthetene på
6738 skolene i kommunene Flora, Harstad, Kongsvinger, Narvik, Nittedal,
6739 Nord-Odal og Randaberg, er det i snitt 2,28 elev pr. PC på skolene med
6740 Linux. På landsbasis er det 3.11 elev per PC i grunnskolen, i følge
6741 side 95 i Monitor-rapporten for 2011. Målingen viser dermed 36% større
6742 PC-tetthet i skoler med Linux.</p>
6744 <p><strong>Om Skolelinux/Debian Edu</strong></p>
6746 <p>Skolelinux har til hensikt å gi alle barn full tilgang til
6747 skoleaktuelle dataprogram på sitt eget morsmål. Derfor følger det med
6748 godt over 100 skoleaktuelle programmene laget for læring. De fleste
6749 programmene er oversatt til over 50 språk. Elevene skal også kunne
6750 studere alle sider av dataprogrammene. Derfor følger også kildekode
6751 med. Elever med interesse kan lære av eksperter som har laget
6752 systemet. Dette med enkelt programmering i læreprogram som KTurtle,
6753 til profesjonelle verktøy som Qt Creator eller Java.</p>
6755 <p>Skolelinux er laget for sentralisert drift, der alt teknisk
6756 administrasjon av alle skolene kan gjøres sentralt fra kommunehuset
6757 eller sentralt i en region. F.eks. drifter to-tre personer 70.000
6758 skoledatamaskiner på 200 skoler i delstaten Extremadura i
6759 Spania. Etter velykket bruk av Debian Edu i skolen, legger delstaten
6760 over til Debian på 40.000 datamaskiner i administrasjonen. Det er idag
6761 mange selskap som tilbyr profesjonell støtte til innføring og drift i
6762 Norge og verden.</p>
6764 <p><strong>Om FRiSK</strong></p>
6766 <p>Medlemsforeningen Fri Programvare i Skolen organiserer
6767 dugnadsprosjektet som står bak Skolelinux.</p>
6769 <p><strong>Kontaktperson</strong></p>
6773 <p>Leder av Fri Programvare i Skolen (FRISK)</p>
6775 <p>Epost: knuty at skolelinux.no
6776 <br>Mobil: +47 93 479 561</p>
6778 <p><strong>Referanser</strong></p>
6782 <li><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a></li>
6783 <li><a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/
">http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/</a></li>
6784 <li><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Download
">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Download</a></li>
6785 <li><a href="https://www.wis.no/gsi
">https://www.wis.no/gsi</a></li>
6786 <li><a href="http://iktsenteret.no/sites/iktsenteret.no/files/attachments/monitor2011.pdf
">http://iktsenteret.no/sites/iktsenteret.no/files/attachments/monitor2011.pdf</a></li>
6787 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/St_rre_PC_tetthet_i_skolen_med_Skolelinux_.html
">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/St_rre_PC_tetthet_i_skolen_med_Skolelinux_.html</a></li>
6788 <li><a href="https://init.linpro.no/pipermail/skolelinux.no/linuxiskolen/
2012-March/
018500.html
">https://init.linpro.no/pipermail/skolelinux.no/linuxiskolen/2012-March/018500.html</a></li>
6796 Tags: <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>.
6801 <div class="padding
"></div>
6805 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Roy_Arne_Myhre.html
">Skolelinux-intervju: Roy-Arne Myhre</a>
6811 <p>I serien med intervjuer av folk i
6812 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Skolelinux</a>-miljøet, får vi
6813 denne gangen høre fra en IKT-ansvarlig som har brukt Skolelinux i
6814 mange år, og vært storfornøyd med erfaringene så langt.</p>
6816 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
6818 <p>Mitt navn er Roy-Arne Myhre og jeg er 42 år. Jeg er ansatt hos
6819 <a href="http://www.sandskole.no/
">Sand skole</a> (Balsfjord kommune)
6820 og har stort sett vært det siden 1990. Jeg er IKT ansvarlig ved
6821 skolen i 40% stilling – 10% undervisning – musikk.</p>
6823 <p>Ved skolen er det ca 100 elever og ca 18 lærere + 4 assistenter i
6824 hele og delte stillinger. Alle lærerne har bærbar PC (dessverre med
6825 Win Vista) – assistenter har tilgang til egne. Vi benytter Fronter i
6826 det daglige arbeidet. Vi har ca 90 elevmaskiner som fungerer til
6827 daglig opp mot Linux server (XFCE) som driftes av
6828 <a href="http://www.bzz.no/
">BzzWare AS</a> via nett. Maskinparken
6829 består kun av brukt utstyr for elevene – og noe av dette begynner å
6830 bli vel gammelt selv som halvtykke klienter.</p>
6832 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med
6833 Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
6835 <p>Vi kom første gang i kontakt med Skolelinux rundt 1997. Den gang
6836 var det oppstart-disketter i hver maskin, ikke mulighet for lyd og
6837 video, gamle nettverkskort og mye plundring. Vi hadde en ihuga
6838 forelder med som pådriver, forsker og inspirator for hele opplegget.
6839 Selv ante jeg knapt at Skolelinux fantes, men han var av den
6840 utforskende typen, og fikk både meg og skolelederen i trua på at dette
6841 var ting som kunne fungere. Etter dette har det gått gradvis
6842 framover; flere maskiner er hentet inn gjennom bl.a
6843 <a href="http://www.greentech.no/
">Greentech</a> og utrangert utstyr
6844 fra høgskole / Avinor og private givere. Når maskinene ble for trege
6845 for nye Windows-versjoner, sto vi klare til å putte dem i nettverket
6846 vårt. Dette betyr at vi i dag har 1:1 dekning av maskiner på
6847 ungdomstrinnet og bedre enn 1:2 på barnetrinnet. Dette er vi veldig
6848 fornøyd med, og vi kan ikke se for oss hverdagen som ville vært
6849 alternativet ved bruk av Windows med sine lisenser pr. Bruker/maskin.
6850 Da ville vi nok vært tilbake til 1-2 maskiner pr klasserom med de
6851 negative konsekvenser det ville hatt for undervisningsformene våre. Vi
6852 kan ha en hel klasse i prosjektjobbing eller individuell jobbing
6853 samtidig – vi kan avholde tentamen og eksamen uten
6854 logistikkproblemer.</p>
6856 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
6858 Hvor skal jeg begynne... Stabiliteten er et nøkkelord - det bare
6859 virker. Har du først fått en server med Skolelinux opp og gå, så må
6860 det en maskinarefeil eller sabotasje til for å stoppe den. Det at man
6861 kan bruke eldre maskiner som normalt sett ville gått på dynga, er også
6862 glimrende - billig for skoler med dårlig økonomi og bra for miljøet
6863 siden vi gjenbruker utstyr i stedet for å skaffe nytt. Vi ville aldri
6864 hatt mulighet til å operere med det maskinantallet vi har pr i dag
6865 hvis det ikke var for Skolelinux - så tilgjengelighet er et annet
6866 nøkkelord. Et tredje moment er sikkerhet og brukertilgang. Alle
6867 brukerer opererer med egne brukernavn og passord, samt egne
6868 brukerområder som kan tilpasses for både enbrukertilgang og for
6869 samarbeid med andre.
6871 Elever har godt av å se at det finnes andre alternativer enn de som
6872 storindustrien selger på lisensbasis - på den måten trenes de opp til
6873 å se flere muligheter og å foreta valg ut fra flere opsjoner.
6875 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
6877 <p>Ulempene med Skolelinux er nok utbredelsen og mangelen på kjennskap
6878 til dette i skolenorge. De som skal ta økonomiske avgjørelser rynker
6879 på nesen og vil gå for det kjente og «sikre» selv om det koster mye
6880 mer. Man får rett og slett litt hetta av å ikke kunne noe – og unngår
6881 dette for enhver pris.</p>
6883 <p>I tillegg er mye av linux-systemet administrert av tekstkommandoer
6884 og er lite intuitiv/visuell for oss som ikke er «inne i»
6885 kildekodene». Så problemet er nok mye godt at de som
6886 utarbeider/drifter Skolelinux ikke helt klarer å sette seg ned på
6887 skoleadministratorens nivå når det gjelder problemer og
6888 utfordringer. Men dette er nok en utfordring alle administratorer
6889 sliter med uansett OS.</p>
6891 <p>Derfor har vi valgt å støtte oss til BzzWare AS for assistanse i
6892 drifta slik at jeg har kunnet konsentrere meg mer om kabling, skifting
6893 av komponenter, veiledning av lærere og elever, vedlikehold av
6894 skrivere og annen daglig drift.</p>
6896 <p>Elevene mestrer Skolelinux helt fint. Så lenge Internett
6897 (Iceweasel) og Libreoffice (Openoffice) fungerer er 90% av
6898 skolehverdagen velfungerende. I tillegg brukes jo en del av den
6899 pedagogiske programpakken bla. i forhold til matematikk og geografi,
6900 men det er såpass mye bra på nett om dagen, så disse programmene er
6901 mer som krydder å regne.</p>
6903 <p>Jeg skulle ønske neste versjon av Skolelinux kunne komme litt
6904 mindre stappet med programmer, for halvparten blir aldri brukt, eller
6905 fungerer ikke uansett. Hva med et pedagogisk panel av lærere/IKT
6906 ansvarlige som kunne sagt: disse programmene skal være standard, så
6907 får resten være slike man kan legge til ved behov – det kan lett bli
6908 en jungel å bevege seg i.</p>
6910 <p>Jeg ønsker meg også en mer grafisk versjon av
6911 <a href="http://bzz.no/lwat/trac/trac.cgi
">Lwat</a> hvor man kan krysse
6912 ut de som f.eks ikke skal ha internett-tilgang en dag pga
6913 eksamen/tentamen, samt en noe enklere brannmurløsning hvor man kan
6914 stenge for en del (få) sider på en enkel måte. Jeg liker godt
6915 Skolelinux sin ideologi om at filteret skal trenes i hodet på eleven –
6916 men av og til skulle jeg ønske at f.eks Facebook og Youtube kunne vært
6917 koblet vekk en periode for å få bedre utnyttelse av tid og
6918 ressurser. Disse to nettstedene er nok mye av årsaken til at mange
6919 lærere holder igjen databruken noe mer enn man kunne ønske.</p>
6921 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
6923 Jeg benytter nesten bare fri programvare til daglig. LibreOffice,
6924 Iceweasel (Firefox), Thunderbird til e-post og Gimp til
6925 bildebehandling. Vi har PHP-Nuke-oppsatt hjemmeside. Det eneste som
6926 jeg ikke har fått helt til enda er videoredigering - her må man vel
6927 innrømme at Mac er hakket over, men da er vi igjen over på å se hva
6928 som egner seg best, og ta valg ut fra det. Folk flest lever i
6929 villfarelsen om at regneark HETER Excel og tekstbehandling HETER
6930 Word. Dette er en misforståelse som jeg bruker mye energi på å
6931 diskutere og "åpne sinn" på Microsoft-slaver. Dessverre er det mange
6932 IKT-ansvarlige som også har låst seg på at det eneste saliggjørende er
6933 Bill G sine produkter.
6935 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
6936 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?
</strong></p>
6938 <p>For å komme lenger i utbredelsen av Skolelinux tror jeg det må mer
6939 fram i nasjonale medier, samt komme bedre fram hva økonomien i dette
6940 valget vil være – samt mulighetene. Fri programvare er en berikelse og
6941 gjør oss i stand til å utføre arbeidet i skolen uten å måtte legge
6942 igjen tusener på tusener i Bill Gates lomme.. Få ETT nettsted med
6943 forståelig veiledning av installasjon/oppgradering og ETT forum med
6944 konkrete feilrettinger og problemer, så tror jeg vi kunne kommet et
6945 par skritt framover. Ellers tror jeg bare at ildsjelene må fortsette å
6946 skinne – kanskje flere enn oss følger etter på veien.
</p>
6952 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
6957 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6961 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication
</a>
6967 <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
6969 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
6970 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
6971 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
6972 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
6973 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
6974 and also available from
<a href=
"https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo
</a>
6976 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
6977 Theora
</a> file. Check it out below.
</p>
6979 <p><video id=
"kmail-kerberos-movie" width=
"256" height=
"184" preload controls
>
6980 <source src=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg;
codecs=
"theora, vorbis"'
/>
6981 <p>Download video as
6982 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
</a>.
</p>
6989 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
6994 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6998 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/St_rre_PC_tetthet_i_skolen_med_Skolelinux_.html">Større PC-tetthet i skolen med Skolelinux?
</a>
7004 <p>Den siste uka har det vært en del skriverier om hvor store
7005 forskjeller det er mellom skolene når det gjelder digital kompetanse.
7007 <a href=
"http://www.digi.no/891660/bekymret-for-it-i-skolen">oppslaget
7008 i Digi
</a>. Diskusjonen fikk meg til å bli litt nysgjerrig på om
7009 Linux-skoler har større PC-tettet enn snittet i landet. Grunnlaget
7010 for diskusjonen har vært undersøkelsen
7011 <a href=
"https://iktsenteret.no/ressurser/monitor-2011-skolens-digitale-tilstand">Monitor
7012 2011</a>, som bruker informasjon fra
7013 <a href=
"https://www.wis.no/gsi">Grunnskolens Informasjonssystem
</a>
7014 (GSI). GSI-data kan lastes ned fra web og jeg lastet ned en Excel-fil
7015 (intet åpen standard-valg tilgjengelig) med navn på alle skoler,
7016 hvilke kommune de befinner seg i og hvor mange elever pr. elev-PC de
7017 har rapportert inn. For å få en ide om svaret trenger jeg deretter å
7018 vite hvilke skoler i landet som bruker Linux, slik at jeg kan slå dem
7019 opp i GSI og finne ut hvor stor PC-tetthet de har.
</p>
7021 <p>Jeg vet om skoler i Balsfjord, Flora, Harstad, Kongsvinger, Narvik,
7022 Nittedal, Nord-Odal, Randaberg og Sunndal som bruker Skolelinux eller
7023 andre Linux-varianter. Jeg tror det er flere enn de
56 skolene jeg
7024 har klart å identifisere de siste dagene, men har ikke klart å få det
7025 bekreftet med offentlige kilder.
</p>
7027 <p>Monitor
2011-rapporteres side
95 forteller at det "ifølge GSI
7028 (
20120-
2011) er det
3,
11 elever per datamaskin når vi tar med alle
7029 grunnskoler (
1.-
10.trinn)". For de
56 Linux-skolene jeg har klart å
7030 koble mot informasjon i GSI er det
2,
28 elever per elevdatamaskin,
7031 hvilket betyr at det er
36% høyere PC-tetthet på Linux-skoler enn
7032 landsgjennomsnittet. Linux-skolen med høyest tettet blant de jeg har
7033 notert -skole er Flora ungdomsskule i Flora kommune med
0.82 elev
7034 pr. PC (
482 elever,
588 elevdatamaskiner).
</p>
7036 <p>Skolelinux gir datamaskiner lengre levetid, og en kan dermed få
7037 flere operative datamaskiner for samme budsjett, i tillegg til en
7038 rekke andre fordeler. Kan det være forklaringen på forskjellen?
</p>
7040 <p>Tallene må tas med en liten klype, da GSI ser ut til å ha endel
7041 feilføringer. Jeg synes i hvert fall en skole med
423 elever og
9
7042 elevmaskiner ser mistenkelig ut. Eller en skole med
346 elever,
0
7043 elevmaskiner, som er et annet ekstremt eksempel jeg fant.
</p>
7045 <p>Takk til Sturle Sunde, Klaus Ade Johnstad, Ole-Anders Andreassen og
7046 Trond Mæhlum for innspill om skoler med Linux.
</p>
7052 Tags:
<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>.
7057 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7061 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby
</a>
7067 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>
7068 users are spread all across the globe. The second inteview after
7069 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
7070 Squeeze release
</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
7071 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.
</p>
7073 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
7075 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
7076 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
7077 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
7078 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
7079 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
7080 years ago we had about
50 schools interested in some way, but we
7081 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
7084 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7085 project?
</strong></p>
7087 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
7088 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
7089 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP
4 and GNOME. When LTSP
5 came
7090 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
7091 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
7092 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
7093 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
7094 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
7095 these things we decided to try it.
</p>
7097 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7100 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
7101 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
7102 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
7103 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
7104 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
7105 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about
25
7106 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
7107 proprietary software everywhere.
</p>
7109 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7112 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
7113 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
7114 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
7115 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
7116 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!
</p>
7118 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
7120 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
7121 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
7122 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
7123 use Ubuntu and an Android
4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
7126 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7127 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
7129 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
7130 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
7131 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
7132 applications". However, schools today are experiencing budget
7133 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
7134 XP. At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
7135 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
7136 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
7137 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
7138 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
7139 first
10,
000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in
2 hours.
</p>
7141 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
7142 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
7143 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.
</p>
7149 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
7154 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7158 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu
</a>
7164 <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
7165 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
7166 translated versions in sync. To do this we have come up with what we
7167 believe is a very efficient work flow.
</p>
7171 <li>The documentation is written in a
7172 <a href=
"http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki
</a> (see for example
7173 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
7174 Squeeze release manual
</a>) with support for exporting the content as
7177 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
7178 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
7179 with the translated text.
</li>
7181 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
7182 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed. They can
7183 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
7184 the translation. There is even a system in place to handle translated
7187 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
7188 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.
</li>
7190 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
7191 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.
</li>
7195 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues. The biggest
7196 issue is that
<a href=
"http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
7197 we use in moinmoin
</a> is not actively maintained. The docbook
7198 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
7199 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.
</p>
7201 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
7202 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
7209 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
7214 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7218 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUG_presentasjon__Skolelinux___ferdig_oppsatt_skolenettl_sning.html">NUUG-presentasjon: Skolelinux - ferdig oppsatt skolenettløsning
</a>
7224 <p>I dag presenterte jeg ny versjon av Skolelinux for NUUGs medlemmer.
7225 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/mypapers/20120313-skolelinux-squeeze.html">Lysark
</a>
7226 er tilgjengelige allerede og
7227 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">video-opptak
</a>
7228 kommer så snart videogruppa til NUUG får publisert den. Jeg kom på
7229 endel punkter om nye ting i Squeeze-utgaven under veis som jeg burde
7230 hatt med, og har sikkert skrevet noe tull på lysarkene som jeg ennå
7231 ikke har oppdaget. Denne presentasjonen ble smurt ihop på veldig kort
7232 tid, og jeg rakk ikke finpusse den. Håper den kan være lærerik
7239 Tags:
<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>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
7244 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7248 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__K_re_Nordby.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Kåre Nordby
</a>
7254 <p>Første ut i serien med intervjuer av folk i
7255 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>-miljøet etter at
7256 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">ny
7257 versjon av Skolelinux
</a> ble lansert i helga, er nylig valgte
7258 styremedlem i foreningen
7259 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">Fri programvare i
7260 Skolen
</a> (FRiSK) som organiserer
7261 Skolelinux-utviklingen og daglig leder i
7262 <a href=
"http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS
</a>, selskapet
7263 prosjektet opprettet som et tilbud til skoler som ønsket en
7264 kommersiell samarbeidsparter. Det bør nevnes at jeg er styremedlem i
7265 Skolelinux Drift AS og styreleder i selskapets hovedeier stiftelsen
7266 <a href=
"http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/">SLX Debian Labs
</a>
7267 som beskytter verdiene til Skolelinux-prosjektet, og kjenner Kåre den
7270 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?
</strong></p>
7272 <p>Jeg har siden januar
2010 vært daglig leder i Skolelinux Drift AS,
7273 som leverer support, installasjon, tilpasning, drift, og opplæring på
7274 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. Fra
2012 er jeg valgt inn som styremedlem i
7275 FRiSK. Min forrige jobb var som KAM i Redpill Linpro (som er en av
7276 eierne i Skolelinux Drift). Før det var jeg daglig leder i et eget
7
7277 manns konsulent selskap som også startet med fri programvare mot
7280 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?
</strong></p>
7282 <p>Jeg hørte om det først når jeg jobbet i Redpill Linpro. Men jeg
7283 har også en datter som går på en friskole, som også bruker Skolelinux.
7284 Som kjent har ikke friskoler de samme økonomiske rammebetingelsene som
7285 offentlige skoler, så for dem var det det absolutt beste alternativet.
7286 De anser også Skolelinux som et stabilt system, som bare går og går (i
7287 motsetning til det lille Windows-baserte nettverket de har på
7290 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
7292 <p>Sentralisert drift av tynne og diskløse arbeidsstasjoner. Således
7293 lydløse og raskere arbeidsstasjoner som er bedre i klasserommet.
7294 Lengre levetid på PC'er. Store besparelser på maskinvare og drift. Og
7295 så klart fjerning av alle lisenskostnader. Personlig synes jeg også at
7296 mange av programmene er bedre enn alternativene. Men dette er ofte en
7297 smakssak og avhengig om man må ha det man er vant til fra før.
</p>
7299 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
7301 <p>For lite kjentskap til løsningen. Noen ganger for dårlig
7302 kompatibilitet med arbeidsstasjoners/bærbare maskiner sine
7303 nettverksdrivere eller skjermkort. Men dette løser vi i skolene ved
7304 standardisering. Ellers er det få, om nesten ingen, av de kjente
7305 maskinvare / infrastruktur leverandørene til fylkes- / kommuner som
7306 tilbyr denne plattformen. Skal dette endre seg så må kommunene selv
7307 sette slike krav til leverandørene.
</p>
7309 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
7311 <p>Har brukt OpenOffice.org siden starten (
2001 ?), Kun Linux på
7312 desktop siden
2005. Bruker i dag Kubuntu, Libreoffice og ymse annet
7313 programvare til ulik kontorbruk som er lett å installere / teste via
7314 alle programarkivene som finnes.
</p>
7316 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
7317 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?
</strong></p>
7319 <p>Fortsette å presentere flere av de gode eksemplene hvor Debian Edu
7320 / Skolelinux brukes i kommuner og enkeltskoler. Vi må få bedre frem
7321 at det er mulig tilknytte både Windows og Mac klienter på denne
7322 plattformen (selv om det vil øke driftskostnadene). Dette gjøres
7323 mange steder. Spesielt er det mange lærere som ønsker å bruke
7324 Windows/Mac-bærbare, gjerne som sin private PC også. Det er også mulig
7325 for kommunen å integrere med Active Directory i stedet for OpenLDAP
7326 som kommer med ut av boksen (selv om også dette øker kostnadene).
7327 Dette vil muligens bidra til å fjerne noe motstand hos noen
7328 potensielle brukere / driftpersonell for å ta i bruk noe
7329 nytt. Fremveksten av mobile brukere og nettbrett går i vår favør.
7330 Brukerne blir kjent og vant til flere nye operativsystemer /
7331 brukergrensesnitt. Så utviklerfellesskapet bør jobbe videre med å
7332 integrere flere nye klienttyper, som ultra lav-kostklienter og
7333 nettbrett (blant annet fri programvare-alternativet
7334 <a href=
"http://makeplaylive.com/">Spark
</a> med
7335 <a href=
"http://www.merproject.org/">Mer OS
</a> og
7336 <a href=
"http://plasma-active.org/">KDE Active Plasma
</a>).
</p>
7342 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
7347 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7351 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!
</a>
7357 <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
7358 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a> based
7359 on Debian/Squeeze. The full announcement is
7360 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available
</a>
7361 from the project announcement list. Now is a good time to test if it
7362 you have not done so already.
</p>
7364 <p>I plan to present the new version at
7365 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
7366 meeting
</a> on tuesday. I look forward to seeing you there if you are
7367 in Oslo, Norway.
</p>
7373 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
7378 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7382 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker
</a>
7388 <p>Inspired by
<a href=
"http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
7389 interview series
</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
7390 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7391 community. This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
7392 more international audience.
</p>
7394 <p>While
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
7395 Skolelinux
</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
7396 Europe, there are users all around the globe. One of those far away
7397 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
7398 and contributor. It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
7399 work out of the box in Japan. I got him to answer a few questions,
7400 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
7403 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
7405 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
7406 and we have three lovely children, aged
15,
14 and
4(!) I am the IT
7407 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
7408 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
7409 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
7410 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
7411 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
7412 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
7413 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
7414 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
7415 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.
</p>
7417 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7418 project?
</strong></p>
7420 <p>In around
2004 or
5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
7421 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
7422 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
7423 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
7424 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
7425 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
7426 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
7427 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
7428 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
7429 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
7430 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
7431 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
7432 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.
</p>
7434 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7437 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
7438 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
7439 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
7440 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
7441 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
7442 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
7445 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7448 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
7449 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
7450 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
7451 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
7452 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
7453 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
7454 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
7455 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
7456 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is. A
7457 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
7458 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
7459 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
7460 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
7461 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
7464 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
7466 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
7467 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
7468 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
7469 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
7470 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music. At school
7471 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
7472 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
7473 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
7474 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS. We also
7475 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
7476 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.
</p>
7478 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7479 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
7481 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
7482 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
7483 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
7484 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
7485 file formats and Word than they did
5 years ago. The Edu aspect is
7486 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
7487 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu? But of course the main attraction is
7488 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
7489 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
7490 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
7491 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
7492 doesn't play flash, for example.
</p>
7498 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
7503 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7507 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze
</a>
7513 <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
7515 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
7516 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
7517 Debian Edu Squeeze. The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
7518 also available from
<a href=
"http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo
</a> and
7520 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
7521 Theora
</a> file. Check it out below.
</p>
7523 <p><video id=
"gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width=
"256" height=
"184" preload controls
>
7524 <source src=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg;
codecs=
"theora, vorbis"'
/>
7525 <p>Download video as
7526 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
</a>.
</p>
7533 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
7538 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7542 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze
</a>
7548 <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
7549 candidate for
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7550 Skolelinux
</a> based on Squeeze. The full announcement is
7551 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available
</a>
7552 from the project announcement list. Check it out if you
7553 need a software solution for your school.
</p>
7559 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
7564 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7568 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded
</a>
7574 <p>Many years ago, the
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
7575 / Debian Edu project
</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
7576 for making stop motion movies. The proposal came from a teacher
7577 needing such tool on Skolelinux. The project, called "stopmotion",
7578 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
7579 national aware with this great project. The project was initiated and
7580 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
7581 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad. They got in touch with people at Aardman
7582 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
7583 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
7584 animators around the globe. But as is usual after studying, both got
7585 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
7586 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now. Until last
7589 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
7590 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
7592 <a href=
"http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion
</a>.
7593 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
7594 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
7595 mean). I've been following
7596 <a href=
"https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
7597 mailing list
</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
7598 the future is encouraging. If you want to make stop motion movies.
7599 Check it out. :)
</p>
7605 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
7610 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7614 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Frode_Danielsen.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Frode Danielsen
</a>
7620 <p>I serien med intervjuer av folk i
7621 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>-miljøet møter vi
7622 denne gangen Frode Danielsen, som er leder for en IT-virksomhet som
7623 passer på IT-løsningen til flere kommuner i Hedmark-området, der noen
7624 av dem bruker Skolelinux i dag.
</p>
7626 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?
</strong></p>
7628 <p>Daglig leder i
<a href=
"http://www.hedmarken-ikt.no/">Hedmark
7629 IKT
</a>. En interkommunal IKT-virksomhet for Stange, Nord-Odal,
7630 Kongsvinger, Grue, Løten og Hamar kommuner. Vi er
32 ansatte
</p>
7632 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?
</strong></p>
7634 <p>Vi har vært i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet i flere
7635 sammenhenger, blant annet gjennom et par piloter som ikke har ført til
7636 noe konkret resultat. Nå sist gjennom satsingen på skolelinux i Grue,
7637 Kongsvinger og Nord-Odal.
</p>
7639 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong>
7640 <br><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
7642 <p>Jeg tror alle løsninger har fordeler og ulemper, litt avhengig av
7643 hvilket ståsted du selv har, så jeg unnlater å svare på dette.
</p>
7645 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
7647 <p>Ingen for min egen del, men vi har noe fri programvare i våre
7650 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
7651 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?
</strong></p>
7653 <p>Jeg tror ikke man skal ha en slik strategi. Man bør ha en strategi
7654 basert på å løse fremtidige behov, og velge løsninger som støtter opp
7661 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
7666 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7670 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze
</a>
7676 <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
7677 candidate for
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7678 Skolelinux
</a> based on Squeeze. The full announcement did for some
7679 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
7680 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available
</a>
7681 from the Debian development announcement list. Check it out if you
7682 need a software solution for your school.
</p>
7688 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
7693 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7697 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Knut_Yrvin.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Knut Yrvin
</a>
7703 <p>I serien med intervjuer av folk i
7704 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>-miljøet, får vi nå
7705 høre fra nyvalgt leder i foreningen
7706 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">Fri programvare i
7707 Skolen
</a> og en av stifterne av Skolelinux-prosjektet.
</p>
7709 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?
</strong></p>
7711 <p>Knut Yrvin her. Jobber i Nokia med å fremme rammeverket Qt og QML
7712 med tilhørende utviklerverktøy. Rollen er som leder av
7713 friprog-samfunn. I fjor var jeg med å legge om utviklingen av Qt til
7714 åpen forvaltning. På den måten kan alle som bidrar til Qt gjøre det
7715 på like vilkår. Nå er det
7716 <a href=
"http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2011/12/22/qt-5-%E2%80%93-a-look-back-at-the-numbers/">over
7717 1000 utviklere
</a> som bidrar til Qt. Med overgangen til åpen
7718 forvaltning er utviklingen av Qt mer åpen enn Linux-kjernen.
</p>
7720 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?
</strong></p>
7722 <p>Jeg var en av initiativtagerne til Skolelinux i
2001. Skolene slet
7723 med både utstyr og Internett-tilgang. De klarte ikke å møte
7724 forventningene til data i skolen. Driften av PC-ene var uholdbar. Som
7725 regel hadde rektor pekt ut en ivrig lærer til å passe på PC-ene,
7726 gjerne naturfaglæreren. Mange lærere jobbet mye ubetalt overtid for å
7727 vedlikeholde
30-
40 datamaskiner på hver sin skole. Med
300 elever og
7728 lærere som brukere, blir det fort mye mer arbeid enn de
4-
8 timene de
7729 kunne bruke på PC-drift. Skolene hadde kun en femtedel av
7730 IT-budsjettet som ble brukt på PC-ene i rådhuset.
</p>
7732 <p>Vi erfarte at skolene hadde mye datautstyr som stod ubrukt. Skolene
7733 manglet penger til Microsoft-lisenser. Selv med solide skolerabatter,
7734 kostet Microsoft-lisensene gjerne like mye som PC-ene i seg selv over
7735 en periode på
5-
6 år.
</p>
7737 <p>Viktigheten av språklig mangfold og pedagogiske programmer var også
7738 viktig for oss. Vi oversatte mange skoleaktuelle programmer til
7739 nynorsk, nordsamisk og bokmål. Dette lenge før andre tok denne
7740 oppgaven seriøst. Allerede etter ett år hadde vi etablert et helt
7741 arsenal av skoleaktuelle programmer på nynorsk, bokmål og
7742 nordsamisk. Vi spredde vår ide om språklig mangfold til de andre frie
7743 prosjekter internasjonalt. Resultatene ser vi i mange land. Det er de
7744 frie programmene som kommer på brukernes morsmål. Det er en av flere
7745 gode grunner til at fri programvare som LibreOffice, VLC, KDE og
7746 Firefox konkurrerer ut godseid programvare mange steder i verden.
</p>
7748 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
7750 <p>Fordelene er at Skolelinux tilbyr over
100 skoleaktuelle programmer
7751 på de norske språkene, uten ett øre i lisenskostnader. Systemet gir
7752 enormt lave driftskostnader med diskløse arbeidsstasjoner og bærbare
7753 med roaming. Skolelinux krever også mindre av maskinvaren.
</p>
7755 <p>Man kan fint kjøre systemet med
512 MB RAM på en bærbar PC sammen
7756 med en nettvideo i nettleseren og en presentasjon med
7757 LibreOffice. Konkurrerende system krever fort
2 GB RAM for å få til
7758 noe tilsvarende uten at det går ufattelig tregt. Skal man gjøre noe
7759 nyttig, krever konkurrentene til Linux mye større harddisk. Skoler har
7760 rapportert at de fort har fått
50% flere nye maskiner om de velger
7761 Linux. Dette i tillegg til de årlige besparelsene ved å unngå
7762 lisensbetaling til godseid programvare.
</p>
7764 <p>De lave driftskostnadene gjør at delstater i Europa har titusener
7765 av datamaskiner med Skolelinux i skolen. F.eks. er det under ti
7766 personer som drifter
70.000 PC-systemer i skolene i Extremadura i
7767 Spania. Det er slett ikke uvanlig at norske kommuner har
1500-
2000
7768 datamaskiner med Skolelinux. Driften tar ett årsverk. Slår flere
7769 kommuner seg sammen, kan de få samme sentraliserte stordriftsfordeler
7770 som delstater i Tyskland og Spania. Delstater som kjører Skolelinux
7771 på alle skolene. Bare noen få personer sentraldrifter titusenvis av
7774 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
7776 <p>Den største ulempen for Skolelinux er motstand mot Linux fra
7777 IT-sjefer i det offentlige. Dette er ledere som holder innlegg som
7778 snytt ut av evangelist-håndboka til Microsoft. Dette gjøres i ett
7779 arbeidsmarked med stor vekst i etterspørselen etter Linux-fagfolk i
7780 privat sektor. Etterspørselen har økt mer enn noe annet tekniske yrke
7781 siste tiåret. Åtte av ti ledere vil ansette Linux-fagfolk i
2012,
7782 rapporterer jobbnettstedet Dice.com på oppdrag av Linux
7785 <p>Det mangler
16.000 ingeniører og IKT-fagfolk i Norge rapporterte
7786 arbeids- og velferdsetaten NAV. Linux-fagfolk kan velge svært
7787 interessante jobber med alt fra apps på ledende mobilsystem laget med
7788 Linux, sky- tjenester eller web-applikasjoner. De raskest voksende
7789 teknologiselskapene i verden er ute etter Linux-fagfolk. Det være seg
7790 Amazon, Google, Facebook og IBM for å nevne noen. Linux er kritisk
7791 for å sikre veksten i markedet. Det sier seg selv at lønningene og
7792 jobbmulighetene er bedre enn for andre tekniske yrker.
</p>
7794 <p>Skal man lage apps for mobilen, smart-TV-en eller
7795 underholdningssystemet i bilen eller på flyet, er det Linux som
7796 gjelder. Med en slik konkurranse om Linux-kompetansen, kombinert med
7797 motstanden mot Linux hos mange IT-sjefer i offentlig sektor, så
7798 hindrer kommunene rekruttering av flere Linux- fagfolk. Skolene blir
7799 tvunget til å velge dyrere og mindre komplette IT-system. De har
7800 blitt hengende igjen slik IT var på begynnelsen av
2000- tallet. Dette
7801 fordi IT-ledere ikke har tilpasset seg markedet det siste tiåret.
</p>
7803 <p>Når det er sagt, er Skolelinux svært enkelt å lære seg også for de
7804 som ikke kan. Det viser alle lærerne som drifter systemet for
7805 hundrevis og tusenvis av systemer. Det meste er på plass rett ut av
7806 boksen. I tillegg er det solid med dokumentasjon med god hjelp på
7807 nettet. Det er mange kommuner som har ansatt en lærer som først lærte
7808 Skolelinux på sin skole, for så å drifte alle PC-ene i kommunen med
7809 Skolelinux. Det kan fort være snakk om
1000-
3000 datamaskiner på
10-
15
7810 skoler som sentraldriftes med en stilling. Står man ordentlig fast,
7811 kan man også kjøpe profesjonell hjelp fra selskap som støtter
7812 Skolelinux. Det er flere slike selskap i Norge og i utlandet.
</p>
7814 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
7816 <p>Qt SDK, LibreOffice, Firefox, VLC og KDE-skrivebordet. Dette på et
7817 Debian-basert GNU/Linux-system. Jeg bruker også noen morsomme
7818 3D-spill. Idag kan jeg velge mellom over
30.000 Linux-programmer. Det
7819 finnes ikke tid i livet å undersøke alle valgmulighetene. Derfor er
7820 det bra med Skolelinux i skolen, da utvalget av programmer er
7821 begrenset til hva som er aktuelt i skolefagene.
</p>
7823 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
7824 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?
</strong></p>
7826 <p>Vi må selge hele Skolelinux forhåndsinstallert på maskinvare i hele
7827 pakker med
50-
100-
1000 PC-klienter med servere. Dette kan selges til
7828 enkeltskoler eller hele kommuner. Pakken må inneholde tjenermaskiner,
7829 svært rimelige diskløse arbeidsstasjoner, nettbrett med Plasma Active,
7830 og bærbare med roaming. Alt er godt testet med Debian. I et slikt
7831 anbud er det mulig å legge til sentraliserte drifts- og
7832 støttetjenester.
</p>
7834 <p>Man bør også selge sky-tjenester som læreadministrative systemet
7835 Moodle og driftsovervåking. I tillegg så bør man slenge seg på med
7836 presentasjoner de gangene LibreOffice og andre friprog-produkter
7837 selges til kommuner.
</p>
7843 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
7848 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7852 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze
</a>
7858 <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
7859 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
7860 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
7861 on Squeeze. The full announcement is
7862 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available
</a>
7863 on the project announcement list. Check it out if you need a software
7864 solution for your school.
</p>
7870 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
7875 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7879 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Olav_Dahlum.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Olav Dahlum
</a>
7885 <p>I serien med intervjuer av folk i
7886 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>-miljøet, får vi nå
7887 høre fra et nyvalgt medlem i foreningen
7888 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">Fri programvare i
7891 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?
</strong></p>
7893 <p>Jeg heter Olav Dahlum, og er frilans oversetter, tester,
7894 prosjektleder og bruker av fri og åpen programvare som
7895 LibreOffice. Jeg er også et av styremedlemmene i FRISK.
</p>
7897 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?
</strong></p>
7899 <p>Jeg kom i kontakt med prosjektet i
2009, da jeg ble ansatt i
7900 stiftelsen Åpne kontorprogram på norsk for å oversette og teste den
7901 norske utgaven av OpenOffice.org. Arbeidet har hele tiden vært
7902 koordinert sammen med Skolelinux, og mange av de samme menneskene er
7903 involvert, så på den måten ble jeg en del av den utvidede
7906 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
7908 <p>Skolelinux handler i likhet med utdanningssektoren om å dele
7909 kunnskap med andre, og det er dette som er hovedstyrken til
7910 prosjektet. Selv om Skolelinux hovedsaklig er involvert i utvikling
7911 av programvare, er det også et sted der man kan utfolde seg uavhengig
7912 av bakgrunn og ferdigheter.
</p>
7914 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
7916 <p>Liten utbredelse og manglende støtte fra leverandører som leverer
7917 pedagogisk programvare til skolebruk. Kunne kanskje hatt flere
7918 verktøy som letter administrasjonen ytterligere, slik at også mindre
7919 erfarne databrukere kan utføre lett vedlikehold og rutinejobber.
</p>
7921 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
7923 <p>Jeg er nesten forpliktet til å si at jeg bruker LibreOffice... Jeg
7924 bruker forøvrig frie og åpne operativsystemer basert på
7925 operativsystemkjernen Linux, for tiden openSUSE
12,
1 med KDE4. Men
7926 hvis jeg skal dra fram noen flere eksempler så er nok Mozilla Firefox
7927 og Thunderbird to av de jeg bruker mest. I tillegg er jeg en flittig
7928 bruker av OpenSSH, Irssi, Midnight Commander, Git, Subversion,
7929 Translation Toolkit og Super Maryo Chronicles (litt gøy skal man ha,
7930 og med to håndkontroller liggende er det ikke til å unngå).
</p>
7932 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
7933 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?
</strong></p>
7935 <p>Vi må få leverandører av pedagogisk programvare med på laget, men
7936 også utvikle vår egen tilpasset det norske markedet. Det er også
7937 mulig å involvere utdanningssektoren direkte i arbeidet, for eksempel
7938 gjennom studentprosjekter der elevene selv er med å utforme
7939 programvare direkte eller indirekte gjennom aktive bidrag. Dette gjør
7940 ikke bare samarbeidet tettere, men fokuset på standarder og friheten
7941 til å velge sin egen løsning vil kanskje stimulere interessen for
7942 framtidig deltakelse i bransjen. Vi som driver med fri og åpen
7943 programvare ønsker oss ikke rene konsumenter, men tenkende og
7944 selvstendige individer som kan være med å skape sin egen fremtid.
</p>
7950 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
7955 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7959 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>
7965 <p>New in the Squeeze version of
7966 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> is the
7967 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
7968 based on their environment. We want all systems on the client to use
7969 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from
<tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat
</tt>, to
7970 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
7971 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings. The schools can
7972 change the global proxy setting by editing
7973 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat
</tt> and the change propagate
7974 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.
</p>
7976 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
7977 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
7978 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):
</p>
7981 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
7983 if (!isResolvable(host) ||
7984 isPlainHostName(host) ||
7985 dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
7988 return "PROXY webcache:
3128; DIRECT";
7992 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:
</p>
7995 http_proxy=http://webcache:
3128/
7996 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:
3128/
7999 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
8000 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
8002 <tt><a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/
</a></tt>,
8003 and insert this extracted proxy URL in
<tt>/etc/environment
</tt> and
8004 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf
</tt>. The perl script wpad-extract work just
8005 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
8006 javascript code is
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
8007 able to build
</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
8008 library. I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
8009 is frozen. An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
8010 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
8011 known alternative is known at the moment.
</p>
8013 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
8014 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
8015 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
8016 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
8017 feature when it is connected to other networks. And if no proxy is
8018 announced, direct connections will be used instead.
</p>
8020 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
8021 or security problem. But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
8022 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
8023 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
8024 distinction to be academic. If you are afraid of using the wrong
8025 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
8026 first place. In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
8027 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
8028 the network setup changes.
</p>
8030 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
8031 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
8033 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
8034 page
</a> for those that want to learn more.
</p>
8040 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
8045 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8049 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Axel_Bojer.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Axel Bojer
</a>
8055 <p>I serien med intervjuer av folk i
8056 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>-miljøet har jeg
8057 fått en av oversetterne som har vært med siden starten i tale.
</p>
8059 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?
</strong></p>
8061 <p>Jeg heter Axel Bojer og er datalærer, tysklærer, oversetter med
8064 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?
</strong></p>
8066 <p>Tror jeg så en annonsering på nettet i slutten av
2001 og ville
8067 være med som oversetter. Jeg kom med på en utviklersamling og
8068 prosjektet var da helt i starten. Det var spennende å være med mens
8069 prosjektet vokste til og utviklet seg.
</p>
8071 <p>Jeg har «alltid» vært språkinteressert og hadde nettopp startet med
8072 Linux og tror jeg tenkte det passet å bidra. Var også glad for å få
8073 en Debian-distribusjon, og ville gjerne bruke den selv. Til å begynne
8074 med brukte jeg først Mandrake og så Debian. Og siden jeg oppdaget at
8075 det ikke var noen mulighet for å bruke den som enkeltstående i lang
8076 tid, så gikk jeg etterhvert over til Kubuntu
</p>
8078 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
8080 <p>Løsningen er forholdsvis lett å sette opp, gratis, fri programvare
8081 og gjør det mulig å gjenbruke eldre maskiner. Det fine med Debian er
8082 at det er stabilt og har en veldig stor mengde programmer. Jeg liker
8083 også apt. :-) Jeg liker også friheten ved Linux og muligheten til å
8084 delta og forme sin egen datahverdag.
</p>
8086 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
8088 <p>Skolelinux er for lite kjent og for sent ute med å gi ut nye
8091 <p>Da jeg selv i hovedsak bruker Kubuntu, så kan jeg egentlig ikke
8092 svare så detaljert rundt ulempene med Skolelinux. Hovedårsaken til at
8093 jeg bruker Kubuntu er nok at da vi begynte med det mener jeg det ikke
8094 var noen annen løsning. «Vandrende arbeidsstasjon» mener jeg ikke
8095 fantes da. Dessuten ville jeg ha siste versjon, da den KDE-versjonen
8096 som var i Skolelinux den gangen var en god del enklere (tror det var
8097 KDE
2) var dårligere i mine øyne enn versjon
3.
</p>
8099 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
8101 <p>Jeg bruker blant annet Kubuntu, LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox,
8102 Kate,
<a href=
"http://comix.sourceforge.net/">Comix
</a> og Konsole. Og
8103 en hel haug andre ved behov :-)
</p>
8105 <p>Har oversatt Comix selv, men det er jo ikke skjedd noe med Comix
8106 siden
2009, så den er det nok bare jeg som har. Om andre vil ha den
8107 gir jeg den gjerne videre. Ser at noen har startet på
8108 <a href=
"http://mcomix.sourceforge.net/">MComix
</a> siden jeg så på så
8109 på dette sist, så nå er jeg igang med å teste og oversette den
8112 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
8113 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?
</strong></p>
8115 <p>Det viktigste er å forankre beslutningen i kollegiet og med de som
8116 er ansvarlige for å vedlikeholde og bruke datamaskinene. Flest mulig
8117 bør være med på å holde det (sosialt) vedlike, kjenne og støtte
8118 prinsippene. Som enkeltmannsprosjekt blir det lett veldig sårbart,
8119 særlig når (Skole)linux ennå i stor grad er en motkultur og ikke noe
8120 en stor nok andel av beslutningstakere, brukere osv kjenner til og
8123 <p>Jeg tror det viktigste er å fortsette å holde fri programvare godt,
8124 oppdatert, minimere antall feil, ha en god kontakt med brukerne og
8125 attraktivt og spennende programmer. Beholde alt som er bra og ha det
8126 tilgjengelig samtidig som man tilbyr det nyeste og rareste for de som
8133 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
8138 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8142 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night
</a>
8148 <p>Since the Lenny version of
8149 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>, a
8150 feature to save power have been included. It is as simple as it is
8151 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
8152 in the morning. This is done using the
8153 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night
</a> Debian package.
</p>
8155 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
8156 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts. For Debian Edu, this is done in
8157 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
8158 every hour from
16:
00 until
06:
00 to see if the machine is unused, and
8159 shut it down if it is. If the hardware in question is supported by
8161 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup
</a>
8162 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around
07:
00 +-
8163 10 minutes. If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
8164 try to turn on the client. The wake-on-lan option is only documented
8165 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.
</p>
8167 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
8168 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
8169 the common setup for a classroom. The nvram-wakeup method only work
8170 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock. I've seen old
8171 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
8172 starting from
0 (or was it
1990?) every boot. If you have one of
8173 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.
</p>
8175 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
8176 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment. For those without a
8177 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
8178 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night
</tt> to enable it.
8179 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?
</p>
8185 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
8190 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8194 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze
</a>
8200 <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
8201 publish the third beta version of
8202 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
8203 on Squeeze. If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
8204 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
8205 installing new machines, check it out. If you need a software
8206 solution for your school, check it out too. The full announcement is
8207 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available
</a>
8208 on the project announcement list.
</p>
8210 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
8211 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):
</p>
8215 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
8216 10.0.0.0/
8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
8217 the installation.
</li>
8219 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
8220 Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.
</li>
8222 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
8223 disabled queues are restarted every hour. This should cut down on
8224 the amount of manual administration needed for printers.
</li>
8226 <li>The set of initial users have been changed. Now a personal user
8227 for the local system administrator is created during installation
8228 instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
8229 and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
8230 membership. This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
8231 up to date on the system.
</li>
8235 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
8236 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home. I will use it look
8237 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
8238 final Squeeze release is published.
</p>
8240 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
8241 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
8242 gathering
</a> in Oslo. We will continue the work on the Squeeze
8243 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version. Perhaps I
8244 will see you there?
</p>
8250 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
8255 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8259 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze
</a>
8265 <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
8266 This is the sad fact of todays computers. In the next version of
8267 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
8268 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
8269 firmware blobs easier to handle. The common use case I run into is a
8270 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
8271 work, but there are other use cases as well.
</p>
8273 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
8274 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
8275 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
8276 during installation. This take care firmware for network devices used
8277 by the installer when installing from from local media. But for
8278 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
8279 not taken care of by this.
</p>
8281 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
8282 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware
</tt> which
8283 search through the
<tt>dmesg
</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
8284 firmware. The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
8285 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
8286 the requested firmware file(s) is installed. I have proposed to do
8287 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
8288 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#
655507</a>), to allow PXE
8289 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better. Run the
8290 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
8291 firmware packages.
</p>
8293 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
8294 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
8295 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
8296 included to be able to install at all. To fill the PXE installation
8297 initrd with extra firmware, the
8298 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware
</tt> script is
8299 provided. Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
8300 PXE initrd with firmware packages.
</p>
8302 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
8303 network cards working. For this,
8304 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware
</tt> is
8305 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs. It is used
8306 the same way as the other firmware related tools.
</p>
8308 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation. We
8309 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
8310 non-free software, and it is their choice.
</p>
8312 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend. You might want to give it a
8319 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
8324 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8328 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skjermbilder_fra_nordsamisk_installasjon_av_Skolelinux_Squeeze.html">Skjermbilder fra nordsamisk installasjon av Skolelinux/Squeeze
</a>
8334 <p>For morro skyld har jeg gjennomført en nordsamisk installasjon for
8335 neste utgave av
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>
8336 (Squeeze) og knipset skjermbilder av resultatet.
</p>
8338 <p>Som en kan se der er det noen oversettelser som mangler. Det hadde
8339 vært hyggelig hvis alle tekstene som vises i Skolelinux-installasjonen
8340 ble oversatt til nordsamisk, men for å få det til må noen som forstår
8341 språket melde seg til dyst. Det er mangel på nordsamiske oversettere
8342 av fri programvare. Hvis noen starter raskt, så bør en rekke å
8343 fullføre Wheezy-utgaven før den gis ut. :)
</p>
8345 <p>Se
<a href=
"http://d-i.debian.org/l10n-stats/">oversetterstatistikk for
8346 debian installer
</a> for detaljert status. Jeg har tipset
8347 <a href=
"https://lister.ping.uio.no/mailman/listinfo/i18n-sme">epostlisten for samiskoversettelser
</a>,
8348 men det har vært veldig liten aktivitet der de siste årene.
</p>
8350 <p><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/01-isomenu.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/01-isomenu.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8351 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/02-sme-lang.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/02-sme-lang.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8352 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/03-sme-place.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/03-sme-place.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8353 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/04-sme-keymap.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/04-sme-keymap.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8354 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/05-sme-profile.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/05-sme-profile.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8355 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/06-sme-autopart.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/06-sme-autopart.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8356 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/07-sme-popcon.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/07-sme-popcon.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8357 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/08-sme-rootpw1.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/08-sme-rootpw1.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8358 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/09-sme-rootpw2.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/09-sme-rootpw2.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8359 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/10-sme-firstuser.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/10-sme-firstuser.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8360 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/11-sme-firstusername.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/11-sme-firstusername.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8361 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/12-sme-firstuserpw1.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/12-sme-firstuserpw1.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8362 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/13-sme-firstuserpw2.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/13-sme-firstuserpw2.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8363 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/14-sme-part.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/14-sme-part.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8364 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/15-sme-debootstrap.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/15-sme-debootstrap.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8365 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/16-sme-tasksel.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/16-sme-tasksel.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8366 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/17-sme-wordlist.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/17-sme-wordlist.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8367 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/18-sme-tasksel.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/18-sme-tasksel.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8368 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/19-sme-ltsp.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/19-sme-ltsp.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8369 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/20-sme-grub.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/20-sme-grub.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8370 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/21-sme-finish-install.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/21-sme-finish-install.png" width=
"40%"></a>
8371 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/22-sme-finish-message.png"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-01-26-skolelinux-sme/22-sme-finish-message.png" width=
"40%"></a></p>
8377 Tags:
<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>.
8382 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8386 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze
</a>
8392 <p>The next version of
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
8393 / Skolelinux
</a> will include a new tool
8394 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp
</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
8395 the computers in a school without much manual labour. Here is a short
8396 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.
</p>
8398 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
8399 central server in the network. Next, PXE boot all the client machines
8400 as thin clients and wait
5 minutes after the last client booted to
8401 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server. When
8402 this is done, log on to the central server and run
8403 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
</tt> in the
<tt>konsole
</tt> to use the
8404 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP. The output
8405 will look similar to this:
</p>
8407 <p><blockquote><pre>
8408 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
8409 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [
10.0.2.2] id ether-
00:
01:
02:
03:
04:
05.
8410 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-
00-
01-
02-
03-
04-
06 [
10.0.16.20] id ether-
00:
01:
02:
03:
04:
06.
8412 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
8414 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8415 enter password: *******
8417 </pre></blockquote></p>
8419 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
8420 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
8421 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
8422 automatically generated names. The final step to set up the school is
8423 then to log into
<a href=
"https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa
</a>,
8424 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
8425 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
8426 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems. All clients that should be used
8427 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
8428 group. After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
8429 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
8432 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
8433 enabled this weekend. You might want to give it a try.
</p>
8435 <p>Update
2012-
01-
28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
8436 hosts, one need to add the option -a. I forgot to mention this in my
8437 original text, and have added it to the text now.
</p>
8443 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary
</a>.
8448 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8452 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Paul_Reidar_L_snesl_kken.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Paul Reidar Løsnesløkken
</a>
8458 <p>I serien med intervjuer av folk i
8459 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>-miljøet, har jeg nå
8460 lyktes med å få tak i en skolemann som ikke er aktiv med utviklingen,
8461 men likevel har vært med nesten siden starten av prosjektet. Jeg
8462 ønsker derfor velkommen til Paul Reidar Løsnesløkken, en mann med
8463 mange års erfaring i bruk av Skolelinux.
</p>
8465 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?
</strong></p>
8467 <p>Jeg driftet tidligere IKT løsningen for skolene i
8468 <a href=
"http://www.nord-odal.kommune.no/">Nord-Odal
</a>. I dag er jeg
8469 IKT-konsulent for hele kommunen og samarbeider med
8470 <a href=
"http://www.hedmarken-ikt.no/">Hedmark-IKT
</a> for best mulig
8471 tjenester til kommunen. Jeg har bakgrunn som elektronikkreparatør og
8472 grunnskolelærer og har tatt en del fag innen IKT, i hovedsak
8473 driftsfag. IKT i Nord-Odal kommune blir i dag driftet av Hedmark IKT
8474 som er et samarbeid mellom Løten, Stange, Grue, Hamar, Kongsvinger og
8475 Nord-Odal. Jeg er fortsatt "IKT-personen" på skolene i kommunen og
8476 følger opp og gjør enkelte mindre endringer der.
</p>
8478 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?
</strong></p>
8480 <p>Kommunen satset på Skolelinux i
2004. Jeg var ikke med i
8481 beslutningsprosessen den gang, men ble likevel med fra starten når
8482 dette ble levert.
</p>
8484 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
8486 <p>Fordelene med Skolelinux er rask oppstart, sentral drift av
8487 klientene, klienter som jobber raskt og effektivt, bedre
8488 funksjonalitet på eldre utstyr og en ganske god programpakke med fri
8489 programvare som følger med. Løsningen med halvtykke klienter gjør at
8490 prosessering skjer lokalt med alltid ferske maskiner.
</p>
8492 <p>Skolelinux kan fungere godt på gammelt utstyr, men det er klart at
8493 utstyr også blir for gammelt selv for Skolelinux. I forbindelese med
8494 at vi nylig fikk nye servere og ny installasjon kastet jeg ut ca
60
8495 klienter som fortsatt var i drift etter at de var kjøpt godt brukt i
8496 2004. Noe var rundt
15 år gammelt, men var fortsatt i bruk. Noen
8497 klaget på at det nå gikk veldig tregt på en del pedagogiske nettsider
8498 med flash o.l. Det er fullt forståelig.
</p>
8500 <p>Jeg fikk nylig et spørsmål fra ungdomsskolens rektor om jeg kunne
8501 legge inn
<a href=
"http://freemind.sourceforge.net/">FreeMind
</a>, et
8502 tankekartprogram , på skolens elev-Windowsmaskiner. Lærerne hadde
8503 vært på kurs og ville ta dette i bruk. Skolen har ca halvparten av
8504 elevmaskinene på bærbare Windowsmaskiner. Da kunne jeg fortelle at
8505 dette programmet allerede lå inne på den nye Skolelinuxløsningen
8506 som nettopp var satt i drift, klart til bruk.
</p>
8508 <p>Vi har de bærbare maskinene på ungdomsskolen i domene med
8509 Skolelinux. Dette fungerer også meget bra nå. Elevene får opp en
8510 midlertidig windowsprofil når de logger på. Denne profilen slettes
8511 etter at de logger av, noe som medfører rene profiler hver gang de
8512 starter opp en maskin. De må lagre i sin Skolelinprofil, noe som
8513 medfører at de får tak i sine filer uavhengig av om de starter en
8514 Windowsmaskin eller en Skolelinuxklient. Det er mye mindre trafikk i
8515 det trådløse nettet etter at ikke hele profiler blir lastet opp til de
8516 enkelte Windowsmaskinene og tilbake når man avslutter. Jeg vet ikke om
8517 dette er standardoppsett i Skolelinux, men slik er vårt oppsett
8520 <p>Vi har i flere år satt opp vår løsning slik at skriverkøer slettes
8521 og skrivere startes hver natt. Hyggelig å høre at dette nå skal bli
8522 en standard i Skolelinuxløsningen. Dette har vært en god hjelp for
8525 <p>Elevene er lite opptatt av om de jobber på en Skolelinux eller en
8526 Windowsmaskin bare de har de programmene de trenger og at det virker
8527 når det skal brukes. Vi kjører mest mulig de samme programmene på
8528 Windows som i Skolelinux, som f.eks Audacity og LibreOffice.
</p>
8530 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
8532 <p>Lærere bruker hos oss Windows. Dette fordi de da selv har mer
8533 kontroll over sin maskin, kan bruke den overalt, og kan legge inn
8534 programmer selv når de trenger noe i forhold til kurs o.l de er
8535 på. Jeg tror lærernes selvstendighet her gjør dem tryggere på IKT-bruk
8536 generelt. Det at de av og til får opp advarsler og lignende gjør også
8537 at de må tenke igjennom og spørre om ting rundt datasikkerhet.
</p>
8539 <p>Det er en del programmer vi bruker som ikke finnes for Linux. Mest
8540 brukt er nok Photostory3 som brukes i mange sammenhenger, særlig på
8541 ungdomsskolen, bl.a. til å lage herbarier (plantesamling) . Dette
8542 finnes gratis for Windows, men er ikke fri programvare. Vi er opptatt
8543 av at programmer elevene bruker på skolen også kan brukes gratis
8544 hjemme. Det er også en del programmer som brukes til spesielle elever
8545 som bare går i Windows. Det er viktig med fokus på funksjoner og ikke
8546 på hvilket OS man bruker.
</p>
8548 <p>For oss er det kombinasjonen mellom Skolelinux og Windows som gir
8549 oss en god og hel løsning. Skolelinux er best der de er gode.
</p>
8551 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
8553 <p>Selv er det LibreOffice jeg bruker til daglig. Jeg bruker selv en
8554 Windowsmaskin. Jeg har benyttet en del fri programvare i forbindelse
8555 med sjekking av trafikk i nettverk, slik som Wireshark, men dette er
8556 jo ikke aktuelt for skolene. Jeg er generelt glad i programmer som
8557 fungerer på både Linux og Windows og gjerne MAC.
</p>
8559 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
8560 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?
</strong></p>
8562 <p>Det er viktig at det benyttes programmer som elevene også kan ta i
8563 bruk hjemme. Det skal da være enkelt, lovlig og gratis for
8564 elevene. Da er jeg ikke lenger veldig opptatt av om det kalles "fri
8565 programvare". For skolene tror jeg "gratis" og "funksjonelt" er bedre
8566 begreper enn "fri" i forhold til programmer. De fleste skiller nok
8567 ikke mellom "fri" og "gratis". Det er nå svært mange elever som
8568 benytter OpenOffice eller LibreOffice som sin primære kontorpakke
8575 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
8580 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8584 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze
</a>
8590 <p>In the Squeeze version of
8591 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> soon
8592 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
8593 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
8594 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP. In
8595 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
8596 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
8599 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
8600 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
8601 default content. By changing this value to another URL, all users get
8602 to see the page behind this new URL.
</p>
8604 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool. It can be
8605 called as "
<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'
</tt>' to update LDAP with the
8608 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
8609 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
8610 from within Iceweasel instead.
</p>
8616 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
8621 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8625 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze
</a>
8631 <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
8632 the second beta version of
8633 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>. If
8634 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
8635 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
8636 machines, check it out. If you need a software solution for your
8637 school, check it out too. The full announcement is
8638 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available
</a>
8639 on the project announcement list.
</p>
8645 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
8650 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8654 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu
</a>
8660 <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
8661 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> ready
8662 for release. The initial problem I looked at was particularly
8665 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
8666 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
8667 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
8668 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
8669 scratch. I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
8670 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
8671 wrap up its tasks.
</p>
8673 <p>Eventually the cause was found. The kernel was simply running out
8674 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
8675 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
8676 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
8677 because I was typing.
</P>
8679 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
8680 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
8681 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
8682 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
8683 generate some disk IO. Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
8684 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
8685 generate entropy.
</p>
8688 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
8689 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze
</a> version, and we
8690 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
8691 developers
</a>. We plan to release beta2 this weekend.
</p>
8697 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
8702 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8706 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Peter_Hansteen.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Peter Hansteen
</a>
8712 <p>Etter en lang pause er det klart for neste mann ut i min serie med
8714 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>-relaterte personer.
8716 Denne gangen har jeg besøk av et avtroppende styremedlem i
8717 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">FRISK
</a>, og en mann
8718 som har vært aktiv i Linux-miljøet i Bergen siden
90-tallet.
</p>
8720 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?
</strong></p>
8722 <p>Jeg heter Peter Hansteen, og jobber til daglig som seniorkonsulent
8723 i EDB ErgoGroup i Bergen. I praksis betyr det systemadministrasjon på
8724 Unix (primært Solaris, men en viss komponent av Linux). Men Solaris
8725 er for meg et relativt nytt bekjentskap, hovedplattformen min har
8726 generelt vært OpenBSD og til dels FreeBSD.
</p>
8728 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?
</strong></p>
8730 <p>Jeg husker ikke helt alle detaljene mer ;) - men jeg tror det var
8731 gjennom news-gruppen no.it.os.unix.linux.diverse, efn-listen og
8732 etterhvert også BLUG-miljøet her i Bergen. Vi hadde et par
8733 Skolelinux-sentrerte BLUG-møter for noen år siden, og det har vært et
8734 par Skolelinux-utviklersamlinger her.
</p>
8736 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
8738 <p>Jeg bruker dessverre ikke Skolelinux daglig. Men slik jeg kjenner
8739 prosjektet har det vært i stand til å ta opp i seg det beste av fri
8740 programvare i mange kategorier, så fra et sysadmin-perspektiv ser det
8741 ut som en svært behagelig sak. For brukerne er det vel både en fordel
8742 og en ulempe at det ikke er Windows. Men vi håper at fordelene med et
8743 fritt system etterhvert vil bli åpenbare for både elever, lærekrefter
8746 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
8748 <p>Vel, ulempen er vel først og fremst at andre aktører med mer
8749 kapitalmuskel har klart å etablere seg som det både lærere og foreldre
8750 føler seg trygge på, selv om det etter mitt hode ikke er noen grunn
8751 til å være spesielt trygg på de kommersielle alternativene.
</p>
8753 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
8755 <p>Når jeg får bestemme helt selv, bruker jeg kun fri programvare. Da
8756 helst med vekt på ting som kjører greit på OpenBSD. Hjemme er det
8757 OpenBSD, Ubuntu eller FreeBSD vi bruker. På skrivebordet er det en
8758 avveining mellom Gnome, KDE eller hva-det-nå-heter som er
8759 standardvalget i Ubuntu, ellers er det de kjente tingene som
8760 LibreOffice, Emacs, mplayer. På server er det selvfølgelig Apache,
8761 for overvåking både OpenNMS og Nagios (det bare ble sånn, og
8762 forskjellige siter). Jeg skriver til tider om slikt jeg holder på med
8764 <a href=
"http://bsdly.blogspot.com">http://bsdly.blogspot.com
</a>.
</p>
8766 <p>Men vi må nevne at selv vi har en Microsoft-ting som vi slår på når
8767 vi av en eller annen grunn må. Det betyr igjen vanligvis når en
8768 mobiltelefon eller en annen lukket elektronisk dings krever kontakt
8769 via en slik for å få oppdateringene sine.
</p>
8771 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
8772 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?
</strong></p>
8774 <p>Hadde vi hatt det rette svaret på det spørsmålet, så hadde vi
8775 gjerne hatt Skolelinux som førstevalg på alle skoler ;)
</p>
8777 <p>Men jeg tror vi må legge vekt på flere forskjellige ting. En helt
8778 sentral sak er å fokusere på fri programvare og åpne standarder som de
8779 demokratiske verdiene de faktisk er. Det har kanskje kommet litt for
8780 mye i bakgrunnen i forhold til strevet etter å lage det mest mulig
8781 'brukervennlige' systemet. Det er en tung vei å gå, så det er
8782 forståelig at freenix-aktivister heller velger å skrive kode og annet
8783 som er mer lystbetont. Mer praktisk tror jeg vi må gjøre i alle fall
8784 to ting: For det første sørge for å fortsette med å levere det best
8785 mulige frie produktet, slik at det er lett å både komme i gang og
8786 holde systemene i daglig drift, og for det andre
2) spore opp mulige
8787 aktivister der de finnes, via lokale brukergrupper, sosiale medier
8788 eller annet og sørge for at de fortsetter å være aktive. Mer og
8789 mindre uformelle treff kan være nyttig i tillegg til de mer
8790 organiserte møtene med foredrag, konferanser og utviklersamlinger.
</p>
8796 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
8801 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8805 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Frode_Jemtland.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Frode Jemtland
</a>
8811 <p>Neste mann ut i min serie med intervjuer av Skolelinux-relaterte
8812 personer er en tidligere styreleder i
8813 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">FRISK
</a> som var med
8815 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>-prosjektet.
</p>
8817 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?
</strong></p>
8819 <p>Mitt navn er Frode Jemtland, og jeg jobber i Hedmark IKT, som er et
8820 driftsselskap for Grue, Hamar, Kongsvinger, Løten, Nord-Odal og Stange
8821 kommuner. Her er jeg leder for avdelingen Løsninger og Arkitektur. Vi
8822 har i hovedansvar for servere, infrastruktur og løsninger som
8825 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?
</strong></p>
8827 <p>Jobbet i IBM fra
2000, og da spesielt med Linux. Dette var da et av
8828 de mest tydelige linux prosjektene i Norge, og her ønsket jeg å
8829 bidra. Var aktivt med i prosjektet i
4-
5 år.
</p>
8831 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
8833 <p>Fordelene slik jeg ser det er den sentraliserte driftmodellen, og
8834 alle de vel gjennomtenkte løsningene som er inkludert i denne
8835 løsningen. Samtidig er det basert på en stabil, og godt kjent
8836 plattform. Dette vil si at man har en løsning som skal være mye
8837 tilgjengelig, og hvor det er relativt enkelt å få tak i personer som
8838 kan mye om den grunnleggende plattformen.
</p>
8840 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
8842 <p>De største utfordringene med en løsningen er at den er intensiv på f.eks
8843 nettverk. I seg selv ikke et problem for en enkelt skole, men skal løsningen
8844 kjøres i større skala, med sentraliserte servere, så gir dette noen
8847 <p>Utifra hva jeg har sett på større installasjoner så er det ikke så
8848 enkelt å skjønne, hva som bør gjøres for at den skal skaleres opp, og
8849 da ta godt vare på alle sider av dette, ikke bare mer server å fordele
8850 last/trykk, men hvordan også beholde robustheten og fleksibiliteten i
8853 <p>En annen utfordring er at stadig flere produkter som skal brukes i
8854 skoleløsningen ikke er laget til å kunne brukes i en
8855 skolelinuxløsning. Det blir derfor fort mye skreddersøm i de
8856 forskjellige installasjonene, for å få diverse pedagogiske programmer,
8857 webløsninger, smartboards, m.m. til å fungere. Man er også en for
8858 liten kundebase til at leverandørene ønsker å gjøre noe med
8859 utfordringen. Problemet overlates til oss.
</p>
8861 <p>Det er også en kontinuerlig utfordring rundt problemet med å holde
8862 programvare på stabile versjoner, kontra å få ny funksjonalitet. Dette
8863 er jo en konflikt mellom oss som ønsker å drifte en stabil, og
8864 kostnadseffektiv løsning, mot sluttbrukerne som ønsker seg funksjoner
8865 det er vant med fra andre løsninger, eller som de må ha for at et
8866 eller annet nytt produkt skal fungere i løsningen. Dette er en
8867 utfordring også for andre plattformer.
</p>
8869 <p>En siste utfordring som ikke har noe med løsningen å gjøre, men med
8870 det omkringliggende miljøet denne skal kjøre i, er at de enhetene som
8871 skal drifte dataløsninger for kommuner og fylkeskommuner begynner å
8872 profesjonaliseres, og er da avhengig av å ha standard løsninger for å
8873 drifte store brukermasser. MS er selvsagt klar over dette, og har jo
8874 nå flere områder de begynner å bli veldig dominerende på. Den største,
8875 og mest problematiske er katalogtjenesten. Man får snart ikke tak i
8876 større løsninger som ikke krever en AD. Når man da har store enheter
8877 som drifter både kommunalt ansatte og skoler, så vil det være et
8878 stordriftargument å standardisere på en katalog tjeneste, og da har
8879 man ikke noe valg. Her er alle slike driftsenheter for små til å få
8880 gjort om på dette. Her burde konkurransemyndighetene kommet på
8881 banen. Men konkurransetilsynet i USA griper sjeldent (og ikke før det
8882 har gått veldig lang tid) inn i monopolsituasjoner så lenge
8883 monopolisten er et amerikansk firma, så da har vel ikke andre
8884 myndigheter så mye de skulle ha sagt....
</p>
8886 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
8888 <p>Privat kjører jeg Debian på alle mine datamaskiner. Det gjør jeg
8889 også på min jobbmaskin. Vi har også
15-
20 linux servere av typene
8890 SuSE, Debian, Redhat, CentOS m.m. Jeg bruker derfor mye fri
8891 programvare. Av enkelt programmer kan sikkert masse nevnes. Hvis vi
8892 skal begrense oss til daglig, så må jeg si: OpenOffice, Firefox,
8893 Kontact, Kopete, Amarok,
8894 <a href=
"http://gramps-project.org/">Gramps
</a>, Kate, ssh, bash,
8895 rsync, backuppc m.m.
</p>
8897 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
8898 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?
</strong></p>
8900 <p>Det er et godt spørsmål, som jeg har lurt på selv.
</p>
8902 <p>Argumentene som ofte har vært brukt om at ting koster mindre holder
8903 ikke mål når man ser på hva som faktisk koster penger. Det er de
8904 ansatte som er en kostnadsdriver. Det vil si at hvis man har et system
8905 som den ansatte kan, så vil en kostnad på dette systemet kunne
8906 forsvares ganske mye ved at den ansatte gjør dette raskere og
8907 effektivt. Også uten å måtte eventuelt leie inn folk.
</p>
8909 <p>Jeg syns det er viktigere å fokusere på prinsippet med å velge fri
8910 programvare, men det er også et felt hvor man fort møter lite
8911 forståelse blant de ansatte i skolen.
</p>
8913 <p>Her må nok strategien fortsette å være at de sentrale myndighetene
8914 må sende tydelige signaler for hva de ønsker at offentlige enheter
8915 skal gjøre. Det var mye positivt på gang ang. dette for et par år
8916 siden. Både med eNorge og eKommune planene, men dette syns jeg har
8917 stoppet opp. En del av dette kan jo kanskje være usikkerheten som
8918 etter hvert har blitt, når man har sett kompleksiteten i de
8919 prosjektene som har blitt igangsatt. Det har også blitt noe usikkerhet
8920 i markedet ref. Sun, Oracle, Novell, Microsoft m.m. Samtidig har jo
8921 også de proprietære programleverandørene sørget for å endre sine
8922 lisenser slik at man uansett ikke slipper unna kostnaden til deres
8923 produkter, selv om man skulle velge alternativer. Da er det økonomiske
8924 argumentet, som jeg nevnte tidligere, spilt ganske godt ut over
8931 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
8936 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8940 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Marius_Kotsbak.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Marius Kotsbak
</a>
8946 <p>Neste mann ut er Marius Kotsbak, styremedlem i
8947 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">FRISK
</a> og mangeårig
8949 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>-prosjektet.
</p>
8951 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?
</strong></p>
8953 <p>Jeg er en systemutvikler/kybernetiker og jobber med dette til
8954 daglig. På fritiden tester jeg ut/bruker mye fri programvare, og
8955 bidrar med testing og utvikling når jeg ser stort nok behov for det og
8956 jeg har noe å bidra med.
</p>
8958 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?
</strong></p>
8960 <p>Hmm, det er lenge siden, så det er nesten så jeg ikke husker. Jeg
8961 hadde vel hørt om prosjektet i media før en gjeng i Trondheim startet
8962 opp SPIST, Skolelinux-prosjektet i Sør-Trøndelag, hvor vi hjalp noen
8963 skoler i nærområdet med å installere Skolelinux og finne brukt
8964 IT-utstyr til disse. Det var moro å gjøre noe praktisk for å spre
8965 Skolelinux, og å se hvor fort gjort det var å sette opp utrangerte
8966 klientmaskiner og få disse opp som tynnklienter på helt nye datasaler
8967 på skolene, kun med kostnaden til servere.
</p>
8969 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
8971 <p>Det er et system spesielt skreddersydd for drift av et stort antall
8972 klienter mot servere, og da spesielt i henhold til skolers behov. Det
8973 er enkelt og billig å installere og drifte, og det trenger ikke ny
8974 maskinvare for god ytelse.
</p>
8976 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
8978 <p>Hardwarestøtten kunne vært bedre og i enda større grad
8979 installerbart rett ut av boksen. Distribusjonen har til tider hatt
8980 litt gammel programvare pga. at den følger Debian sine utgivelser.
8981 Kanskje man skulle vurdert en versjon basert på Ubuntu eller andre
8982 distribusjoner i tillegg?
</p>
8984 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
8986 <p>Oi, det er ikke lite. Her er det jeg kommer på i farta. Jeg bruker
8987 Linux og Ubuntu, og på Ubuntu programene Firefox, Thunderbird,
8988 Chromium, Pidgin, Digikam, OpenOffice, Wireshark, git og irssi.
8989 Telefonen min er en Android, og der bruker jeg programmene K-
9 Mail,
8990 OI Shopping list, Shuffle, ZXing, OI Notepad og ADW Desktop. På jobb
8991 bruker jeg JBoss, Eclipse, uCLinux for Blackfin, RCF-CPP, Qt, Maven,
8992 og boost-bibliotekene for C++.
</p>
8994 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
8995 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?
</strong></p>
8997 <p>En bør fokusere på totalkostnader inkludert driftsbehov,
8998 fleksibilitet, åpenhet og ikke låsing til en leverandør framfor sparte
8999 lisenskostnader, samt programvarens kvalitet og fortrinn, og at den
9000 fritt kan brukes på et ubegrenset antall PC-er, også hjemme hos
9001 elevene. En bør også forbedre den fri programvaren ved testing,
9002 bugrapportering og kodebidrag om man kan, og ikke anbefale programvare
9003 uten at man har forsikret seg at den har tilstrekkelig kvalitet,
9004 ellers kan man lett oppnå det motsatte. Tror en bør selge inn
9005 konseptet til fylkes-/statsnivå, kanskje med bidrag til
9006 utviklingsarbeid fra disse som alle landets skoler kan få glede
9013 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
9018 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9022 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Odin_Hetland_N_sen.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Odin Hetland Nøsen
</a>
9028 <p>Mine bloggposter om Linux i skolene i Norge førte til at inspektør
9029 og ildsjel på Harestad skole tok kontakt og fortalte at de bruker
9030 Linux på sin skole, og lurte på om de kunne bidra til å gjøre
9031 fordelene kjent. Riktig nok bruker de ikke
9032 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> på denne skolen,
9033 men jeg synes dette er en god anledning til å gjøre flere fasetter
9034 rundt Linux-økosystemet kjent, og tok et lite intervju.
</p>
9036 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?
</strong></p>
9038 <p>Mitt navn er Odin Hetland Nøsen og er en
70-modell. Jeg er bosatt i
9039 Stavanger og jobber nå på
9. året som undervisninginspektør på
9040 Harestad skole i Randaberg kommune (nabokommune til Stavanger).
</p>
9042 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?
</strong></p>
9044 <p>I
2002 begynte daværende IKT-ansvarlige og jeg et arbeid på skolen
9045 med å gå over fra Win98 til... noe annet. Vi testet en rekke
9046 forskjellige løsninger, deriblant Skolelinux, men endte opp med
9047 RedHat. Skolelinux var den gang ikke modent for det vi ville ha. Jeg
9048 har siden fulgt jevnlig med på hva skolelinux holder på med, men har
9049 hele tiden vært bedre fornøyd med vår egen "standardiserte" løsning på
9050 RedHat/CentOS og Fedora. Vi snuser for tiden på Ubuntu som løsning på
9053 <p>I dag har vi på skolen vår en større linux-løsning med
400 klienter
9054 som kjører en blanding av LTSP (tynnklient) og DRBL (tykk klient uten
9055 harddisk) med en masse tjenere på serverrommet. Vi drifter hele
9056 sulamitten selv med webtjener, eposttjener, webmail, filtjenere,
9057 virtuelle tjenere osv. Og IT-ansvarlig har en
80% stilling som
9058 IT-ansvarlig - og så er han KoH-lærer i de resterende
20% :-)
</p>
9060 <p>Du kan få en ide om hva vi holder på med om du går inn på
9061 <a href=
"http://www.gnuskole.no/">http://www.gnuskole.no/
</a>.
</p>
9063 <p>For å ta brodden av frykten for at ildsjeler gjør skolen sårbar om
9064 ildsjelene falle fra, har jeg forsikret kommunen og skolesjefen i
9065 Randaberg om at det finnes godt kommersielle tjenester vi kan benytte
9066 oss av - om det skulle bli nødvendig. Vi er tre stykker i kommunen som
9067 nå har
<strong>god
</strong> linux-kompetanse ift. å drifte et større
9068 system. IT-avdelingen i kommunen vil ikke ta på oss med ildtang -
9069 selv om vi nok har større IT-kompetanse mot linux enn det de selv har
9070 mot windows (de kjøper en
<strong>masse
</strong> konsulenttjenester
9073 <p>I kvantitet er Harestad og Grødem skole tilsammen et større
9074 IT-system enn resten av Randaberg kommune + Kvitsøy og Rennesøy, som
9075 kommunen også har driftsansvar for. Vi har som sagt rundt
800
9076 maskiner, mens kommunen med sitt driftsansvar har ansvar for rundt
500
9077 maskiner. Det er selvfølgelig litt forskjell i hvor kritiske
9078 tjenestene våre er, men det gir allikevel et litt rart bilde når
9079 IT-avdelingen overhode ikke er interessert i å snakke med oss om
9080 hvordan vi gjør ting :-)
</p>
9082 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
9084 <p>Fra linux-perspektivet (ikke bare Skolelinux) er det en fordel av
9085 systemet er basert på fri programvare - og dermed fritt i ordets mange
9086 betydninger. Det er alt vi trenger: stabilt, relativt enkelt å drifte
9087 (tross alt - et større windowssystem er ikke enkelt å holde live det
9088 heller), rimelig i innkjøp og drift, og sist, men ikke minst, det er
9089 moderne for sluttbruker! Linux, i sine mange varianter,
9090 <strong>ser
</strong> nytt ut, fordi det hele tiden blir
9091 oppdatert. Derfor lever systemet opp til hvordan elever forventer at
9092 et moderne GUI skal være (i motsetning til WinXP :-).
</p>
9094 <p>Vi var veldig pragmatiske da vi begynte med linux i skolen. Det var
9095 billig, det fungerte og kunne bruke alle de gamle windows-maskinene
9096 som "nye" tynne klienter. I dag er vi mer bevisste fri
9097 programvare-tilhengere. Vi har oppdaget hva det er - og vi liker
9100 <p>En av de
<strong>store
</strong> fordelene med fri programvare er at
9101 vi kan installere tjenester vi ønsker å tilby brukerne våre - uten å
9102 måtte tenke på om vi har råd til lisensene (fordi det er ingen). Alt
9103 vi setter i produksjon er ut i fra brukernes behov og vår kapasitet
9104 til å drifte dem. Vi skreddersyr tjenestene etter behovet og dermed
9105 trenger vi ikke ende opp med å kjøpe en pakke der vi egentlig bare var
9106 interessert i en liten del av den.
</p>
9108 <p>Bruk av linux frigjør ikke økonomiske midler, fordi midlene til IKT
9109 i skole er for få i utgangspunktet - men vi får så
9110 <strong>mye
</strong> mer igjen for dem når vi bruker en linux-løsning
9111 fremfor en windows-løsning. I praksis ser vi at vi måtte ut med det
9112 dobbelte på budsjettet vårt om vi skulle hatt en tilsvarende
9113 windows-løsning, som det vi i dag drifter med linux.
</p>
9115 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
9117 <p>Ikke all pedagogisk programvare er tilgjengelig. Det er en del
9118 programvare i skolen som er laget med utviklerverktøy som bare virker
9119 i windows, f.eks. Drillpro, LingDys/LingWrite. Det er også
9120 "programmer" som bare virker om du har tilgang til Microsoft Office,
9121 f.eks. AskiRaski.
</p>
9123 <p>Vi sliter også litt med at video-codecer ikke alltid er like lett å
9124 få opp å gå på klientene. Det er alltid en eller annen videosnutt fra
9125 nrk.no som ikke er så samarbeidsvillig, uansett mediaplayer.
</p>
9127 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
9129 <p>Alt :-) På skolen bruker vi det som finnes og som er nyttig. Det vi
9130 bruker mest er Firefox (jobber med Chrome, fordi det er
9131 <strong>mye
</strong> raskere med Flash enn Firefox), OpenOffice (skal
9132 over til LibreOffice), GIMP osv. Standardpakken av
9133 sluttbrukerprogrammer.
</p>
9135 <p>På tjenernivå bruker vi OpenWebMail (skal over til Zimbra), Exim
9138 <p>Personlig bruker jeg de fleste programmer over flere plattformer,
9139 men jeg har lagt meg til en vane å prioritere bruken av fri
9140 programvare også i Windows
7 og OSX.
</p>
9142 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
9143 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?
</strong></p>
9145 <p>Jeg er langt i fra sikker. For det første handler det mye om at
9146 IKT-avdelingen i kommunen ofte er de som styrer hva som er IKT på
9147 skolene - og de liker å bruke avtalene med Microsoft, som de garantert
9148 har fra før. Dessuten - Select
6-avtalen til skolene gjør Microsoft
9151 <p>Vi la vekt på effektiv drift av systemet - og at vi kunne øke
9152 antall maskiner uten å måtte øke budsjett for utstyr eller personell
9153 særlig mye, enn om vi hadde gått for en Microsoft-løsning. I praksis
9154 ser vi at en ren linux-installasjon driftes til halve prisen av en
9155 Microsoft-løsning.
</p>
9157 <p>Vi har i praksis også sett at det lærerne (og elevene) liker er at
9158 vi tilbyr
<strong>veldig
</strong> mange tjenester som ikke er så
9159 vanlige i en Microsoft-løsning. Det er ikke så vanlig at
9160 <strong>elevene
</strong> også har epost, hjemmekontor osv. Det har vi
9161 også brukt som et vellykket argument mot Microsoft.
</p>
9163 <p>Den beste måten er selvfølgelig at noen bare bestemmer
9164 det. Problemet er å få dem som har makt til å bestemme det til faktisk
9171 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
9176 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9180 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Astri_Sletteng.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Astri Sletteng
</a>
9186 <p>En dame som har bidratt lenge til fri programvare i skoleverket og
9187 i foreningen som organiserer skolelinux-utviklersamlinger,
9188 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">FRISK
</a>, er neste
9189 intervjuoffer. Det er en glede å her presentere en lærer fra Håkvik.
</p>
9191 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?
</strong></p>
9193 <p>Jeg heter Astri Sletteng. Jeg er lærer og IKT veileder ved Håkvik
9194 skole i Narvik kommune. Min bakgrunn når det gjelder IKT: Av formell
9195 utdannelse har jeg lærerutdanning, Master i skoleledelse og IKT for
9196 lærere. Har jobba som IKT veileder siden
2002.
</p>
9198 <p>Det viktigste for meg som IKT veileder er å få fundamentert den
9199 5. basisferdigheten, digital kompetanse ved skolen min på en god måte
9200 slik at hele skolesamfunnet tar i bruk IKT i alle fag. Dette arbeidet
9201 gjøres i nært samarbeid med skolens ledelse.
</p>
9203 <p>Min viktigste jobb som IKT veileder er å være motivator og pådriver
9204 i IKT arbeidet ved skolen.
</p>
9206 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?
</strong></p>
9208 <p>Jobber i en kommune hvor vi satser på Fri programvare. I
2004 ble
9209 det gjort et politisk vedtak om at vi skulle innføre Skolelinux ved
9210 alle skolene i kommunen. Jeg har dermed en god del erfaring med
9211 Skolelinux, samt annen fri programvare som Open Office, Joomla, Moodle
9214 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
9216 <p>Siden vi jobber med åpen kildekode kan vi få programmene og
9217 produktene tilpasset vår bruk. Det er jo heller ikke en ulempe at
9218 skolen kommer bedre ut økonomisk, men først og fremst er det viktig
9219 for oss at vi har digitale systemer som gjør at vi kan følge
9220 læreplanen i alle fag. Det syns jeg at vi kan gjøre gjennom
9223 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
9225 <p>Skolen er avhengige av å ha folk på IT avdelinga i kommunen som kan
9226 drive support, og være tilgjengelige når vi trenger hjelp. Det er en
9227 ulempe at ikke alle på denne avdelingen nødvendigvis er god på
9230 <p>Vi har også noen utfordringer når det kommer til spesielle
9231 programmer som enkelte elever er avhengige av ? og som ikke er
9232 plattform uavhengige. Her har vi i Friprog-verden, men også
9233 departement en jobb å gjøre.
</p>
9235 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
9237 <p>Skolen vår bruker Skolelinux, Open Office, Iceweazel (Mozilla),
9238 VLC, Tux paint, Scribus, FreeMind, GIMP, digiKam, Ksnapshot, GeoGebra,
9239 Moodle (innført på alle klassetrinn + som et administrativt verktøy)
9240 og Joomla som hjemmeside.
<p>
9242 <p>Det er de jeg kommer på i farten. I tillegg har vi Smartboard
9243 installert på server, men det regnes vel ikke som fri programvare?
</p>
9245 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
9246 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?
</strong></p>
9248 <p>Først og fremst trenger skolen oppetider på sine datasystemer. Syns
9249 også at det at vi kan få tilpasset plattform og systemer til vår bruk
9250 er en god strategi å bruke.
</p>
9256 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
9261 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9265 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Rub_n_Romero_y_Cordero.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Rubén Romero y Cordero
</a>
9271 <p>Styret i foreningen som organiserer skolelinux-utviklersamlinger,
9272 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">FRISK
</a>, er fullt av
9273 flinke folk. Denne gangen har jeg fått et ferskt styremedlem som
9274 kommer fra Ubuntu-miljøet i tale.
</p>
9276 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?
</strong></p>
9278 <p>Rubén Romero y Cordero,
81-modell, deltidspappa (
50%) for en jente
9279 på
6 år. Jobber i Oslo som Global Sales Executive hos Varnish Software
9280 og til daglig har jeg kontakt med kunder fra hele verden. Min
9281 forkjærlighet for fri programvare har gjort at jeg har nå flere års
9282 erfaring med salg av slike løsninger (bl.a. fra Redpill Linpro og
9283 Freecode) og mye innsikt og kunnskap om det globale IT-markedet.
9284 Ellers er jeg involvert i flere prosjekter bl.a. er jeg Ubuntu
9285 Community medlem, kontaktpersonen for Ubuntu Norge og driveren av
9286 SpreadUbuntu marketing prosjektet og nå fersk styremedlem i FRISK. Jeg
9287 har brukt GNU/Linux siden
1997.
</p>
9289 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?
</strong></p>
9291 <p>Som Debian bruker siden slutten av
90-tallet var det uunngåelig å
9292 ikke komme bort i Skolelinux. Dette var vel i slutten av
2001 når jeg
9293 var student ved UiO. Flere år senere fikk jeg lastet og testet Venus
9294 (Skolelinux
1.0) på release dagen.
</p>
9296 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
9298 <p>Fri programvare bygges sten for sten i det åpne, slik at koden og
9299 prosessen den lages på kan gjennomskues av andre enn de som har laget
9300 det. Det er et vitenskapelig og gjennomsiktig måte å lage programvare
9303 <p>Skoler i vårt samfunn skal være steder hvor vitenskapelig kunnskap
9304 deles til alle. I dag har vi ikke et vitenskapelig tilnærming til
9305 hvordan programvaren som brukes på skolen lages. Skolelinux bringer
9306 inn at slik tilnærming i skoleverkets klasserom, siden
9307 operativsystemet er en åpent platform som gir skolene muligheten til å
9308 dra nytte av programvare som er laget av tusenvis av mennesker verden
9309 rundt og som gir elevene så vel som lærerne muligheten til å bruke,
9310 dele, forandre og forbedre OSet sitt uten begrensninger. I den
9311 forbindelsen representerer Skolelinux også konkrete resultater utfra
9312 samhandling på tvers av grenser.
</p>
9314 <p>Når det gjelder de tekniske fordelene av Skolelinux er jeg sikker
9315 på at andre enn meg har allerede beskrevet disse bedre enn det jeg
9316 kan. Men jeg kan likevel tilføye noe: Skolelinux som sådan er en
9317 community-drevet operativsystemplatform. Som i ethvert
9318 community-prosjekt har alle Skolelinux brukere muligheten til å
9319 påvirke retning av prosjektet og resultatet som gjenspeiles i
9320 programvaren. Dette kommer sjeldent frem og jeg mener at det er noe
9321 som burde fokuseres mer på.
</p>
9323 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
9325 <p>De største ulempene er:
</p>
9328 <li>Mangel på kompetanse
</li>
9329 <li>Mangel av administrative verktøy som kunne hjelpe lokale IT
9330 avdelinger å bruke Skolelinux til mer enn bare en tjener for
9331 terminalklienter. Et eksempel: Zentyal sin web-dashboard.
</li>
9334 <p>Bedre og mer intuitive administrative verktøy kunne løst deler av
9335 problemet, men det er unektelig at ved bruk av Skolelinux må
9336 IT-personalet vite hva de gjør for å få ting gjort riktig, eller i det
9337 hele tatt. Med andre platformer er kompetansen enklere tilgjengelig og
9338 løsningene kan fungere på en tilfredstillende, om ikke riktig
9341 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
9343 <p>Har brukt GNU/Linux utelukkende sommitt skrivebord OS siden
2000. I
9344 dag bruker jeg Ubuntu og gjør det meste med friprogramvare verktøyene
9345 som er tilgjengelige der. Med over
20.000 programmer å velge mellom er
9346 dette mer enn nok for de fleste brukerne.
</p>
9348 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
9349 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?
</strong></p>
9351 <p>Opplysning og pragmatikk. Vi prøver å løse problemer med bruk av
9352 programvare. De fleste utfordringene skolene har på IKT-siden kan
9353 løses ved hjelp av friprogramvareverktøy i dag. Det som trenges er
9354 opplysning, kunnskap og kompetanse.
</p>
9360 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
9365 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9369 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Morten_Amundsen.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Morten Amundsen
</a>
9375 <p>Denne gangen er det Tromsøkontoret til Friprog-senteret, og nyvalgt
9376 styremedlem i
<a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">foreningen
9377 FRISK
</a> jeg har fått i tale i min intervjuserie med
9378 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>-folk.
</p>
9380 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?
</strong></p>
9382 <p>Jeg heter Morten Amundsen og jobber i
9383 <a href=
"http://www.friprog.no/">Friprog.no
</a>, men er for tiden leid
9384 ut til
<a href=
"http://www.bredbandsfylket.no/">Bredbåndsfylket
9385 Troms
</a> der jeg jobber med ett prosjekt som heter
9386 "
<a href=
"http://www.bredbandsfylket.no/skolefjoela.157417.no.html">Skolefjøla
</a>"
9387 Vi ser på en åpen løsning som integrerer eksisterende lukkete
9388 løsninger sammen med fri programvare. Målet er å gi elever og lærere
9389 en plattform som de kan tilpasse utfra behov.</p>
9391 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
9393 <p>Skolelinux har jeg møtt ved flere anledninger opp gjennom åra, både gjennom
9394 entusiastiske skolelinuxbrukere og skeptiske "forståsegpåere" :-)
</p>
9396 <p>Jeg husker en leverandør av et stort OS for noen år siden mente at
9397 Skolelinux var kun for hackere og nerder og at ingen seriøse skoler
9398 kunne ta dette i bruk. Heldigvis er kunnskapen større nå og
9399 skikkelige "IT-folk" søker alltid å utvide sin kunnskap.
9401 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
9403 <p>Ja det er mange fordeler. Uavhengighet, stabilitet, åpenhet, standarder
9404 osv. Tror det er viktig at man ikke begrenser mulighetene på den plattformen
9405 elevene skal jobbe.
</p>
9407 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
9409 <p>Det største hinderet er det vi opplever på andre områder rundt
9410 fri programvare, nemlig kunnskap. For mange er det trygt å velge det vi
9411 alltid har valgt. Fordi leverandørene rundt oss sitter på den kunnskapen og
9412 de vi støtter oss på har den samme. Hvis vi klarer å riste løs litt og
9413 glemme gamle kriger mellom operativsystemer og leverandører, men sette ned
9414 hva som er viktig og velge ut fra det, så hadde man kanskje kommet ut med
9415 litt andre resultat. Jeg tror IT-folk er konservative og velger tradisjonelt
9418 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
9420 <p>Jeg bruker Ubuntu, Android, Jolicloud, Open Office, Zimbra, Picasa
9421 og Firefox samt en bråte med tjenester som er webbasert. Det eneste
9422 som er betalingslisens for er OSX. Ser at jeg jobber mer og mer i
9423 skyen og setter pris på alt jeg slipper egen klient til. Derfor er
9424 jeg veldig sjarmert av små kjappe operativsystemer som krever minimalt
9427 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
9428 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?
</strong></p>
9430 <p>Tror en blanding av krav og informasjon er veien å gå. Krav om
9431 sikkerhet, oppetid og åpne standarder. Informasjon om muligheter og
9432 alternativer. Her har leverandører, IT-avdelinger og pedagoger en vei
9433 å gå sammen. Det er til slutt LÆRING det dreier seg om, og da må man
9434 få mest mulig læring for pengene man har.
</p>
9440 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
9445 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9449 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Sturle_Sunde.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Sturle Sunde
</a>
9455 <p>Denne gang har jeg fått tak i en mangeårig unix-mann som etter
9456 mange år ved Universitetet i Oslo, der jeg først traff ham, har
9457 flyttet tilbake til vestlandet, og der bidratt til å revitalisere
9458 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>-oppsettet i
9461 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?
</strong></p>
9463 <p>Sturle Sunde, ansvarleg for skulenettet i Flora kommune. Eg driv,
9464 vidareutviklar og er andrelinje brukarstøtte for datanettet ved
9465 skulane i Flora kommune.
10 skular og meir enn
700 maskiner med
9466 Linux, medrekna tynnklientar. Tidlegare jobba eg i mange år med
9467 unix-drift ved Universitetets senter for informasjonsteknologi ved
9468 Universitetet i Oslo.
</p>
9470 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?
</strong></p>
9472 <p>Det er vanskeleg å svare konkret på. Eg har drive med Unix og Linux i
9473 alle år, og Skulelinux er eit godt kjent prosjekt i miljøet. Det var
9474 først i
2008, då eg tok til i min noverande jobb, at eg fekk bruk for
9475 Skulelinux for alvor.
</p>
9477 <p>Jobben min skulle vere drift av eit nytt skulenett i Flora kommune,
9478 levert av eit firma eg ikkje vil reklamere for. Systemet skulle vere
9479 ferdig levert i september året før. Dette viste seg å ta mykje lenger
9480 tid, og i haustferien
2008 hadde dei endå ikkje klart å få opp ei
9481 fungerande løysing. Situasjonen var prekær for den største skulen i
9482 kommunen med meir enn
500 elevar på ungdomssteget. Skulen hadde brukt
9483 Skulelinux før, og var tilfredse med det. No hadde dei vore utan
9484 fungerande datasystem i nesten eit år. Difor fekk eg opp ein ny tenar
9485 utanfor prosjektet og installerte Skulelinux på den. Etter litt
9486 justering av konfigurasjonen med god hjelp av #skolelinux på IRC, var
9487 den nye tenaren oppe og gjekk med både tynne og halv-tjukke klientar.
9488 Autentisering gjekk mot det nye systemet, slik at elevar og lærarar
9489 framleis har same brukarnamn og passord over alt. Dette berre
9490 fungerte, og vi bestemte oss for å erstatte delar av løysinga vi
9491 skulle få levert med Skulelinux.
</p>
9493 <p>Det høyrer med til historia at det nye systemet eg skulle drive frå
9494 januar
2008 endå ikkje er ferdig levert. Dei jobbar med saka, seier
9495 dei, og har von om å fullføre leveransen i løpet av
2011.
</p>
9497 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
9499 <p>Det er veldig mange. Eg skal ta nokre få.
</p>
9501 <p>Den viktigaste fordelen er at det igrunn berre er ei maskin å passe
9502 på, og det er tenaren. Med andre løysingar har ein gjerne programvare
9503 og anna som skal vedlikehaldast på kvar enkelt maskin. Med Skulelinux
9504 kan alle feil rettast og alle program oppgraderast på alle maskiner
9505 samstundes ved å gjere endringa som må til på tenaren. Eg kan sitje
9506 på kontoret og passe på alle tenarane i kommunen derifrå.
</p>
9510 <li>Tynne klientar gjer det mogleg å bruke eldre utstyr lenge, so lenge
9511 tenaren er sterk nok. Ein liten tenar med eit par halv-moderne CPUar
9512 og
2 GiB RAM held lenge for eit typisk klasserom med
30 tynnklientar,
9513 og det er lett å utvide med fleire.
9515 <li>Halvtjukke klientar gjer det mogleg å utnytte kapasiteten i litt
9516 nyare maskiner betre, og avlaste tenaren. Ingenting vert installert
9517 lokalt på desse heller, og harddisken kan gjerne koblast frå. Gode
9518 halvtjukke klientar kan kjøpast brukt for under
1000-lappen, og det er
9519 heile kostnaden. Ingen lisensar eller anna på toppen, og det er ikkje
9520 krav til kraftigare tenar heller.
9522 <li>Det er Linux. Vi har ikkje noko kluss med drivarar, dei berre er
9523 der. Heller ikkje med virus, dei finst i realiteten ikkje. Eller med
9524 elevar som klussar med installert programvare, for dei klarar ikkje å
9525 øydeleggje for nokon andre enn seg sjølve.
9529 <p>Skulelinux er lagt opp til å vere veldig lett å installere rett ut
9530 av boksen på ein heil skule av ein interessert lærar. Det er ofte ei
9531 god løysing for skulen. Å ha nokon til stades som kjenner systemet og
9532 kan forklare enkle ting eller løyse problem der og då, er uvurderleg
9533 viktig for ein stressa lærar fem minutt før det ringer inn.
</p>
9535 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
9537 <p>All den ferdige konfigurasjonen gjer det tungvint å tilpasse
9538 Skulelinux til eit system som skal fungere saman med mange andre
9539 installasjonar i eit felles datanett for skulane i ein kommune. Det
9540 heile er prekonfigurert for ein skule, og utviding til mange skular
9541 med eigne tenarar er ikkje berre enkelt.
</p>
9543 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
9545 <p>Eg brukar mest alle små hjelpeprogram som føl med operativsystemet,
9546 samt scriptspråket perl. Elles er Firefox/Iceweasel, Gnome-terminal
9547 og ssh i kontinuerleg bruk. Av Linux-distribusjonar brukar eg både
9548 Debian, Ubuntu, SuSE og RedHat dagleg. Eg prøvar å finne det verktyet
9549 som passar best til kvar del av jobben.
</p>
9551 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
9552 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?
</strong></p>
9554 <p>Det er to målgrupper ein må sikte mot. Det eine er alle skulane som
9555 manglar eller har eit lite tilfredsstillande opplegg i dag, og ikkje
9556 har råd til å kjøpe noko nytt og blankpussa opplegg. Der er det om å
9557 gjere å gjere det enkelt for skulane å finne Skulelinux, og gjere det
9558 enkelt for dei å få hjelp til installasjon på skulen. Gjerne med
9559 lokale kontaktpersonar. Her er det dugnadsinnsats som må til, for
9560 desse skulane har ikkje råd til å betale for dette.
</p>
9562 <p>Den andre og kanskje viktigare målgruppa er dei meir eller mindre
9563 profesjonelle kundane. Alle store offentlege innkjøp, inkludert
9564 innkjøp av nytt datasystem for skular, må ut på offentleg anbod.
9565 Offentlege anbod er mykje meir lukka enn dei gjev inntrykk av, og både
9566 regelboka og boka med triks for å sminke tilbodet er tjukk. Det er
9567 vanskeleg å komme inn utan eit solid salsapparat i ryggen. Kanskje
9568 Skulelinux skulle prøve aktivt å få seg eit partnarskap med eit av dei
9569 store som gjerne vil sterkare inn på den offentlege IT-marknaden?
9570 Nokon som kjenner triksa og har krefter til å ta opp kampen mot både
9571 dårlege anbod og Rudolf Blostrupmoen IT AS. Leveranse til skulane i
9572 ein kommune er ein god måte å få ein fot inn døra som leverandør til
9573 ein lukrativ kommunemarknad som kjøper alle tenester. Ta kontakt med
9574 nokon som er passeleg store og ikkje er Microsoft-partnar, og fortell:
9575 «Vi har eit ferdig produkt som du kan selje. Nei vi skal ikkje ha for
9576 det. Du kan gjerne gjere kva du vil med det, berre vi får lov til å
9577 hjelpe deg. Målgruppa er alle kommunar, og det er noko dei vil ha.
9578 Det er eit godt produkt, brukt av mange og godt likt.»
</p>
9584 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
9589 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9593 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Embrik_Kaslegard.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Embrik Kaslegard
</a>
9599 <p>Neste ut i min intervjuserie med folk i
9600 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinuxprosjektet
</a> er
9601 lærer, mangeårig bidragsyter på epostlistene og tidligere
9602 Skolelinux-administrator på en skole i Hemsedal.
</p>
9604 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?
</strong></p>
9606 <p>Embrik Kaslegard,
1964-modell, fire barn (
7-
20 år). Begynte som
9607 lærer i
1989 - har hatt IKT-ansvar siden første året i jobb. Har
9608 jobbet som lærer/IKT-ansvarlig uavbrutt siden
1989. Jobbet med
9609 Skolelinux fra
2004 til
2010. Nå har jeg fått ny arbeidsplass og er
9610 40% lærer og
60% IKT med Windows XP, Win2003 server og et regionalt
9611 IKT-regime som legger premissene og begrensingene for hva vi kan gjøre
9614 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?
</strong></p>
9616 <p>Jeg leste en artikkel om en dugnadsinstallasjon av Skolelinux på en
9617 skole på Jæren et sted. Tanken om dugnad og frihet appellerte til
9618 meg. Da vi skulle bygge ny skole var det en del vi måtte spare på,
9619 fordi vi beveget oss mot en kostnadssprekk. Kabling og investering i
9620 PC-er var en av tingene vi sparte på. Derfor kjøpe vi
72 pc-er for
390
9621 pr stk. En filtjener og en applikasjonsserver.
</p>
9623 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
9625 <p>Fordelen er at så mye er satt opp fra starten. I tillegg er det
9626 tydelig at pakka er laga for skoleverket. Brukerne har egne
9627 skrivebord, tilgang på mange gode verktøyprogrammer. Vi slipper å
9628 tenke på virus. Brukerne har ikke mulighet til å ødelegge
9629 klientoppsett, men har gode muligheter til å endre eget oppsett. Dette
9630 tror jeg er inspirerende og kjekt for mange brukere. Mappestrukturen
9631 er ferdig og det er "enkelt" å designe lokale mappestrukturer via
9632 skeleton. Noen av oss i skoleverket mener skolen skal være en
9633 "mot-kultur". Da er Skolelinux et av valgene man kan ta. Et annet er å
9634 spise på indisk restaurant i stedet for Mc Donald's når vi er på bytur
9635 osv.. Ordene deling, frihet, dugnad osv er positive ord i
9636 skoleverket. Det er viktig at elevene blir bevisst dette.
</p>
9638 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
9640 <p>Kompabiliteten er selvsagt et problem, selv om det er mindre nå enn
9641 før. For IKT-personer på skolene som skal drifte dette er det
9642 problematisk med kommandoer i terminalen. I tillegg er det alt for
9643 mange programmer i Skolelinux som ikke blir brukt. Jeg tror
9644 Skolelinux er tjent med å tone ned begrepet pedagogisk programvare.
9645 Slik jeg ser det finnes ikke denne kategorien programmer lengre slik
9646 de gjorde før, som frittsående programmer som installeres på en
9647 datamaskin eller på serveren. Det finnes en del spesialpedagogiske
9648 programmer, som Textpilot, LingDys, LingRight, AskiRaski, Ny i Norge
9649 osv. Men dette er programmer for enkelt-elever eller små grupper av
9650 elever. Det som bør være fokus er at alle undervisningsressurser som
9651 lages for nettet skal være nettleseruavhengig.
</p>
9653 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
9655 <p>OpenOffice bruker jeg til vanlig kontorarbeide. VLC bruker jeg som
9656 videoavspiller og av og til streaming av film. Gimp bruker jeg i
9657 undervisningen til bildemanipulering. Firefox og Chrome er mine
9658 favoritt-nettlesere. Firefox har lenge vært førstevalget mitt, nå
9659 bruker jeg mest Chrome. Opplever den som raskere og smidigere enn
9660 Firefox. Ubuntu bruker jeg som dualboot på jobb-maskinen min i
9661 tillegg til at alle PCer hjemme har en eller annen Ubuntu-distribusjon
9662 installert. Jeg bruker Clonezilla på Ubuntu
10.04 til kloning av
9663 datamaskiner på jobb. Det er selvsagt en haug andre frie programmer
9664 jeg bruker men jeg bruker dem ikke daglig. Jeg kan ramse opp:
9665 recordmydesktop, cinelerra, acidrip, soundjuicer, audacity, NX
9666 (no-machine), Kino, Rythmbox...
</p>
9668 <p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
9669 skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?
</strong></p>
9671 <p>Jeg tror oppsøkende virksomhet er den rette strategien.
9672 Ressurspersoner gjør avtaler med rådmenn, skolesjefer, rektorer. Det
9673 er slik konkurrentene gjør det. Fokuset i slike samtaler bør være
9674 kost-nytte. Dersom personer med økonomisk ansvar ser at de kan få
9675 like godt tilbud til mindre utgifter, tror jeg det er mulighet til å
9676 få innpass. Dersom de også kan få konkrete tilbud på drift i slike
9677 samtaler, vil de kanskje bli litt mer interesserte i hvor mye penger
9678 som faktisk går til IKT i skolene. Det er også viktig at vi ikke
9679 firer for mye på krav til datamaskiner. Det er flott at Skolelinux
9680 går på "utrangert" utstyr, men dette bør bare presenteres som et
9681 alternativ. Skolelinux-installasjoner med utrangert utstyr er ikke å
9682 foretrekke dersom man kan unngå det. Det skaper ikke entusiasme hos
9683 brukerne (elever og lærere) når de bruker gamle datamaskiner som går
9684 tregt. Det er kjempefint med skoler som har kommet seg frem til
9685 Skolelinux og fri programvare av seg selv, men de lever på nåde.
9686 Slike valg må fundamenteres hos skoleeier.
</p>
9688 <p>Oppdatering
2011-
01-
16 22:
40: Oppdatert svarene for de tre siste
9689 spørsmålene litt mer tekst fra Embrik.
</p>
9695 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
9700 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9704 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Viggo_Fedreheim.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Viggo Fedreheim
</a>
9710 <p>Jeg fortsetter min intervjuserie med folk i
9711 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinuxprosjektet
</a>. Denne
9712 gang er det en av folkene som har vært med lenge og som har tatt i
9713 bruk Skolelinux på alle skolene i Narvik kommune som skal i ilden.
9714 Han er styremedlem i
9715 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">foreningen
9718 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?
</strong></p>
9720 <p>Mitt navn er Viggo Fedreheim, og jeg er pedagogisk og teknisk
9721 IKT-veileder for alle skoler i Narvik kommune. Jeg drifter totalt
17
9722 servere basert på Skolelinux og Debian. Jeg holder i tillegg noen kurs
9723 mellom all driftingen. For tiden arbeider jeg med en sentral
9724 LDAP-tjener for alle skoleservere samt våre Moodle- og
9725 Joomla-installasjoner.
</p>
9727 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?
</strong></p>
9729 <p>Gjennom en eller annen nettavis i
2001 der var det skrevet om
9730 Skolelinux. Artikkelen ga meg lyst til å prøve ut systemet.
</p>
9732 <p>Det startet i
2002 ved at jeg installerte en av de første utgavene
9733 av Skolelinux på en standard pc på Solneset skole i Tromsø. Denne var
9734 oppe fram til desember
2003 da jeg sluttet på den skolen og begynte i
9735 ny jobb i Narvik kommune.
</p>
9737 <p> I Narvik kommune var det i
2004 kun
2 servere på da totalt
15
9738 skoler. Disse var Windows NT baserte. På disse to skolene var det lite
9739 med maskiner. Jobben med å få Narvik Kommune opp på akseptabelt nivå
9740 virket å være formidabel. Men med hjelp av gode kollegaer og leder
9741 skrev jeg en IKT plan for Narvik kommune som ble vedtatt av politikere
9742 i august
2004. I denne planen ble det bestemt at Narvik kommune skulle
9743 bruke Skolelinux. Her ble det også satt av midler til kabling av god
9744 infrastruktur på alle skoler samt innkjøp av nye datamaskiner. Så i
9745 dag har vi
17 servere hvorav
13 er på Skolelinux, med ca
1500 klienter
9746 basert på tynne, "halvtykke" og et stort antall bærbare pcer basert på
9749 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
9751 <p>Lisenskostnader, driftkostnader og hardwarekrav som er mye lavere
9752 enn for andre systemer.
</p>
9754 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
9756 <p>Pedagogiske programvare som ikke fungerer mot Linux. En Stoooor
9757 flaskehals og som gjør at Linux kanskje ikke blir valgt andre
9760 <p>Eksempler er Relemo, Lindys (lingit sine programmer),
5plus
9761 (matematikk). Disse er programmer som ikke lar seg kjøre i Linux.
</p>
9763 <p> Men det ser ut for at mange leverandører går over til mer
9764 nettbaserte programmer istedet for å installere lokalt. Dette med
9765 enkelte leverandører som ikke kan levere programmer til Linux er et
9766 lite problem og over tid tror jeg at denne barrieren er borte.
</p>
9768 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
9770 <p>Kjører Kubuntu på laptoper, Debian squeeze på stasjonær
9771 kontorpc. Ut over dette arbeder jeg svært mye via konsoll mot andre
9778 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
9783 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9787 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Arnt_Ove_Gregersen.html">Skolelinux-intervju: Arnt Ove Gregersen
</a>
9794 <a href=
"http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">intervjurunden
</a>
9795 som Raphael Hertzog har startet med folk i Debianprosjektet, fikk jeg
9796 lyst til å gjøre det samme med folk i
9797 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinuxprosjektet
</a>. Håpet
9798 er at de som til daglig bidrar til å fremme fri programvare i
9799 skoleverket og utvikler en linux-distribusjon spesiallaget for
9800 skolebruk kan bli bedre kjent og kanskje inspirere flere til å bidra
9801 til Skolelinux-prosjektet.
</p>
9803 <p>Først ut er nyvalgt leder i
9804 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">foreningen FRISK
</a> som
9805 organiserer utviklingen av Skolelinux-distribusjonen. FRISK trenger
9806 alltid flere medlemmer, så
9807 <a href=
"http://medlem.friprogramvareiskolen.no/index.php?page=signup">meld
9808 deg gjerne inn
</a> hvis du vil støtte oss.
</p>
9810 <p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?
</strong></p>
9812 <p><!-- Mitt navn er Arnt Ove Gregersen, jeg er en småbarnfar på 32 år som
9813 for tiden bor Trondheim. -->
9814 Mitt navn er Arnt Ove Gregersen, jeg er
32 år og bor for tiden i Trondheim.
9816 Her jobber jeg som systemutvikler i et firma
9817 som heter
<a href=
"http://www.geomatikk-ikt.no/">Geomatikk IKT AS
</a>,
9818 hvor jeg er på et Vegmeldings-prosjekt for Statens Vegvesen. På
9819 fritiden er jeg styreleder i FRISK (Fri programvare i skolen) og
9820 bidrar til bl.a. Skolelinux-prosjektet når jeg får tid til det. Det er
9821 primært hjemmesiden til Skolelinux-prosjektet og
9822 <a href=
"http://linuxveiviseren.no/">Linux-veiviseren
</a> jeg har
9823 jobbet med her, men jeg har også gjort en del arbeid i forhold til
9824 FRISK sin hjemmeside.
</p>
9826 <p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?
</strong></p>
9828 <p>Jeg var på en presentasjon av prosjektet i regi av Knut Yrvin på
9829 Gløshaugen i Trondheim, hvor jeg fattet stor interesse for prosjektet
9830 og ville hjelpe til så godt jeg kunne. Dette var vel i
2002 eller
9833 <p>Jeg hadde fra før hørt om prosjektet fra før og syntes tanken bak var
9834 ganske fin, men hadde ikke noen interesse av bruke min egen fritid på
9837 <p>I etterkant av presentasjonen startet jeg og noen andre fra
9838 Trondheim "Skolelinux-prosjektet i Sør-Trøndelag" . Hvor vi var med å
9839 bidra til at Trondheim kommune satte igang Selsbakk ungdomskole som et
9840 pilotprosjekt med Skolelinux, som egentlig var og er en stor suksess,
9841 men det virker ut som det ikke skjer noe mer på. I tillegg var vi med
9842 på dugnad på Brundalen videregående skole hvor vi installerte
9843 Skolelinux som såvidt jeg vet fortsatt kjører på Skolelinux.
</p>
9845 <p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
9847 <p>Det bygger på fri programvare og har lav kostnad i forhold til
9848 nytteverdien. Dette fordi det har forholdsvis lav inngangsum og bruker
9849 en arkitektur med sentral-drift som gir mange driftfordeler. I
9850 tillegg vil det kunne frigjøre kostnader for skolene slik at de kan
9851 bruke dem til å ansette f,eks flere lærere om det er ønskelig.
</p>
9853 <p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?
</strong></p>
9855 <P>Ikke all pedagogisk programvare er tilgjengelig der, som f.eks
9856 Drillpro om jeg ikke husker feil.
</p>
9858 <p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?
</strong></p>
9860 <p>Til utvikling av Java-applikasjoner og Android bruker jeg Eclipse og
9861 Quanta til web-utvikling via php. For all bildebehandling bruker jeg
9862 GIMP og Blender til
3d-modellering . Dessverre har Blender en bratt
9863 læringskurve i starten, men det er absolutt verdt det.
9865 <p>Til musikk bruker jeg stort Rhytmbox. Firefox til surfing på nettet og
9866 Thunderbird og Evolution til e-post,
9868 <p>På database-siden bruker jeg PostgreSQL, Postgis og av og til Mysql.
9870 <p>Når jeg får tid til å spille bruker jeg som regel et strategi-spill
9871 som er basert på TA Spring-motoren (springrts.com), her er det et
9872 veldig bra utvalg av gratis spill som er av høy kvalitet. Veldig lett
9879 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
9884 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9888 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Inspirerende_fra_en_ukjent_Skolelinux_skole.html">Inspirerende fra en ukjent Skolelinux-skole
</a>
9894 <p>Følgende inspirerende historie fant jeg i
9895 <a href=
"http://www.digi.no/php/ny_debatt.php?id=858869#innlegg_770926">kommentarfeltet
9896 hos digi.no
</a> i forbindelse med en trist sak om hvordan
9897 <a href=
"http://www.digi.no/858869/datakaos-etter-linux-satsing">skolen
9898 i Hemsedal har fått ødelagt
</a> sin Skolelinux-installasjon. Jeg har
9899 fikset endel åpenbare skrivefeil for lesbarhetens skyld.
</p>
9902 <p><strong>Lignende situasjon i annen kommune, se bare her:
</strong>
9903 <br>av Inspektør Siri (gjest)
9905 <p>Kommunen min har to omtrent jevnstore tettsteder, og en
9906 ungdomsskole i hvert av tettstedene. Den minste av disse har ca
300
9907 elever og til denne sogner det
3 barneskoler. Den største har ca
350
9908 elever og til denne sogner det
4 barneskoler.
</p>
9912 <li>Kommunen har i veldig lang tid forsømt IKT i skolen, og det har
9913 bare blitt gitt smuler i ny og ne. Det er kun den største av
9914 ungdomsskolene som har hatt en skikkelig datapark, og dette takket
9915 være en naturfaglærer som ble lei av å vente på kommunen. Det gjorde
9916 at vi bestemte oss for å ta ting i egne hender, og da vha
9917 skolelinux. En testinstallasjon med
10 gamle PCer ble gjort, og vi så
9918 raskt at dette var veldig lovende. Neste etappe var å gi alle lærere
9919 egen PC på arbeidsplassene sine (
2004), og så sette opp
16 PCer på to
9920 datarom. Vi har kun basert oss på å kjøpe inn brukte maskiner, og
9921 aldri dyrere enn
1000 kr pr klient. For to år siden så hadde vi
9922 klienter i alle klasserom, og totalt hadde vi da rundt
250 stk. Rundt
9923 40 klienter brukes av lærerne og kjører på en egen server. Elvene har
9924 resten, og kjører også en egen server. Servere har vi også kjøpt
9925 brukt,
2 år gamle servere koster
6-
7000 kroner.
</li>
9927 <li>Skolen vår er et relativt gammelt bygg, men en meget dyktig
9928 vaktmester har sammen med IKT-ansvarlig/Naturfaglærer lagt kabler til alle
9929 rom. Gradvis har vi byttet ut billige svitsjer med mer solide saker
9930 som er mulig å fjernstyre.
</li>
9932 <li>Vi har i all hovedsak greid å få dette til over eget budsjett, men
9933 vi har også passet på å få penger når de andre skolene har fått
9934 bærbare PCer til lærere osv.
</li>
9936 <li>Vår IKT-ansvarlig har gjort (og gjør) en fenomenal jobb, og vi har
9937 en maskinpark som de andre av kommunens skoler bare kan drømme
9942 <p>Så skjer det som ofte skjer. Det kommer en eller annen
9943 selger/blåruss og skal fikse ALT. I vårt tilfelle betyr dette også
9944 sentralisering av drift. Den ny-ansatte på kommunens IT-avdelingen
9945 skal også ha jobb, og ser for seg å ta over skoledriften. Kommunen
9946 kjøper inn eksterne driftstjenester, og nekter i samme slengen å ta
9947 hensyn til skolen vår. Dette til tross for at vi alene har like mange
9948 datamaskiner som de andre til sammen.
</p>
9952 <li>Det blir krevd at vi skal innlemmes i de kommunale systemet, og
9953 det er VI som får ansvar for at dette kommer på plass. Og det er her
9954 de horrible tingene begynner å skje.
</li>
9956 <li>Det settes opp en lukket Exchange server som gjør av vi ikke kan
9957 hente epost for våre ansatte. Og det kreves at vi finner løsning på
9960 <li>Det velges sak arkivsystem som vi pålegges å bruke, noe som gjør
9961 at vi må bruke en terminalløsning mot kommunal server. Ikke i seg selv
9962 et problem i følge IKT-ansvarlig hos oss. Men kommunens IT-avd nektet
9963 faktisk å åpne de porter OSV som vi måtte bruke.
</li>
9965 <li>Vi blir pålagt å flytte på innsiden av det kommunale
9966 nettverket. Dette gjorde at vi mistet hjemmekontor for lærere og
9967 elever. Å få åpnet porter i kommunal brannmur var ikke
9968 aktuelt. Mulighet for fjerndrift ble også vekk i samme slengen.
</li>
9970 <li>Vår LMS Moodle er ikke mulig å nå for elevene og lærerne.
9974 <p>Den andre ungdomsskolen i kommunen begynner så å kreve at de skal
9975 få bedre datatetthet, og komme opp på et nivå som ligner det vi
9976 har. De ser at vi kan avholde eksamen hvor alle
10. klassingene får
9977 sitte ved hver sin PC. Og de har fått tilbakemelding (klager) fra VGS
9978 om manglende datakompetanse på elevene som kommer fra dem. Dette fører
9979 videre til at kommunen endelig innser at de må ta grep.
</p>
9981 <p>Grepet betyr sentralisering, og farvel til vår plattform får vi
9982 høre. Det blir gjort en rekke bestemmelser og vedtak som vi ikke får
9983 være en del av. Det blir helt klart at vi må redusere antall maskiner,
9984 og det skal satses på bærbare maskiner. Siden vi ikke har fått tatt
9985 del i prosessene som angår oss, så bruker vi fagforening. Vi har ikke
9986 blitt hørt i forbindelse med endringer som er betydelig for vår
9987 hverdag, og greier å stoppe omlegging. I tillegg så har vi et politisk
9988 vedtak i kommunen på at vi skal kjøre Linux på elevnett, og dette
9989 vedtaket kan ikke administrasjonen i kommunene helt uten videre
9992 <p>I sum har dette gjort at vi har fått jobbe videre i fred. Og en del
9993 runder i kommunens kontrollutvalg har gjort det tydelig at vi har blitt
9994 systematisk motarbeidet.
</p>
9996 <p>I dag har de andre skolene fått sine bærbare maskiner til elever og
9997 lærere, men etter
2 år med innkjøring er det fremdeles problemer
10002 <li>Ungdomsskolen med windows kan ikke kjøre eksamen med sine bærbare,
10003 det er for mye arbeid å renske disse for innhold slik at juks ikke er
10006 <li>Utskrift er et mareritt, etter sigende pga at utskrift først
10007 sendes til sentral server, og så sendes ut til rett skriver. I snitt
10008 så tar det
7-
8 minutter før utskrift starter på enkelte av
10011 <li>Trådløst skaper store problemer, og det er i perioder helt umulig
10012 å komme seg på nett. Og lagring på felles server er bare å glemme i
10017 <p>Vi har slitt mye, kranglet og sloss. Ikke med tekniske problemer,
10018 men med omgivelsene rundt som vil oss til livs. Men det har vært verdt
10019 hver dråpe med svette, og timer med irritasjon. Men vi har begynt å få
10020 rutine her nå.
</p>
10024 <li>Vi har fremdeles et system som vi styrer helt selv.
</li>
10025 <li>Vi har vist at argumentet med at vår IKT-ansvarlig kan finne seg annen jobb ikke holder mål. Vi har kjøpt driftskonto hos et firma i tilfelle krise, og vi har kjørt opplæring på flere av de yngre lærerne.
</li>
10026 <li>Vi har til enhver tid en lærling IKT driftsfag, og velger selvsagt ut dem som satser på Linux. Vi har nå begynt å få tilbake av våre tidligere elever som vil til oss nettopp fordi vi har Linux.
</li>
10027 <li>Vi har vist at vi greier å opprettholde en dobbelt så stor datapark som naboskolen, og det til en billigere penge.
</li>
10028 <li>Vi har datastøtte og support på huset, ALLTID tilgjengelig. De andre skolene må vente flere dager hvis det ikke er noe kritisk.
</li>
10029 <li>Vår IKT-ansvarlig har
50% stilling som lærer og
50% som IKT-ansvarlig.
</li>
10030 <li>Vi har en lærer på hvert trinn som har
3 timer i uka til å drive support/støtte til de andre lærerne.
</li>
10031 <li>Vi opplever at de yngste lærerne ved den andre ungdomsskolen ønsker seg over til oss.
</li>
10035 <p>Vi skal i løpet av året starte prosess med å planlegge ny skole, og vi har fått gjennomslag for at jeg (inspektør) og IKT-ansvarlig skal ha det fulle og hele ansvar for IKT/Infrastruktur. Begrunnelsen vår som ble avgjørende her, var at IT-avd i kommunen ikke kan noe om data i skolen.
</p>
10037 <p>Beklager hvis dette ble litt usammenhengende, men det ble tastet i
10038 fei, og jeg har ikke lest gjennom
</p>
10041 <p>Det kom raskt et lite svar:
</p>
10044 <p><strong>SV: Lignende situasjon i annen kommune, se bare her:
</strong>
10045 <br>av captain_obvious
</p>
10047 <p>Inspirerende å lese. Har dere gjort noe for å fortelle denne
10048 historien videre?
</p>
10050 <p>Hadde vært svært interessant om dere tok kontakt med dokument
2 eller
10051 lignende for å fortelle hvordan det egentlig står til med
10052 IT-satsningen i kommune-Norge. Om ikke annet kan du begynner med å
10053 raffinere innlegget ditt og få en gjesteartikkel på digi.no
</p>
10056 <p>Og deretter en lengre oppfølging.
</p>
10059 <p><strong>SV: Lignende situasjon i annen kommune, se bare her:
</strong>
10060 <br>av Inspektør Siri (gjest)
10062 <p>Joda, vi har lekt med tanken, og vi har t.o.m skrevet flere lengre
10063 leserinnlegg myntet på aviser. Disse er ikke sendt til aviser, men
10064 brukt internt i forbindelse med møter med kommune. Vår IKT-ansvarlig
10065 har også truet med å si opp jobben sin hvis det ikke ble tatt hensyn i
10066 større grad enn hva som har vært tilfelle. VI kan også dokumentere
10067 flere brudd på anbudsregler, og vi kjenner til at relativt store
10068 IT-leverandører som ikke har fått tatt del i disse anbudene, rett og
10069 slett ikke tør melde fra av redsel for å få et dårlig rykte.
</p>
10071 <p>Alt ser ut til å roe seg ned, og vi har fått opp øynene på
10072 politikerne. I sum gjør dette at vi ikke ønsker for mye publisitet nå,
10073 det vil bare rote til igjen.
</p>
10075 <p>Jeg glemte å nevne at vi nå nesten ikke bruker tid på å drifte
10076 systemet vårt, noe som gjør at det aller meste av tid blir brukt til å
10077 støtte lærerne og elevene. F.eks så bruker vår IKT-ansvarlig den
10078 første timen på jobb,
0730-
0830 kun til å gå ute på arbeidsplassene
10079 til læreren. Dette for å kunne svare på små og store problem, gi tips
10080 og råd, eller bare for å plukke opp hva som er behovet ute i
10081 undervisningsarealene. Det er dessverre ikke slik at alle lærerne har
10082 nok digital kompetanse til å kunne formulere alle spørsmålene de har,
10083 men ved å kunne få vise eller lufte tanker med IKT-ansvarlig så er det
10084 utrolig hva som kommer fram.
</p>
10088 <li>Jeg ser at mange bruker økonomi som argument i forhold til å bruke
10089 SkoleLinux, og jeg skal ikke legge skjul på at det var dette som i
10090 utgangspunktet var årsaken til vårt valg. Men diskusjonene og kampen
10091 med kommunens IT-avdeling har gjort at vi har fått et noe annet
10092 fokus. Fordelene med drift og stabilitet, gjør at vi ville ha valgt
10093 samme løsning selv om den var dyrere. At vi slipper langt billigere
10094 unna, som følge av
0,- lisenskostnader og lave maskinvarekostnader, er
10095 bare en bonus.
</li>
10097 <li>Etter å ha kranglet oss til å få skikkelig oversikt over hva de
10098 andre skolene i kommunen bruker på IT, så har vi fått gehør for å få
10099 samme midler til innkjøp. Dette har gjort at vi nå kan kjøpe inn
10100 utstyr som de andre skolene bare kan se langt etter. Vi har nettopp
10101 kjøpt inn
3 videokamera i semiproff-klassen for å kunne lage film,
10102 samt sende live fra skoleteater/konserter. Vi har kjøpt inn digitale
10103 kompaktkamera til alle klassene. Vi har et team av lærere som skal i
10104 gang med å teste ut tablets på svake elever. Håpet et at teknologien
10105 kan være med på å gi noen av elevene litt mer motivasjon. Vi har kjøpt
10106 inn et halvt klassesett med pulsklokker, noe som har vist seg å være
10107 overraskende inspirerende for en del av elevene. Vi har også oss på
10108 fag på en høyskole litt lengre sør for oss, slik at
3 av oss nå skal
10109 ta faget "Linux tjenestedrift". Som inspektør og en del av skolens
10110 administrasjon er det veldig praktisk å kunne trå til hvis det
10111 kniper. Men IKT-ansvarlig har vært UTROLIG flink til å lage rene
10112 smørbrødlister for hvordan de mest vanlige driftsproblem løses, så det
10113 er lett for flere av oss å ta del i den daglige driften. Vi har svært
10114 stor nytte av lærling (som også hjelper to av naboskolene), men det er
10115 nesten blitt slik at det er om å gjøre å komme til først for å få løse
10116 problem. Det å få fingrene på problem og utfordringer er den aller
10117 beste læremester.
</li>
10121 <p>Når vi nå tar til med planlegging av ny skole, så vil det være med
10122 tanke på at det skal være mulig med datautstyr på alle plasser. Vi
10123 kommer i all hovedsak til å legge kabel til alle tenkelige og
10124 utenkelige plasser. WiFi koster tilnærmet NULL å sette opp i
10127 <p>Vi har ikke vært noe flink til å bidra til SkoleLinux-prosjektet,
10128 vi har rett og slett vært for opptatt med vår egen kamp. Vi har hentet
10129 mye inspirasjon fra diskusjoner som har gått i det miljøet, og vi
10130 håper at vi nå framover kan få tid til å bidra. Vi er i ferd med å
10131 bytte ut en av serverne våre, og da vil denne trolig bli satt opp som
10132 testserver for neste versjon av Skolelinux. På den måten vil vi i alle
10133 fall kunne gi tilbakemeldinger og rapportere feil. I tillegg så vil
10134 det kanskje gi oss noen nye utfordringer, for som lærlingen vår sier:
10135 "Skolelinux er noe herk, det skjer jo ikke noe galt og hvordan skal
10140 <p>Det er veldig hyggelig å høre at
10141 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> fungerer så bra i
10142 skoleverdagen etter å ha jobbet med det i
10 år.
</p>
10148 Tags:
<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>.
10153 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10155 <div class=
"entry">
10156 <div class=
"title">
10157 <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>
10163 <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the
<a
10164 href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a> testing if the new
10165 batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
10166 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
10167 computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
10168 five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
10169 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
10170 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
10173 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
10174 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
10175 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
10176 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
10177 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
10178 on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
10179 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
10180 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.
</p>
10182 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
10183 I perform on a new model.
</p>
10187 <li>Is PXE installation working? I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
10188 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
10189 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.
</li>
10191 <li>Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
10192 installation, X.org is working.
</li>
10194 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
10195 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
10196 reported by the program.
</li>
10198 <li>Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
10199 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
10200 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
10201 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
10202 normally test this by playing
10203 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
10204 video
</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.
</li>
10206 <li>Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
10207 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
10209 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
10210 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
10212 <li>Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
10213 picture from the v4l device show up.
</li>
10215 <li>Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
10216 any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
10219 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
10220 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
10223 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working? I'm testing if the
10224 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
10227 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
10228 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
10229 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
10230 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
10233 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
10234 acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
10235 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
10240 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
10241 for the HP machines I am testing. I'm not done yet, so I will report
10242 the test results later. For now I can report that HP
8100 Elite work
10243 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook
8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
10244 and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with
8440p. As you
10245 can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
10246 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
10247 RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.
</p>
10253 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>.
10258 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10260 <div class=
"entry">
10261 <div class=
"title">
10262 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK
</a>
10268 <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
10269 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
10270 gathering
</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway. I
10271 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
10272 Squeeze release. The gathering is open for everyone interested in
10273 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.
</p>
10275 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
10276 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
10278 <a href=
"http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
10279 for
2010</a>. Membership is open for all, and currently there are
388
10280 people registered as members. Last year
32 members cast their vote in
10281 the memberdb based election system. I hope more people find time to
10282 vote this year.
</p>
10288 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
10293 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10295 <div class=
"entry">
10296 <div class=
"title">
10297 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?
</a>
10303 <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
10304 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
10305 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
10306 to play a video file or stream. Only if VLC fail will I drag out
10307 gmplayer to see if it can do better. The reason is mostly the failure
10308 model and trust. When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
10309 reporting the problem. When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
10310 just hangs. The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.
<p>
10312 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
10313 mplayer in
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
10314 Edu/Skolelinux
</a>. The reason is simple. We need a good browser
10315 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
10316 not very good. For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
10317 is no way for the user to pause the video. Also, when I
10318 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
10319 tested the browser plugins
</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
10320 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked. If
10321 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
10322 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.
</P>
10324 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
10325 annoying. The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
10326 keyboard shortcuts. When the player is in full screen mode, its
10327 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
10328 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode. I
10329 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
10330 window mode. Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
10331 the current video. It is very nice when playing short videos from the
10332 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
10333 what is going on.
</p>
10339 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>.
10344 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10346 <div class=
"entry">
10347 <div class=
"title">
10348 <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>
10354 <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
10355 upgrade testing of the
10356 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
10357 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a> to do
<tt>apt-get autoremove
</tt> when using apt-get.
10358 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
10359 can now present the updated result from today:
</p>
10361 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
10363 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
10370 browser-plugin-gnash
10377 freedesktop-sound-theme
10379 gconf-defaults-service
10392 gnome-codec-install
10394 gnome-desktop-environment
10398 gnome-session-canberra
10400 gnome-themes-extras
10403 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
10404 gstreamer0.10-tools
10406 gtk2-engines-pixbuf
10407 gtk2-engines-smooth
10409 libapache2-mod-dnssd
10412 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
10415 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
10416 libboost-python1.42
.0
10417 libboost-thread1.42
.0
10419 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0
10421 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
10428 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
10441 libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
10443 libgnomepanel2.24-cil
10448 libgtksourceview2.0-common
10449 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
10450 libmono-addins0.2-cil
10451 libmono-cairo2.0-cil
10452 libmono-corlib2.0-cil
10453 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
10454 libmono-posix2.0-cil
10455 libmono-security2.0-cil
10456 libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
10457 libmono-system2.0-cil
10460 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
10461 libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
10471 libtelepathy-farsight0
10480 nautilus-sendto-empathy
10484 python-aptdaemon-gtk
10486 python-beautifulsoup
10501 python-gtksourceview2
10512 python-pkg-resources
10519 python-twisted-conch
10520 python-twisted-core
10525 python-zope.interface
10527 remmina-plugin-data
10530 rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
10537 system-config-printer-udev
10539 telepathy-mission-control-
5
10546 transmission-common
10552 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
10558 epiphany-extensions
10560 fast-user-switch-applet
10579 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
10581 libsdl1.2debian-alsa
10587 system-config-printer
10594 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
10597 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10600 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
10606 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
10608 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
10614 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
10618 network-manager-kde
10621 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
10637 kdeartwork-emoticons
10639 kdeartwork-theme-icon
10643 kdebase-workspace-bin
10644 kdebase-workspace-data
10656 konqueror-nsplugins
10658 kscreensaver-xsavers
10673 plasma-dataengines-workspace
10675 plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
10676 plasma-runners-addons
10677 plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
10678 plasma-scriptengine-python
10679 plasma-scriptengine-qedje
10680 plasma-scriptengine-ruby
10681 plasma-scriptengine-webkit
10682 plasma-scriptengines
10683 plasma-wallpapers-addons
10684 plasma-widget-folderview
10685 plasma-widget-networkmanagement
10688 update-notifier-kde
10689 xscreensaver-data-extra
10691 xscreensaver-gl-extra
10692 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
10695 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
10699 google-gadgets-common
10717 libggadget-qt-
1.0-
0b
10722 libkonqsidebarplugin4a
10726 libkunitconversion4
10731 libplasma-geolocation-interface4
10733 libplasmagenericshell4
10747 libsmokeknewstuff2-
3
10748 libsmokeknewstuff3-
3
10750 libsmokektexteditor3
10758 libsmokeqtnetwork4-
3
10759 libsmokeqtopengl4-
3
10760 libsmokeqtscript4-
3
10764 libsmokeqtuitools4-
3
10765 libsmokeqtwebkit4-
3
10776 plasma-dataengines-addons
10777 plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
10778 plasma-widget-lancelot
10779 plasma-widgets-addons
10780 plasma-widgets-workspace
10784 update-notifier-common
10787 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
10788 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
10789 differences. I have no idea what packages should be installed after
10790 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.
</p>
10796 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>.
10801 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10803 <div class=
"entry">
10804 <div class=
"title">
10805 <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>
10811 <p>Most of the computers in use by the
10812 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project
</a>
10813 are virtual machines. And they have been Xen machines running on a
10814 fairly old IBM eserver xseries
345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
10815 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge
2950 host machine. This was a
10816 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
10817 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
10818 know is not supported by KVM. So to migrate, we had to convert
10819 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.
</p>
10822 <a href=
"http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
10823 nice recipe
</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
10824 migration. It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
10825 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
10826 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data. I NFS mounted the
10827 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.
</p>
10833 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/
35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
10838 if [ -z "$
1" ] ; then
10839 echo "Usage: $
0 <hostname
>"
10845 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
10846 echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
10850 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs. not sure why.
10851 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
10852 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
10853 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
10856 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=
1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
10857 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
10859 parted $img mklabel msdos
10860 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap
0 $disksize
10861 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
10862 parted $img set
1 boot on
10865 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
10866 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
10868 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=
1M
10869 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
10870 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
10872 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
10873 losetup -d /dev/loop0
10876 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
10877 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.
</p>
10879 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
10880 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-
686 and
10881 set up grub to boot from the disk image. After this, the KVM machines
10882 seem to work just fine.
</p>
10888 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>.
10893 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10895 <div class=
"entry">
10896 <div class=
"title">
10897 <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>
10903 <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
10904 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
10905 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
10906 status. Here is a short update based on a test I ran
20101118.
</p>
10908 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
10909 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
10910 can see if anything should be changed.
</p>
10912 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
10914 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
10917 apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
10918 browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-
4.3 cups-pk-helper
10919 dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
10920 freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
10921 gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
10922 geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
10923 gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
10924 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
10925 gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
10926 gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
10927 gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
10928 gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
10929 gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
10930 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
10931 libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-
0 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
10932 libboost-python1.42
.0 libboost-thread1.42
.0 libchamplain-
0.4-
0
10933 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
10934 libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-
1.0-
2
10935 libepc-common libepc-ui-
1.0-
2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
10936 libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
10937 libgdl-
1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-
0 libgif4
10938 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
10939 libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
10940 libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
10941 libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
10942 libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
10943 libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
10944 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
10945 libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
10946 libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-
6
10947 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6
.8
10948 libpolkit-gtk-
1-
0 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
10949 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6
.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
10950 libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-
4
10951 libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-
0.99-
0
10952 libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
10953 mono-
2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
10954 nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
10955 openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-
4suite-xml
10956 python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
10957 python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
10958 python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
10959 python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
10960 python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
10961 python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
10962 python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
10963 python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
10964 python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
10965 python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
10966 python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
10967 python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
10968 python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
10969 remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
10970 rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
10971 software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
10972 telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-
5 telepathy-salut tomboy
10973 totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
10974 transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
10978 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
10981 arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
10982 epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
10983 fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
10984 gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
10985 gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
10986 gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
10987 guile-
1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
10988 libavahi-ui0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7
10989 libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
10990 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1
10991 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3 libfaad0 libgadu3
10992 libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
10993 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
10994 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
10995 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-
1.0-
0
10996 libgtkhtml2-
0 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
10997 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
10998 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
10999 libmagick++
10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
11000 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
11001 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9
11002 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8
11003 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
11004 libspeexdsp1 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libsvga1
11005 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
11006 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
11007 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
11008 sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
11009 totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
11012 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
11015 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
11018 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
11024 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
11026 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
11029 autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-
4.3 dcoprss
11030 edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
11031 ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
11032 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
11033 kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
11034 kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
11035 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
11036 kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
11037 kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
11038 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
11039 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
11040 kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
11041 killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
11042 kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
11043 ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42
.0
11044 libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
11045 libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
11046 libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
11047 libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
11048 libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
11049 libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
11050 libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
11051 libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
11052 libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
11053 lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
11054 openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
11055 parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
11056 pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
11057 speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
11058 ttf-sazanami-gothic
11061 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
11064 amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
11065 dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
11066 kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
11067 kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
11068 keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
11069 kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
11070 kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
11071 klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
11072 kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
11073 kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
11074 kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
11075 ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
11076 ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
11077 kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
11078 kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
11079 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
11080 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-
0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2
11081 libboost-python1.34
.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
11082 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
11083 libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-
0 libicu38
11084 libiec61883-
0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
11085 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
11086 libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
11087 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
11088 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
11089 libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
11090 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
11091 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-
8 librss1 libsensors3
11092 libsmbios2 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90
11093 libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
11094 mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
11095 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
11096 ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
11099 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
11102 dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
11103 kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
11104 kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
11105 kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
11106 netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
11107 xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
11108 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
11111 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
11114 kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
11121 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>.
11126 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11128 <div class=
"entry">
11129 <div class=
"title">
11130 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd
</a>
11137 <a href=
"http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
11138 call from the Gnash project
</a> for
11139 <a href=
"http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot
</a> slaves to test the
11140 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
11141 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
11142 Debian/Squeeze. I hope this can help the developers in getting new
11143 releases out more often.
</p>
11145 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
11146 I have considered setting up a
<a
11147 href=
"http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd
</a>
11148 machine as well. I have also considered using the kfreebsd
11149 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the
5
11150 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video. Because of this, I
11151 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
11152 kfreebsd. Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
11153 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
11154 screen at random locations). Have not gotten very far with the
11155 testing. Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
11156 fatal problem. Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
11157 useful as a file server for NUUG. Will try to find time to set up a
11158 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.
</p>
11164 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>.
11169 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11171 <div class=
"entry">
11172 <div class=
"title">
11173 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
</a>
11179 <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
11180 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> DVD, which is
11181 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
11182 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard. Even
11183 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
11184 working using this DVD.
</p>
11186 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
11187 installing recommended packages by default. We want the same set of
11188 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
11189 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD. I created
11190 a patch for debian-cd in
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
11191 report #
601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
11192 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.
</p>
11194 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
11195 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
11196 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
11197 Debian archive.
</p>
11199 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
11200 were using most space. A few large packages are well know;
11201 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont. But I also
11202 discovered that lilypond used
106 MiB and fglrx-driver used
53 MiB.
11203 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
11204 when looking a bit closer I discovered that
99 MiB of the
106 MiB were
11205 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
11206 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
11207 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
11208 documentation. Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
11209 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
11210 free X driver should work.
</p>
11212 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
11213 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
11214 DVD more useful again.
</p>
11220 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
11225 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11227 <div class=
"entry">
11228 <div class=
"title">
11229 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates
2010-
10-
24</a>
11235 <p>Some updates.
</p>
11237 <p>My
<a href=
"http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge
</a> to
11238 raise money for the project is going well. The lower limit of
10
11239 signers was reached in
24 hours, and so far
13 people have signed it.
11240 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
11241 how far we can get before the time limit of December
24 is reached.
11244 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
11245 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
11246 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
11248 <a href=
"http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov
</a>,
11249 and can be used using
<tt>kcov
<directory
> <binary
></tt>.
11250 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
11251 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
11252 libglib2.0-dev. Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
11253 solvable. I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.
</p>
11255 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for
<a
11256 href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
11257 new alpha release of Debian Edu
</a>, and just published the second
11258 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
11259 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>
11260 release. Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
11261 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
11262 client servers and diskless workstations. A nice touch added
11263 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
11264 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.
</p>
11270 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>.
11275 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11277 <div class=
"entry">
11278 <div class=
"title">
11279 <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>
11285 <p>In the
<a href=
"http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
11286 popularity-contest numbers
</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
11287 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian. The sixth
11288 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla. This is a clear indication that
11289 working flash is important for Debian users. Around
10 percent of the
11290 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
11293 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August
2008
11294 («
<a href=
"http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
11295 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
11296 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs
</a>»), one of the most important problems
11297 schools experienced with
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
11298 Edu/Skolelinux
</a> was the lack of working Flash. A lot of educational
11299 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
11300 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
11301 good reason to stay with Windows.
</p>
11303 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
11304 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
11305 everything you told him but could work fairly well. This was a
11306 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
11307 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
11308 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
11309 example Internet Explorer
6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
11310 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
11311 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
11312 pages they want to visit.
</p>
11314 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
11315 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
11316 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
11317 Video to working out of the box. For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
11318 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
11319 the new release
0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
11320 unstable. The new version work with more sites that version
0.8.7.
11321 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
11322 release team have not had time to reply to it yet. I hope they agree
11323 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
11324 accept the new package into Squeeze.
</p>
11330 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>.
11335 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11337 <div class=
"entry">
11338 <div class=
"title">
11339 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs
</a>
11345 <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
11346 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
11347 post about sshfs
</a>. He reported another problem with sshfs. It
11348 fail to handle hard links properly. A simple way to spot this is to
11349 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree. These should have
11350 a link count
>1, but on sshfs the count is
1. I just tested to see
11351 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:
</p>
11355 ln: creating hard link `bar' =
> `foo': Function not implemented
11359 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
11360 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
11361 avoid surprised unix programs. Not as useful as working file locking
11362 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
11363 nevertheless. :)
</p>
11365 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
11367 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a></p>
11373 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
11378 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11380 <div class=
"entry">
11381 <div class=
"title">
11382 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_i_Osloskolen.html">Skolelinux i Osloskolen
</a>
11388 <p>Denne høsten skal endelig alle Osloskolene få mulighet til å bruke
11389 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>. Ny IT-løsning
11390 har vært rullet ut i noen måneder nå, og så vidt jeg fikk vite før
11391 sommeren skulle alle skoler ha nytt opplegg på plass før oppstart nå i
11392 høst. På alle skolene skal en kunne velge ved installasjon om en skal
11393 ha Windows eller Skolelinux på maskinene, og en kan i tillegg
11394 PXE-boote maskinene over nett som tynne klienter eller diskløse
11395 arbeidsstasjoner. Jeg er spent på hvor mange skoler som velger å ta i
11396 bruk Skolelinux, og gleder meg til å se hvordan dette utvikler seg.
11397 Løsningen leveres av
11398 <a href=
"http://www.logica.no/">Logica
</a> med
11399 <a href=
"http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS
</a> som
11400 underleverandør, og jeg har vært involvert i utviklingen av løsningen
11401 via Skolelinux Drift AS siden prosjektet starter. Jeg synes det er
11402 fantastisk at Skolelinux er kommet så langt siden vi startet i
2001 at
11403 alle elevene i Osloskolene nå skal få mulighet til å bruke
11404 løsningen. Jeg håper de vil sette pris på alle de
11405 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.no/linux-signpost/">fantastiske
11406 brukerprogrammene
</a> som er tilgjengelig i Skolelinux.
</p>
11412 Tags:
<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>.
11417 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11419 <div class=
"entry">
11420 <div class=
"title">
11421 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs
</a>
11427 <p>My file system sematics program
11428 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
11429 a few days ago
</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
11430 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit. I'm
11431 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
11432 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs. My friend
11433 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
11434 Edu, but stopped because of problems. I asked today what the problems
11435 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
11436 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
11440 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
11442 int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
11445 struct stat statbuf;
11446 if (-
1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
11447 retval = statbuf.st_mode &
0x1ff;
11454 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
11455 int test_umask(void) {
11456 printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
11458 mode_t orig_umask = umask(
000);
11460 if (
0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar",
0666))) {
11461 printf(" error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode
666 and umask
000\n",
11465 if (
0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar",
0666))) {
11466 printf(" error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode
666 and umask
007\n",
11470 umask (orig_umask);
11474 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
11481 <p>Sure enough. On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:
</p>
11484 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
11485 info: testing symlink creation
11486 info: testing subdirectory creation
11487 info: testing fcntl locking
11488 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
11489 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
11490 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
11491 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
11492 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
11493 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
11494 info: testing umask effect on file creation
11497 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
11501 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
11502 info: testing symlink creation
11503 info: testing subdirectory creation
11504 info: testing fcntl locking
11505 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
11506 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
11507 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
11508 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
11509 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
11510 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
11511 info: testing umask effect on file creation
11512 error: Wrong file mode
644 when creating using mode
666 and umask
000
11513 error: Wrong file mode
640 when creating using mode
666 and umask
007
11516 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
11517 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
11520 <p>Update
2010-
08-
26: Reported the issue in
11521 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #
594498</a></p>
11523 <p>Update
2010-
08-
27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
11524 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
11525 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a>.
</p>
11531 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
11536 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11538 <div class=
"entry">
11539 <div class=
"title">
11540 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients
</a>
11546 <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
11547 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
11548 configuration settings on the clients. I believe the work to be
11549 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
11550 generated configuration.
</p>
11552 <p>What is the point, you might ask? The point is to allow a Debian
11553 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
11554 without any manual configuration.
</p>
11556 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
11557 the University of Oslo using PXE. With the PXE installation, I am
11558 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
11559 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
11560 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
11561 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret). After answering
11562 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
11563 after around
50 minutes it is done. I press enter to finish the
11564 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE. When the machine is
11565 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
11566 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
11567 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
11568 same username and password to the KDE
4.4 desktop. At no point during
11569 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
11570 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
11571 fetched via DHCP and DNS. The roaming workstation is now ready for
11574 <p>How was this done, you might wonder? First of all, here is the
11575 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
11576 working properly out of the box:
</p>
11579 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.
</li>
11580 <li>Web proxy URL.
</li>
11581 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).
</li>
11582 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.
</li>
11583 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)
</li>
11584 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)
</li>
11585 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)
</li>
11588 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything? Let me knew if I did.)
</p>
11590 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
11591 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
11592 administrators to track their machines. Since yesterday, everything
11593 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
11594 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.
</p>
11596 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
11597 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
11598 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
11599 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
11600 /etc/apt/apt.conf. I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
11601 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
11602 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
11603 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.
</p>
11605 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
11606 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot. First the
11607 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain. If
11608 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead. If an
11609 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
11610 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
11611 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS. If there are several
11612 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
11613 LDAP subtree is used as the base. If defaultNamingContext is missing,
11614 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
11615 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
11616 such an object is used as the LDAP base. For Kerberos, a similar
11617 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
11618 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record. I've been unable to find a way to
11619 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
11620 current DNS domain is used.
</p>
11622 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
11623 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
11624 found. This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
11625 Oslo. A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
11626 server, but have not been implemented yet. I decided to fetch and
11627 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
11628 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
11629 log in nor the passwords required to log in. Usernames and passwords
11630 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
11631 network, and will not change as the laptop move around. For a
11632 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
11633 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much. Perhaps we
11634 should switch those to use sssd too?
</p>
11636 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
11637 located when the user logs in for the first time. The LDAP server is
11638 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
11639 attribute is used if found. If it isn't found, the home directory
11640 path fetched from NSS is used instead. Assuming the path is of the
11641 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
11642 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
11643 smb://server.domain/username. This algorithm works for both Debian
11644 edu and the University of Oslo. Perhaps there are better attributes
11645 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
11648 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
11649 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
11650 more flexible than before. I suspect it will also work for thin
11651 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
11652 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
11655 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
11656 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
11658 <p>Update
2010-
08-
09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
11659 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
11660 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name. Will have to
11661 implement it for Debian Edu. :)
</p>
11667 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
11672 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11674 <div class=
"entry">
11675 <div class=
"title">
11676 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...
</a>
11682 <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
11683 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
11684 Edu/Skolelinux machines. This was thought to be no problem, as the
11685 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
11686 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
11687 mount home directories without any problems. But, after months of
11688 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.
</p>
11690 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
11691 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
11692 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
11693 underlying file system is a unix file system. When using a Windows
11694 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
11695 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
11696 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.
</p>
11698 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
11699 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
11700 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
11701 it should. If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
11702 help you find your way out again. This is the fs-test.c source:
</p>
11706 * Some tests to check the file system sematics. Used to verify that
11707 * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
11709 * License: GPL v2 or later
11711 * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
11712 * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
11715 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS
64
11716 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE
1
11717 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE
1
11719 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
11721 #include
<errno.h
>
11722 #include
<fcntl.h
>
11723 #include
<stdio.h
>
11724 #include
<string.h
>
11725 #include
<stdlib.h
>
11726 #include
<sys/file.h
>
11727 #include
<sys/stat.h
>
11728 #include
<sys/types.h
>
11729 #include
<unistd.h
>
11733 * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
11734 * package and linking with -lsqlite3. A more low level test is
11736 * See also
<URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5
>.
11738 #include
<sqlite3.h
>
11739 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS \
11740 "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
11741 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
11743 char *name = "testsqlite.db";
11746 int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
11748 printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
11753 /* create tables */
11754 rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,
0, &zErrMsg);
11755 if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
11756 printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
11760 printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
11764 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
11767 * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3. This
11768 * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows
2003. This is
11769 * done in the sqlite3 library.
11771 *
<URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/
2001-
08/msg00854.html
> and the
11772 * POSIX specification
11773 *
<URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/
009695399/functions/fcntl.html
>.
11775 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
11777 char *name = "testsqlite.db";
11779 int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE,
0644);
11780 printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
11782 fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
11783 fl.l_pid = getpid();
11784 printf(" Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824");
11785 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
11787 fl.l_type = F_RDLCK;
11788 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
11790 printf(" Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826");
11791 fl.l_start =
1073741826;
11793 fl.l_type = F_RDLCK;
11794 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
11796 printf(" Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824");
11797 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
11799 fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
11800 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
11802 printf(" Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824");
11803 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
11805 fl.l_type = F_WRLCK;
11806 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
11808 printf(" Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826");
11809 fl.l_start =
1073741826;
11811 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
11813 printf(" Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824");
11814 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
11816 fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
11817 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
11824 * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
11825 * below them. This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
11826 * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
11827 * slowing down file operations.
11829 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
11831 char *path = strdup("test");
11832 char *dirs[LEVELS];
11834 printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
11835 for (level =
0; level
< LEVELS; level++) {
11836 char *newpath = NULL;
11837 if (-
1 == mkdir(path,
0777)) {
11838 printf(" error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
11839 path, strerror(errno));
11842 asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
11850 * Test if symlinks can be created. This was a problem detected with
11853 int test_symlinks(void) {
11854 printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
11856 if (-
1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
11857 printf(" error: Unable to create symlink\n");
11861 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
11862 printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
11864 test_subdirectory_creation();
11866 test_sqlite_open();
11867 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
11868 test_gcompris_locking();
11873 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
11877 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
11878 info: testing symlink creation
11879 info: testing subdirectory creation
11880 info: sqlite worked
11881 info: testing fcntl locking
11882 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
11883 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
11884 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
11885 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
11886 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
11887 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
11890 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
11891 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
11892 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
11893 the read-only lock (while Windows do not). Another was a bug in the
11894 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
11895 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
11896 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
11897 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.
</p>
11899 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
11902 <p>Update
2010-
08-
27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
11903 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
11904 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a>.
</p>
11910 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
11915 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11917 <div class=
"entry">
11918 <div class=
"title">
11919 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu
</a>
11925 <p>A few days ago, I
11926 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
11927 to install
</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
11928 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
11929 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
11930 university infrastructure. It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
11931 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
11932 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
11933 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
11934 around it. Now I am a huge step further along that road.
</p>
11936 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
11937 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
11938 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
11939 servers for Kerberos authentication. All this without any
11940 configuration at all during installation. My users home directory got
11941 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
11942 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured. In addition to
11943 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
11944 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
11945 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf. Iceweasel and KDE is
11946 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
11947 a proxy when at the university network. If the machine is moved to a
11948 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
11949 gave it a IP address.
</p>
11951 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
11952 entry ldap.$domain. If this do not exist, it look for the
11953 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
11954 server. Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
11955 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
11956 pick the first one as the LDAP base. For Kerberos, a similar
11957 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
11958 uppercase version of $domain.
</p>
11960 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask. SMB mounting my home
11961 directory do not work. No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
11962 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
11963 the cause. These are not properly configured during installation, and
11964 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
11965 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(
</p>
11967 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
11968 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
11969 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
11970 authentication. It should also work out of the box in a Active
11971 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
11972 with UID and GID values.
</p>
11974 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
11975 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
11981 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
11986 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11988 <div class=
"entry">
11989 <div class=
"title">
11990 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo
</a>
11996 <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
11997 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
11998 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
11999 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
12000 infrastructure. In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
12001 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
12004 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
12005 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
12006 /etc/mklocaluser.d/
20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
12007 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
12008 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
12009 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
12010 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
12013 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
12014 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
12015 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
12016 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
12017 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
12018 university servers.
</p>
12020 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
12021 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
12022 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
12023 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
12024 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
12031 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
12036 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12038 <div class=
"entry">
12039 <div class=
"title">
12040 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released
</a>
12046 <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
12047 with the next Debian Edu release. Not nearly done, but one major step
12051 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
12052 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
12053 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
12054 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
12055 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
12056 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
12057 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
12058 language of choice, please let us know too.
</p>
12060 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
12061 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
12062 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.
</p>
12064 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
12065 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
12068 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version
</p>
12071 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
12073 <li>Desktop environment KDE
4.4 =
> the new KDE desktop in
12074 combination with some new artwork
12075 <li>Web browser Iceweasel
3.5
12076 <li>OpenOffice.org
3.2
12077 <li>Educational toolbox GCompris
9.3
12078 <li>Music creator Rosegarden
10.04.2
12079 <li>Image editor Gimp
2.6.10
12080 <li>Virtual universe Celestia
1.6.0
12081 <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium
0.10.4
12082 <li>3D modeler Blender
2.49.2 (new application)
12083 <li>Video editor Kdenlive
0.7.7 (new application)
12085 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
12091 <li>SMTP (sender verification)
12094 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.
</li>
12095 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
12096 fetched from LDAP.
</li>
12097 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.
</li>
12098 <li>General cleanup (not finished)
</li>
12100 <p>The following features are not working as they should
</p>
12103 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
12104 scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
12106 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
12107 and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
12108 clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.
</li>
12109 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.
</li>
12110 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.
</li>
12111 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.
</li>
12112 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
12113 netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.
</li>
12114 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
12115 some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
12116 jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.
</li>
12117 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
12118 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
12119 and help out with translations.
</li>
12122 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use
</p>
12125 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</a></li>
12126 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</a></li>
12127 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
12129 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use
</p>
12132 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</a></li>
12133 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</a></li>
12134 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
12137 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
12138 get closer to the final release.
</p>
12140 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are
</p>
12143 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
12144 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
12147 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are
</p>
12149 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
12150 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
12152 <p>How to report bugs:
12153 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla
</p>
12155 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org
</p>
12162 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
12167 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12169 <div class=
"entry">
12170 <div class=
"title">
12171 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu
</a>
12177 <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
12178 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
12179 Edu/Skolelinux into shape. This future version will use Kerberos for
12180 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
12181 getting rid of password questions one at the time.
</p>
12183 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
12184 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
12185 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
12186 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server. This
12187 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
12188 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
12189 package. I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.
</p>
12191 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
12192 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
12193 password when mounting the SMB volume. A simple click on the shortcut
12194 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
12197 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
12198 Debian Edu. We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
12199 also Samba. Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.
</p>
12201 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
12202 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
12203 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
12204 the release. It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
12205 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
12206 time for a alpha0 release today. As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
12207 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
12208 release another day.
</p>
12210 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
12211 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
12217 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
12222 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12224 <div class=
"entry">
12225 <div class=
"title">
12226 <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>
12233 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup
</a>
12235 <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
12237 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
12238 all
</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.
</p>
12240 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
12241 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
12242 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server. The two
12243 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.
</p>
12245 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
12246 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
12247 on a Debian Edu main-server. Here is a summary.
12249 <p><strong>powerdns
</strong></p>
12251 <a href=
"http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
12252 on how to
</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
12255 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
12256 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
12257 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
12258 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
12259 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
12260 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.
</p>
12262 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
12263 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
12264 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
12265 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
12266 "dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
12267 "(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry. For
12268 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
12269 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
12270 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
12271 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
12272 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
12273 spfrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entries it is looking for
12274 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
12275 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
12276 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. The equivalent
12277 ldapsearch commands could look like this:
</p>
12280 ldapsearch -h ldap \
12281 -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
12282 -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
12283 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
12284 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
12285 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
12286 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
12288 ldapsearch -h ldap \
12289 -b dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
12290 -s base -x '(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
12291 dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
12292 hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
12293 srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
12294 </pre></blockquote>
12296 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
12297 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
12298 example LDAP objects used there. In addition to these objects, the
12299 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12303 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12305 objectclass: dnsdomain
12306 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
12309 associateddomain: tjener.intern
12311 dn: dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12313 objectclass: dnsdomain2
12314 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
12316 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
12317 associateddomain:
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
12318 </pre></blockquote>
12320 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently. When looking for
12321 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
12322 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
12323 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
12324 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
12325 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
12326 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entires it also do a
12327 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=
10.0.2.2)"
12328 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
12329 modifytimestamp. In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
12330 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
12333 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
12337 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
12338 '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
12339 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
12340 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
12341 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
12342 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
12344 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
12345 '(arecord=
10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
12346 </pre></blockquote>
12348 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
12349 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
12350 reverse lookups.
</p>
12352 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
12353 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
12354 need to generate a DNS reply. This make it able to work with any
12355 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.
</p>
12357 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC
1274) and
12358 dnsdomain2 schemas. The latter is used for reverse entries like
12359 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.
</p>
12361 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
12362 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
12363 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain). The use
12364 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
12365 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.
</p>
12367 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
12368 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
12369 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
12370 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
12371 (zonename and relativedomainname).
</p>
12373 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
12374 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
12375 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
12376 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
12377 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
12378 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):
</p>
12381 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
12384 MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
12385 DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
12386 TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
12387 NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
12388 A6Record $ DNAMERecord
12390 </pre></blockquote>
12392 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
12393 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
12394 all the attributes PowerDNS wants. I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
12395 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
12396 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
12397 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.
</p>
12399 <p><strong>ISC dhcp
</strong></p>
12401 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
12402 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want. This
12403 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
12404 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
12405 what is needed without having to read the source code.
</p>
12407 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
12408 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
12409 stored. These are the relevant entries from
12410 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:
</p>
12413 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
12414 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
12415 </pre></blockquote>
12417 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
12418 configuration it need. The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
12419 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))". The
12420 search result is this entry:
</p>
12423 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12426 objectClass: dhcpServer
12427 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12428 </pre></blockquote>
12430 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
12431 subtree with DHCP configuration. The DHCP configuration subtree base
12432 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
12433 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
12434 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
12435 The search result is this entry:
</p>
12438 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12441 objectClass: dhcpService
12442 objectClass: dhcpOptions
12443 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12444 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
12445 dhcpStatements: authoritative
12446 dhcpOption: smtp-server code
69 = array of ip-address
12447 dhcpOption: www-server code
72 = array of ip-address
12448 dhcpOption: wpad-url code
252 = text
12449 </pre></blockquote>
12451 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time. When
12452 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
12453 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
12454 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
12455 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost. These provide options
12456 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc. Leaving out the
12457 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
12458 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
12459 related computer objects.
</p>
12461 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
12462 of the client (
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00 in this example), using a subtree
12463 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
12464 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
12465 00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00))" as the filter. This is what a host object look
12469 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12472 objectClass: dhcpHost
12473 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
12474 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
12475 </pre></blockquote>
12477 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
12478 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
12479 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure. On the
12480 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
12481 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries. The latter should make
12482 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
12483 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
12484 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
12485 structural object class.
12487 <p><strong>Conclusion
</strong></p>
12489 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
12490 to which LDAP schemas to use. While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
12491 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
12492 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
12493 in the configuration.
</p>
12495 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
12496 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
12497 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
12498 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
12499 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
12502 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
12503 this might work for Debian Edu:
</p>
12507 cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
12508 cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
12509 cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
12510 cn=
10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
12511 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
12512 cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
12513 cn=
192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
12514 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
12515 ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
12516 cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
12517 </pre></blockquote>
12519 <P>This is not tested yet. If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
12520 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
12521 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
12522 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.
</p>
12524 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
12528 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12531 objectClass: dhcpHost
12532 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
12533 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
12534 associateddomain: hostname.intern
12535 arecord:
10.11.12.13
12536 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
12537 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
12538 </pre></blockquote>
12540 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
12541 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
12542 auxiliary object class.
</p>
12548 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>.
12553 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12555 <div class=
"entry">
12556 <div class=
"title">
12557 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects
</a>
12563 <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
12564 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
12565 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
12566 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
12567 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.
</p>
12569 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
12570 information finally found a solution that seem to work.
</p>
12572 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
12573 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry. If
12574 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
12575 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
12576 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
12577 to a slave DNS server.
</p>
12579 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
12580 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
12581 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
12582 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
12583 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup. It
12586 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
12587 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
12588 an earlier email. The combined LDAP object will look something like
12592 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12594 objectClass: dhcphost
12595 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
12596 objectclass: dnsdomainaux
12597 associateddomain: hostname.intern
12598 arecord:
10.11.12.13
12599 dhcphwaddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
12600 dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
12602 </pre></blockquote>
12604 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
12605 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
12606 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress. LTSP will use
12607 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.
</p>
12609 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
12610 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
12611 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
12612 that. If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
12613 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
12614 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
12615 content. I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
12616 might be a good place to put it.
</p>
12618 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12619 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
12625 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>.
12630 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12632 <div class=
"entry">
12633 <div class=
"title">
12634 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP
</a>
12640 <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
12641 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
12642 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
12643 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.
</p>
12645 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
12646 to get configuration from LDAP. The idea is to look up the MAC
12647 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
12648 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
12651 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
12652 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
12653 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.
</p>
12655 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
12656 this approach. A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
12657 need to be written. Comments, suggestions, etc?
</p>
12660 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
12662 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
12664 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
12665 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
12666 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
12668 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
12669 # existence of attribute names.
12671 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
12672 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
12673 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
12675 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
12676 # configuration settings. Something like this should work:
12678 # objectclass (
1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
12681 # MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
12683 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
12684 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
12685 LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
12686 for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $
5}'|sort -u) ; do
12687 filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
12688 ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
12689 grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
12690 # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
12691 attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
12692 # bass value on to clients
12693 eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
12697 </pre></blockquote>
12699 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
12700 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
12701 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
12702 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
12703 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)
</p>
12705 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12706 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
12708 <p>Update
2010-
07-
17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
12709 configuration in LDAP that was created around year
2000 by
12710 <a href=
"http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
12711 Xperience, Inc.,
2000</a>. I found its
12712 <a href=
"http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files
</a> on a
12713 personal home page over at redhat.com.
</p>
12719 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>.
12724 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12726 <div class=
"entry">
12727 <div class=
"title">
12728 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
12735 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
12736 last post
</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
12737 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma. The java application
12738 <a href=
"http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer
</a> is claimed to be capable of
12739 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
12740 authenticate using Kerberos. I have only tested the Kerberos
12741 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
12742 LDAP with my test user yet. It is
12743 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
12744 Debian
</a> testing and unstable at the moment. The only problem I
12745 have with it is how it handle errors. If something go wrong, its
12746 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
12747 and remove the failing query. Nothing big, but very annoying.
</p>
12753 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>.
12758 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12760 <div class=
"entry">
12761 <div class=
"title">
12762 <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>
12768 <p>Here is a short update on my
<a
12769 href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
12770 Debian Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrade testing
</a>. Here is a summary of the
12771 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude. I'm
12772 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
12773 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
12774 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#
584861</a> and
12775 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#
585716</a>).
</p>
12777 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
12778 complete list of the installed packages. Based on this I see these
12779 differences when I did a test run today. As usual, I do not really
12780 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
12781 publish the difference.
</p>
12783 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
12786 at-spi cpp-
4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
12787 libatspi1.0-
0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-
1-common
12788 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
12789 libgtksourceview-common libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
12790 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
12791 libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
12792 python-
4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
12793 python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
12796 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
12799 bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
12800 gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
12801 libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-
50
12802 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
12803 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9
12804 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3
12805 libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
12806 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
12807 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
12808 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-
0
12809 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
12810 libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++
10
12811 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
12812 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5
12813 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
12814 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
12815 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1
12816 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
12817 libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
12818 mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
12821 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
12824 gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
12825 python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
12826 xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
12827 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
12828 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
12829 xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
12830 xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
12831 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
12832 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
12833 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
12834 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
12835 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
12836 xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
12837 xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
12838 xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
12839 xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
12840 xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
12841 xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
12842 xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
12843 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
12844 xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
12847 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
12850 deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
12851 xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
12852 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
12855 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
12856 <a href=
"http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
12857 in git
</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
12858 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
12859 the difference somewhat.
12865 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>.
12870 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12872 <div class=
"entry">
12873 <div class=
"title">
12874 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop
</a>
12880 <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
12881 a bit troubling. Laptops are typically used also when not connected
12882 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
12883 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
12884 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
12885 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
12886 in Debian. Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
12887 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
12888 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.
</p>
12890 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir
</h2>
12892 This is the traditional method with a twist. The password caching is
12893 provided by libpam-ccreds (version
10-
4 or later is needed on
12894 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd. The directory
12895 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP. If one want to use
12896 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
12897 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal. If one is happy having a
12898 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
12899 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
12900 using libpam-mklocaluser. A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
12901 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
12902 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #
568577</a> is in the
12903 archive. Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
12904 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
12905 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/. This
12906 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.
</p>
12908 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured
</p>
12911 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
12912 </pre></blockquote>
12914 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
12915 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site. Make sure the
12916 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
12917 sent in clear text to the LDAP server. I've been unable to get TLS
12918 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
12919 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
12920 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
12921 on how to get this working.
</p>
12923 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
12924 caching until
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #
485282</a>
12925 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
12926 currently in /etc/nscd.conf. The changes are in the fields
12927 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
12928 instructions I found in the
12929 <a href=
"http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops
</a>
12930 instructions by Flyn Computing.
</p>
12934 reload-count unlimited
12937 enable-cache passwd yes
12938 positive-time-to-live passwd
2592000
12939 negative-time-to-live passwd
20
12940 suggested-size passwd
211
12941 check-files passwd yes
12942 persistent passwd yes
12944 max-db-size passwd
33554432
12945 auto-propagate passwd yes
12947 enable-cache group yes
12948 positive-time-to-live group
2592000
12949 negative-time-to-live group
20
12950 suggested-size group
211
12951 check-files group yes
12952 persistent group yes
12954 max-db-size group
33554432
12955 auto-propagate group yes
12957 enable-cache hosts no
12958 positive-time-to-live hosts
2592000
12959 negative-time-to-live hosts
20
12960 suggested-size hosts
211
12961 check-files hosts yes
12962 persistent hosts yes
12964 max-db-size hosts
33554432
12966 enable-cache services yes
12967 positive-time-to-live services
2592000
12968 negative-time-to-live services
20
12969 suggested-size services
211
12970 check-files services yes
12971 persistent services yes
12972 shared services yes
12973 max-db-size services
33554432
12974 </pre></blockquote>
12976 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
12977 automatically like the one provided in
12978 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #
496915</a>, the file
12979 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
12980 directory service on the machine. /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
12981 look like this:
</p>
12987 hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
12993 netgroup: files ldap
12994 </pre></blockquote>
12996 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
12997 shadow and netgroup.
</p>
12999 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
13000 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
13001 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
13004 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
13005 libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir
</h2>
13007 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
13008 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
13009 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
13010 LDAP database is available. I have not tested such setup, because I
13011 discovered sssd.
</p>
13013 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser
</h2>
13015 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
13016 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
13017 <a href=
"https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd
</a> package from Redhat.
13018 It is part of the
<a href=
"http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA
</A> project
13019 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
13020 machines. The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
13021 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
13022 libpam-ccreds. It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS. Version
13023 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
13024 in version
1.5 expected to show up later in
2010. Because the
13025 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package
</a>
13026 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
13027 version
1.2 is now in testing.
13029 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
13030 roaming setup I want
</p>
13033 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
13034 </pre></blockquote>
13036 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
13037 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf
</tt>.
13041 config_file_version =
2
13042 reconnection_retries =
3
13044 services = nss, pam
13048 filter_groups = root
13049 filter_users = root
13050 reconnection_retries =
3
13053 reconnection_retries =
3
13057 cache_credentials = true
13060 auth_provider = ldap
13061 chpass_provider = ldap
13063 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
13064 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
13065 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
13066 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
13067 </pre></blockquote>
13069 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking. Had to set
13070 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.
</p>
13072 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
13073 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
13074 modify it manually.
</p>
13076 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
13077 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
13083 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
13088 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13090 <div class=
"entry">
13091 <div class=
"title">
13092 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
13098 <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
13099 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
13100 tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
13101 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
13102 <a href=
"http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA
</a>, which has proved to
13103 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
13104 populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
13105 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
13106 objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
13107 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)
</p>
13109 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
13110 the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
13111 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
13112 Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
13115 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
13116 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
13117 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
13118 <a href=
"http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi
</a> for that.
</p>
13120 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
13121 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
13123 <p>Update
2010-
06-
29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
13124 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq
</a> package as a
13125 useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
13126 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
13127 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.
</p>
13133 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>.
13138 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13140 <div class=
"entry">
13141 <div class=
"title">
13142 <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>
13149 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
13150 about the fact
</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
13151 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
13152 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.
</p>
13154 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
13155 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
13156 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
13157 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.
</p>
13159 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
13160 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
13161 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
13164 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
13166 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
13167 schema
</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
13168 available today from IETF.
</p>
13171 --- dhcp.schema (revision
65192)
13172 +++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
13173 @@ -
376,
7 +
376,
7 @@
13174 objectclass (
2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
13176 DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
13178 + SUP top AUXILIARY
13180 MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
13181 X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
13184 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
13185 Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
13186 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.
</p>
13188 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
13189 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
13195 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>.
13200 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13202 <div class=
"entry">
13203 <div class=
"title">
13204 <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>
13211 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
13212 of Debian upgrades
</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
13213 finally made the upgrade logs available from
13214 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/
</a>.
13215 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
13216 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting. This time
13217 I will only focus on their removal plans.
</p>
13219 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
13220 to remove
72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze. The
13221 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
13222 xserver-xorg-video* drivers. Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
13223 sure why. When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove
129
13224 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
13225 longer needed. Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
13226 I do not know. Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?
</p>
13228 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove
82 packages, among them kdebase
13229 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
13230 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove
192 packages, none which are
13231 too surprising.
</p>
13233 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
13234 and avoided, and perhaps others as well. Here are the complete list
13235 of planned removals. The complete logs is available from the URL
13236 above. Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
13237 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
13238 conffile questions. No idea why. I worked around it by using
13239 '
<tt>echo
>> /proc/
<em>pidofdpkg
</em>/fd/
0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
13242 <p><b>apt-get gnome
72</b>
13243 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
13244 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
13245 iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-
1-
0
13246 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
13247 nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
13248 serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
13249 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
13250 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
13251 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
13252 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
13253 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
13254 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
13255 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
13256 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
13257 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
13258 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
13259 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
13260 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
13261 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
13262 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
13263 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
13264 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
13265 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
13266 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
13267 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
13268 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
13269 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
13270 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-
1.9
13271 xulrunner-
1.9-gnome-support
</p>
13273 <p><b>aptitude gnome
129</b>
13275 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-
4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
13276 djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
13277 gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
13278 gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
13279 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
13280 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
13281 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-
9 libeel2-
2.20
13282 libeel2-data libepc-
1.0-
1 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libfaad0 libgail-common
13283 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libgdl-
1-
0 libgdl-
1-common
13284 libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0
13285 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
13286 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
13287 libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-
0
13288 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgucharmap6
13289 libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++
10
13290 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
13291 libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2
13292 libosp5 libparted1.8-
10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-
1.10.10
13293 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-
8
13294 libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8 libssh2-
1
13295 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
13296 libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
13297 libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
13298 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
13299 openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
13300 python-
4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
13301 python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
13302 python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
13303 swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
13304 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
13305 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
13308 <p><b>apt-get kde
82</b>
13310 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
13311 kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
13312 kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
13313 kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
13314 kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
13315 libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
13316 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
13317 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
13318 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
13319 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
13320 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
13321 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
13322 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
13323 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
13324 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
13325 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
13326 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
13327 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
13328 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
13329 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
13330 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
13331 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
13332 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
13333 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
13334 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
13335 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
13336 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
13337 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-
1.9</p>
13339 <p><b>aptitude kde
192</b>
13340 <br>bluez-utils cpp-
4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
13341 djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
13342 ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
13343 kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
13344 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
13345 kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
13346 kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
13347 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
13348 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
13349 kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
13350 kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
13351 klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
13352 kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
13353 krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
13354 ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
13355 kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
13356 kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
13357 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
13358 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-
0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
13359 libboost-python1.34
.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
13360 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
13361 libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-
0
13362 libicu38 libiec61883-
0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
13363 libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
13364 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
13365 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
13366 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
13367 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-
8 libsmbios2
13368 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
13369 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
13370 libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
13371 openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
13372 superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
13373 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
13374 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
13375 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
13383 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>.
13388 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13390 <div class=
"entry">
13391 <div class=
"title">
13392 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze
</a>
13398 <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
13399 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
13400 have been discovered and reported in the process
13401 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#
585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
13402 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#
584879</a> already fixed in
13403 enscript and
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#
584861</a> in
13404 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
13405 am working on a script to automate the test.
</p>
13407 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
13408 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
13409 it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
13410 script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
13411 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
13412 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).
</p>
13414 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
13415 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
13416 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
13417 is created. The bug report
13418 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#
566000</a> make me suspect
13419 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
13420 to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
13421 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
13422 do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
13423 <a href=
"http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
13424 issue
</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
13425 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
13426 working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
13427 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
13428 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
13429 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
13430 Debian Squeeze.
</p>
13432 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
13433 script, which I call
<tt>upgrade-test
</tt> for now, is doing the
13449 exec
< /dev/null
13451 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
13452 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
13454 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
13455 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
13456 cat
> $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
<<EOF
13460 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
13462 umount $tmpdir/proc
13464 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
13465 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
13466 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
13468 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
13470 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
13471 # to return the correct answers.
13472 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
13473 chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
13475 # Include the desktop and laptop task
13476 for test in desktop laptop ; do
13477 echo
> $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
<<EOF
13481 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
13484 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
13485 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
13486 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
13487 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
13489 echo deb $mirror $to main
> $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
13490 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
13491 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
13492 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
13494 </pre></blockquote>
13496 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
13497 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
13498 differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
13499 regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
13500 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
13501 kdebase-workspace-data
</p>
13503 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
13504 (KDE
167 KiB, Gnome
516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
13505 post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
13506 aptitude report
760 packages upgraded,
448 newly installed,
129 to
13507 remove and
1 not upgraded and
1024MB need to be downloaded while for
13508 KDE the same numbers are
702 packages upgraded,
507 newly installed,
13509 193 to remove and
0 not upgraded and
1117MB need to be downloaded
</p>
13511 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
13512 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
13513 booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
13514 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
13515 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
13522 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>.
13527 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13529 <div class=
"entry">
13530 <div class=
"title">
13531 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_er_laget_for_sentraldrifting__naturligvis.html">Skolelinux er laget for sentraldrifting, naturligvis
</a>
13537 <p>Det er merkelig hvordan myter om Skolelinux overlever. En slik
13538 myte er at Skolelinux ikke kan sentraldriftes og ha sentralt plasserte
13539 tjenermaskiner. I siste Computerworld Norge er
13540 <a href=
"http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article169432.ece">IT-sjef
13541 Viggo Billdal i Steinkjer intervjuet
</a>, og forteller uten
13544 <blockquote><p>Vi hadde Skolelinux, men det har vi sluttet med. Vi testet
13545 om det lønte seg med Microsoft eller en åpen plattform. Vi fant ut at
13546 Microsoft egentlig var totalt sett bedre egnet. Det var store
13547 driftskostnader med Skolelinux, blant annet på grunn av
13548 desentraliserte servere. Det var komplisert, så vi gikk vekk fra det
13549 og bruker nå bare Windows.
</p></blockquote>
13552 href=
"https://init.linpro.no/pipermail/skolelinux.no/bruker/2010-June/009101.html">rask
13553 sjekk
</a> mot den norske brukerlista i Skolelinuxprosjektet forteller
13554 at Steinkjers forsøk foregikk fram til
2004/
2005, og at Røysing skole
13555 i Steinkjer skal ha vært svært fornøyd med Skolelinux men at kommunen
13556 overkjørte skolen og krevde at de gikk over til Windows. Et søk på
13557 nettet sendte meg til
13558 <a href=
"http://www.dn.no/multimedia/archive/00090/Dagens_it_nr__18_90826a.pdf">Dagens
13559 IT nr.
18 2005</a> hvor en kan lese på side
18:
</p>
13561 <blockquote><p>Inge Tømmerås ved Røysing skole i Steinkjer kjører ennå
13562 Microsoft, men forteller at kompetanseutfordringen med Skolelinux ikke
13563 var så stor. Jeg syntes Skolelinux var utrolig lett å drifte uten
13564 forkunnskaper. Men man må jo selvsagt ha tilgang på ekstern kompetanse
13565 til installasjoner og maskinvarefeil, sier Tømmerås.
</p></blockquote>
13567 <p>Som systemarkitekten bak Skolelinux, kan jeg bare riste på hodet
13568 over påstanden om at Skolelinux krever desentraliserte tjenere.
13569 Skolelinux-arkitekturen er laget for sentralisert drift og plassering
13570 av tjenerne lokalt eller sentralt alt etter behov og nettkapasitet.
13571 Den er modellert på nettverks- og tjenerløsningen som brukes på
13572 Universitetet i Tromsø og Oslo, der jeg jobber med utvikling av
13573 driftstjenester. Dette er det heldigvis noen som har fått med seg, og
13574 jeg er glad for å kunne sitere fra en kommentar på den overnevnte
13575 artikkelen. Min venn og gamle kollega Sturle Sunde forteller der:
13578 <p>I Flora kommune køyrer vi Skulelinux på skular med alt frå
15 til
13579 meir enn
500 elevar. Dei store skulane har eigen tenar, for det er
13580 mest praktisk. Eg, som er driftsansvarleg for heile nettet, ser
13581 sjeldan dei tenarane fysisk, men at dei står der gjer skulane mindre
13582 avhengige av eksterne linjer som er trege eller dyre. Dei minste
13583 skulane har ikkje eigen tenar. Å bruke sentral tenar er heller ikkje
13584 noko problem. Småskulane klarar seg fint med
1 mbit-linje til ein
13585 sentral tenar eller tenaren på ein større skule.
</p>
13587 <p>Det beste med Skulelinux er halvtjukke klientar. Dei treng ikkje
13588 harddisk og brukar minimalt med ressursar på tenaren fordi dei køyrer
13589 programma lokalt. Eit klasserom med
30 sju-åtte år gamle maskiner har
13590 mykje meir CPU og RAM totalt enn nokon moderne tenar til under
13591 millionen. Det trengst to kommandoar på den sentrale tenaren for å
13592 oppdatere alle klientane, både tynne og halvtjukke. Vi har ingen
13593 problem med diskar som ryk heller, som var eit problem før fordi
13594 elevane sat og sparka i maskinene. Og dei krev lite bandbreidde i
13595 nettet, so det er fullt mogleg å køyre slike på småskular med trege
13596 linjer mot tenaren på ein større skule.
</p>
13598 <p>Flora kommune har nesten
800 Linux-maskiner i sitt skulenett, og
13599 ein person som tek seg av drift av heile nettet, inkludert tenarar,
13600 klientar, operativsystem, programvare, heimekontorløysing og
13601 administrasjon av brukarar.
</p>
13603 <p>No skal det seiast at vi ikkje køyrer rein Skulelinux ut av
13604 boksen. Vi har gjort ein del tilpassingar mot noko Novell-greier som
13605 var der frå før, og som har komplisert installasjonen vår. Etter at
13606 oppsettet var gjort har løysinga vore stabil og kravd minimalt med
13610 <p>Jeg vet at Narvik, Harstad og Oslo er kommuner der Skolelinux
13611 sentraldriftes med sentrale tjenere. Det forteller meg at Steinkjers
13612 IT-sjef neppe bør skylde på Skolelinux-løsningen for sine
5 år gamle
13619 Tags:
<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>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
13624 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13626 <div class=
"entry">
13627 <div class=
"title">
13628 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...
</a>
13635 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
13636 of Rob Weir
</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
13637 <a href=
"http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
13638 Standards Wars
</a> (PDF
25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
13639 following the standards wars of today.
</p>
13645 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>.
13650 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13652 <div class=
"entry">
13653 <div class=
"title">
13654 <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>
13660 <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
13661 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
13662 information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
13663 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
13664 the Skolelinux build servers:
</p>
13667 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
13669 Dell Computer Corporation
1
13672 eserver xSeries
345 -[
8670M1X]-
1
13676 </pre></blockquote>
13678 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
13679 provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
13680 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
13681 machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
13682 option to list the individual machines.
</p>
13684 <p>A larger list is
13685 <a href=
"http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
13686 city of Narvik
</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
13687 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
13688 are ~
1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
13689 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
13690 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
13697 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>.
13702 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13704 <div class=
"entry">
13705 <div class=
"title">
13706 <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>
13712 <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
13713 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
13714 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
13715 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
13718 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
13719 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#
583312</a> initially filed
13720 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
13721 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
13722 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#
524751</a> initially filed against
13723 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.
</p>
13725 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
13726 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
13727 distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
13728 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
13729 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
13730 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
13731 distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
13732 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.
</p>
13734 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.
</p>
13740 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>.
13745 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13747 <div class=
"entry">
13748 <div class=
"title">
13749 <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>
13755 <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
13756 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
13757 issues are known and should be solved:
13761 <li>The wicd package seen to
13762 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting
</a> and
13763 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup
</a> when
13764 parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
13765 seem to be on the case.
</li>
13767 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
13768 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition
</a>
13769 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
13770 maintainer is on the case.
</li>
13772 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
13773 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
13774 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back
</a> to
13775 sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
13776 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
13777 sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
13778 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
13779 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.
</li>
13783 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
13784 solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
13785 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
13786 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.
</p>
13788 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
13789 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
13790 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
13791 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
13793 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.
</p>
13799 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>.
13804 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13806 <div class=
"entry">
13807 <div class=
"title">
13808 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer
</a>
13814 <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
13815 found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
13816 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
13817 definitely helped freeing some time.
</p>
13819 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
13820 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
13821 get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
13822 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
13823 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
13824 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
13825 an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
13826 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
13827 debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
13828 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
13829 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
13830 /cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
13831 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
13834 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
13835 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
13836 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
13837 packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
13838 "external" media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
13839 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
13840 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
13841 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
13842 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
13843 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
13846 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
13847 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
13848 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
13849 run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
13850 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
13851 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.
</p>
13853 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
13854 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.
</p>
13860 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>.
13865 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13867 <div class=
"entry">
13868 <div class=
"title">
13869 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian
</a>
13875 <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
13876 Edu finally entered the Debian archive. Today, the new
13877 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser
</a>
13878 package was accepted. Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
13880 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python
</a>
13881 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
13882 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd
</a> package
13883 passed NEW on Monday. In addition, the
13884 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds
</a>
13885 package we need is in experimental (version
10-
4) since Saturday, and
13886 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.
</p>
13888 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
13889 roaming laptops. The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
13890 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
13891 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
13892 for nscd in
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
13893 #
485282</a> is implemented. The alternative setup is to use sssd with
13894 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
13895 care of the caching of passwords and group information.
</p>
13897 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
13898 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
13899 problem with the server certificate. I plan to update the Debian
13900 package to version
1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
13901 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
13902 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches. Upstream is friendly and responsive,
13903 and I am sure we will find a good solution.
</p>
13905 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
13906 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
13907 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
13908 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
13909 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information. The
13910 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
13911 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
13912 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used. To avoid confusion
13913 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
13914 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
13915 on the home directory servers.
</p>
13917 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
13918 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
13919 is created. Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
13920 message. The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
13921 a bug in gdm. Have not investigated if there is some other message
13922 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.
</p>
13924 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
13925 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
13931 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
13936 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13938 <div class=
"entry">
13939 <div class=
"title">
13940 <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>
13946 <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
13947 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
13948 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
13949 expected, if I am to believe the
13950 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
13951 on debian-devel@
</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
13952 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
13953 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen. If serious problems are
13954 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
13955 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
13958 More information about
13959 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
13960 based boot sequencing
</a> is available from the Debian wiki. It is
13961 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
13962 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
13966 </pre></blockquote>
13968 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
13969 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
13970 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
13971 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
13977 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>.
13982 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13984 <div class=
"entry">
13985 <div class=
"title">
13986 <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>
13992 <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
13993 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
13994 system
</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
13995 network. Each machine will automatically report its status to the
13996 central server after boot and once per night. The network setup is
13997 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
13998 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines. This is useful
13999 to update the DHCP configuration.
</p>
14001 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
14002 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary. Run
14003 this on the collector host:
</p>
14006 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
14007 </pre></blockquote>
14009 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
14010 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.
</p>
14012 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
14013 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
14014 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
14015 tables in LDAP using this information. Such tool is unfortunately not
14022 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>.
14027 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14029 <div class=
"entry">
14030 <div class=
"title">
14031 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login
</a>
14037 <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
14038 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
14039 change the password on the first login attempt.
</p>
14041 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
14042 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account. The account
14043 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
14044 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
14045 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.
</p>
14047 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
14048 settings in /etc/shadow:
</p>
14051 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
14052 Last password change : May
02,
2010
14053 Password expires : never
14054 Password inactive : never
14055 Account expires : never
14056 Minimum number of days between password change :
0
14057 Maximum number of days between password change :
99999
14058 Number of days of warning before password expires :
7
14060 </pre></blockquote>
14062 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
14063 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
14064 lowest value possible (January
1th
1970), and the maximum password age
14065 to the difference in days between that date and today. To make it
14066 simple, I went for
30 years (
30 *
365 =
10950) and January
2th (to
14067 avoid testing if
0 is a valid value).
</p>
14069 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
14073 root@tjener:~# chage -d
1 test; chage -M
10950 test
14074 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
14075 Last password change : Jan
02,
1970
14076 Password expires : never
14077 Password inactive : never
14078 Account expires : never
14079 Minimum number of days between password change :
0
14080 Maximum number of days between password change :
10950
14081 Number of days of warning before password expires :
7
14083 </pre></blockquote>
14085 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
14086 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
14087 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).
</p>
14089 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
14090 sure only the user itself have the account password?
</p>
14092 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
14093 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
14095 <p>Update
2010-
05-
02 17:
20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
14096 shadow(
8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
14097 last password change to zero (
0) will force the password to be changed
14098 on the first login. This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
14099 I did not notice this in my initial testing. I have tested it on
14100 Squeeze, and '
<tt>chage -d
0 username
</tt>' do work there. I have not
14101 tested it on Lenny yet.
</p>
14103 <p>Update
2010-
05-
02-
19:
05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
14104 equivalent command to expire a password is '
<tt>passwd -e
14105 username
</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
14112 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
14117 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14119 <div class=
"entry">
14120 <div class=
"title">
14121 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu
</a>
14127 <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
14128 Debian Edu. The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
14129 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
14132 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
14133 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
14134 example called Roaming Workstations. Here are my thought on this.
14135 The setup would consist of the following:
</p>
14139 <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
14140 the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
14141 the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
14142 server. This allow the user to work also when offline. The
14143 central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
14144 request, for example mounted via CIFS. It could be mounted
14145 automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
14146 and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
14147 hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
14148 request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
14149 can be used to access it when needed. Perhaps it is enough to use
14150 the fish protocol in KDE?
</li>
14152 <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
14153 authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
14154 to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
14155 to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server. This can be done using
14156 <a href=
"http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds
</a>
14157 or the Fedora developed
14158 <a href=
"https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
14159 Security Services Daemon
</a> packages.
</li>
14161 <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
14162 using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
14163 directory, using unison.
</li>
14165 <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
14166 their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
14167 the box with CUPS. For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
14168 system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
14171 <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
14172 sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.
</li>
14174 <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
14175 cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
14176 local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.
</li>
14180 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
14181 the moment. If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
14182 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze. Some of the pieces need
14183 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
14184 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#
566718</a>) and nslcd (or
14185 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
14186 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
14187 when disconnected from the net. If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
14188 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.
</p>
14190 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
14191 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
14197 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
14202 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14204 <div class=
"entry">
14205 <div class=
"title">
14206 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?
</a>
14212 <p><a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
14213 NUUG presentation
</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
14214 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux. Setting up a
14215 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
14216 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
14217 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
14218 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
14219 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
14220 users and cryptographic keys instead.
</p>
14222 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration. Is there a
14223 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
14224 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups? With it, the
14225 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
14226 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.
</p>
14228 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
14229 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together. Anyone know?
</p>
14231 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
14232 Nagios. I have no idea how much work that will be to implement. We
14233 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
14234 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
14235 to work properly.
</p>
14237 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
14238 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
14239 configuration and integration. A natural starting point would be
14240 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
14241 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
14244 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
14245 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
14246 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home. The video show show
14247 up in a few days.
</p>
14253 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
14258 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14260 <div class=
"entry">
14261 <div class=
"title">
14262 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After
6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented
</a>
14268 <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
14269 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
14270 when the user log out. A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
14271 package in
2004 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#
230422</a>),
14272 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
14273 Today, this finally paid off.
</p>
14275 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
14276 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
14277 been updated to use this framework. Next on my agenda is to make sure
14278 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.
</p>
14280 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
14281 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
14282 after a user. With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
14283 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
14284 framework. My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
14285 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.
<p>
14291 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
14296 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14298 <div class=
"entry">
14299 <div class=
"title">
14300 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues
</a>
14306 <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
14307 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> was finally
14308 shipped. This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
14309 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up. Work on the first
14310 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
14311 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
14312 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.
</p>
14314 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?
</p>
14316 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
14317 next major release, based on Squeeze. We will try to get as many of
14318 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
14319 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.
</p>
14325 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
14330 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14332 <div class=
"entry">
14333 <div class=
"title">
14334 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration
</a>
14340 <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
14341 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
14342 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
14343 Nagios. The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
14344 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
14347 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
14348 configured as a Munin and Nagios server. In addition, it is
14349 configured to be a server for the
14350 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
14351 system
</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu. The SiteSummary
14352 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
14353 work. In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
14354 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
14355 computer submitting information to this collector. This allow for
14356 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
14357 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
14358 packages got etc. This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
14359 and Nagios configuration.
</p>
14361 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
14362 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
14363 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
14364 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.
</p>
14366 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
14367 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
14368 services detected). In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
14369 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
14370 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
14371 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
14374 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
14375 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
14376 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
14377 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.
</p>
14379 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
14380 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP. The system
14381 administrator need to run "
<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
14382 nagiosadmin
</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
14383 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages. After that,
14384 everything is taken care of.</p>
14390 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary
">sitesummary</a>.
14395 <div class="padding
"></div>
14397 <div class="entry
">
14398 <div class="title
">
14399 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Opphavet_til_Skolelinux_prosjektet.html
">Opphavet til Skolelinux-prosjektet</a>
14405 <p>De færreste er klar over at Skolelinux-prosjektet kom som et resultat
14406 av en avgjørelse på årsmøtet i
14407 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/
">NUUG</a> i 2000-06-29, der Håkon Wium
14408 Lie, da varamedlem i styret, tok på seg oppdraget om å starte et
14409 initiativ kalt "Teach the Teacher", som skulle være et initiativ for
14410 å få fri programvare og unix-lignende operativsystemer inn i Skolen.
14411 Tanken var at en måtte starte med lærerne for at ungene skulle få
14412 mulighet til å møte en bedre IT-hverdag. Jeg var tilstede på
14413 møtet, og hadde sans for ideen, men intet skjedde. På vårparten
14414 2001 ble det arrangert en demonstrasjon i anledning at First Tuesday
14415 hadde invitert Microsoft til et møte for å fortelle om fremtidens
14416 Internet. Dette provoserte endel av oss, og EFN og NUUG tok initiativ
14418 <a href=
"http://www.digi.no/60982/first-tuesday-mote-med-microsoft-protest">en
14419 demonstrasjon utenfor lokalene
2001-
05-
21</a>. Blant de som sto bak
14420 demonstrasjonen var Vidar Bakke fra NUUG og Håkon W. Lie fra EFN.
14421 Etter demonstrasjonen arrangerte Håkon en fest hjemme hos seg der alle
14422 som hadde vært aktive i demonstrasjonsplanlegging og gjennomføringen
14423 deltok. Før festen var jeg blitt lei av å vente på at Håkon skulle ta
14424 initiativ til "Teach the Teacher", og for å forsøke å få litt fremgang
14425 besteme jeg meg for å benytte anledningen hos Håkon til å snakke om
14426 behovet for å hjelpe skolene i gang med bedre datasystemer bestående
14427 av fri programvare og unix-lignende operativsystemer. Flere var
14428 interessert, og Knut Yrvin tenkte på ideen. Han
14429 <a href=
"http://developer.skolelinux.no/brev/2001-06-28-invitasjon-skolelinux.txt">ropte
14430 sammen
</a> til et stiftelsesmøte i prosjektet i sin arbeidsgivers
14431 Objectwares lokaler ved Ullevål stadion
2001-
07-
02, og jeg ble med.
14432 Resten er historie. :)
</p>
14438 Tags:
<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>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
14443 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14445 <div class=
"entry">
14446 <div class=
"title">
14447 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_operativt_webbasert_medlemsregister_for_Fri_programvare_i_skolen.html">Endelig operativt webbasert medlemsregister for Fri programvare i skolen
</a>
14453 <p>Under helgens utviklersamling i
14454 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.no/">Skolelinux
</a> fikk jeg endelig
14455 satt meg ned sammen med Ronny Aasen i styret for å få et webbasert
14456 medlemsregister tilbake på plass for foreningen som passer på
14457 skolelinuxprosjektet. Etter flere års knot og problemer, er nå
14458 memberdb satt opp og klart til bruk. Import av det gamle
14459 medlemsregisteret har vist seg vanskelig, så alle medlemmer bes om å
14460 registrere seg på nytt. Hvis du støtter FRiSKs formål så er du
14461 hjertelig velkommen til
14462 <a href=
"http://medlem.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">å melde deg
14463 inn
</a>. Formålet lyder:
</p>
14465 <blockquote>Linux i skolen skal tilrettelegge for og informere om bruk
14466 av fri programvare, i henhold til Debian Free Software Guidelines av
14467 2002-
02-
03, i den norske skolen, slik som f.eks. Linux og
14474 Tags:
<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>.
14479 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14481 <div class=
"entry">
14482 <div class=
"title">
14483 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering
</a>
14489 <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
14490 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering. I got a bit done tuning the
14491 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
14492 implementation avahi. It look like it could be useful for us. Almost
14493 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
14494 get to know the Skolelinux system. Walter Bender, involved in the
14495 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
14496 also helped me improve my OLPC installation. He also showed me that
14497 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
14498 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian. As a
14499 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu. We also
14500 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
14501 proved to be too hard for us. The application seem to need more work
14502 before it is ready for me. I look forward to getting home and relax
14509 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>.
14514 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14516 <div class=
"entry">
14517 <div class=
"title">
14518 <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>
14524 <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
14525 optimal. There is RFC
2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
14526 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC
2307bis, with
14527 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory. The RFC
14528 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
14529 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.
</p>
14531 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux
</a>,
14532 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
14533 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
14534 and LTSP configuration in LDAP. These objects have a lot in common,
14535 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
14536 object per entity. For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
14537 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
14538 DNS information and another with DHCP information. The schemas
14539 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
14540 object. In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
14541 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
14542 It just do not scale. I believe it is time for a few RFC
14543 specifications to cleam up this mess.
</p>
14545 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
14546 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
14547 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
14548 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.
</p>
14550 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
14551 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.
</p>
14553 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
14554 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up. Time to start a
14555 new IETF work group?
</p>
14561 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>.
14566 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14568 <div class=
"entry">
14569 <div class=
"title">
14570 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut
</a>
14576 <p>Endelig er
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a>
14577 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny
</a> gitt ut.
14578 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
14579 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
14580 stabile utgaven av Debian. Neste steg er nå å få
14581 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> /
14582 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu
</a> ferdig
14583 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
14584 slippes løs på skolene. Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
14585 gjort dette mulig. Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
14586 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
14587 <tt>insserv
</tt>.
</p>
14593 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>.
14598 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14600 <div class=
"entry">
14601 <div class=
"title">
14602 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_norsk_stavekontroll_med_st_tte_for_ord_med_bindestrek.html">Endelig norsk stavekontroll med støtte for ord med bindestrek
</a>
14608 <p>Etter flere års mislykkede forsøk på å skrive om byggesystemet for
14609 <a href=
"http://no.speling.org/">den norske stavekontrollen for bokmål
14610 og nynorsk
</a> til å ikke bruke bindestrek som ordskillemarkør, lyktes jeg
14611 endelig første juledag. Bruken av bindestrek som ordskillemarkør har
14612 gjort det umulig å få med ord med bindestrek i
14613 stavekontrolldatagrunnlaget, slik at ord som e-post og CD-spiller ikke
14614 kunne godtas av stavekontrollen. Hadde litt tid til overs å bruke på
14615 stavekontrollen, og satte meg ned med to kopier av byggsystemet og en
14616 liten testdatafil, og byttet ut - med = på utvalgte steder i
14617 byggsystemet og datafilen helt til jeg fikk samme resultat med det
14618 gamle og det nye byggsystemet. Dette tror jeg var forsøk
4, der de
14619 foregående har feilet uten at jeg klarte å forstå hvorfor. Det sier
14620 kanskje litt om kompleksiteten i det originale byggsystemet som Rune
14621 Kleveland laget i sin tid.
</p>
14623 <p>Etter å ha endret byggsystemet, var neste steg å importere ordene
14624 med bindestrek. Vi har en rekke slike i databasene for
14625 <a href=
"http://tyge.sslug.dk/~korsvoll/nb.speling.org/htdocs/">bokmål
</a>
14627 <a href=
"http://tyge.sslug.dk/~korsvoll/nn.speling.org/htdocs/">nynorsk
</a>
14628 for korrektur av datagrunnlaget for stavekontrollen, og etter importen
14629 skulle nå
10350 nye ord bli godkjent som korrekt stavede ord av
14630 stavekontrollen.
</p>
14636 Tags:
<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>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll
</a>.
14641 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14643 <div class=
"entry">
14644 <div class=
"title">
14645 <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>
14651 <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
14652 Oslo. Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
14653 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
14654 LTSP installation. LTSP now work out of the box on the
10-network.
14655 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
14656 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box. Was working on getting the
14657 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
14658 finish it before the weekend was up.
</p>
14660 <p>Did not find time to look at the
4 VGA cards in one box we got from
14661 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
14662 development gathering. Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
14663 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
14664 of these cards.
</p>
14670 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>.
14675 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14677 <div class=
"entry">
14678 <div class=
"title">
14679 <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>
14685 <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
14686 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
14687 default in Debian Edu. We need an embedded video playing plugin with
14688 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
14689 all the multimedia content available on the web. The test results and
14690 notes are available on
14691 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
14692 Debian wiki
</a>. I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
14693 fill this need. My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
14694 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages. A lot of the MIME
14695 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
14696 video/ogg), just do not work. And simple formats like the
14697 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
14698 totem and vlc plugins. I hope the situation will improve soon. No
14699 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.
</p>
14701 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin. It seem to
14702 be the only one fitting our needs. :/
</p>
14708 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>.
14713 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14715 <p style=
"text-align: right;"><a href=
"debian edu.rss"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt=
"RSS Feed" width=
"36" height=
"14" /></a></p>
14726 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (
7)
</a></li>
14728 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (
6)
</a></li>
14730 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (
1)
</a></li>
14732 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (
4)
</a></li>
14734 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (
3)
</a></li>
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2)
</a></li>
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9)
</a></li>
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6)
</a></li>
14753 <li><a href=
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2)
</a></li>
14755 <li><a href=
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3)
</a></li>
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5)
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6)
</a></li>
14773 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (
3)
</a></li>
14775 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (
5)
</a></li>
14782 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (
11)
</a></li>
14784 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (
9)
</a></li>
14786 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (
9)
</a></li>
14788 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (
6)
</a></li>
14790 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (
9)
</a></li>
14792 <li><a href=
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</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (
7)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (
3)
</a></li>
14798 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (
5)
</a></li>
14800 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (
7)
</a></li>
14802 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (
9)
</a></li>
14804 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (
3)
</a></li>
14811 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (
7)
</a></li>
14813 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (
10)
</a></li>
14815 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (
17)
</a></li>
14817 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (
12)
</a></li>
14819 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (
12)
</a></li>
14821 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (
20)
</a></li>
14823 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (
17)
</a></li>
14825 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (
6)
</a></li>
14827 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (
9)
</a></li>
14829 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (
17)
</a></li>
14831 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (
10)
</a></li>
14833 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (
7)
</a></li>
14840 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (
16)
</a></li>
14842 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (
6)
</a></li>
14844 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (
6)
</a></li>
14846 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (
7)
</a></li>
14848 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (
3)
</a></li>
14850 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (
2)
</a></li>
14852 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (
7)
</a></li>
14854 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (
6)
</a></li>
14856 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (
4)
</a></li>
14858 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (
2)
</a></li>
14860 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (
3)
</a></li>
14862 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (
1)
</a></li>
14869 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (
2)
</a></li>
14871 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (
1)
</a></li>
14873 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (
3)
</a></li>
14875 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (
3)
</a></li>
14877 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (
9)
</a></li>
14879 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (
14)
</a></li>
14881 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (
12)
</a></li>
14883 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (
13)
</a></li>
14885 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (
7)
</a></li>
14887 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (
9)
</a></li>
14889 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (
13)
</a></li>
14891 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (
12)
</a></li>
14898 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (
8)
</a></li>
14900 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (
8)
</a></li>
14902 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (
12)
</a></li>
14904 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (
10)
</a></li>
14906 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (
9)
</a></li>
14908 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (
3)
</a></li>
14910 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (
4)
</a></li>
14912 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (
3)
</a></li>
14914 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (
1)
</a></li>
14916 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (
2)
</a></li>
14918 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (
3)
</a></li>
14920 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (
3)
</a></li>
14927 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (
5)
</a></li>
14929 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (
7)
</a></li>
14940 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (
13)
</a></li>
14942 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (
1)
</a></li>
14944 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (
1)
</a></li>
14946 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (
4)
</a></li>
14948 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (
9)
</a></li>
14950 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (
15)
</a></li>
14952 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (
2)
</a></li>
14954 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (
2)
</a></li>
14956 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (
114)
</a></li>
14958 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (
154)
</a></li>
14960 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (
10)
</a></li>
14962 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (
15)
</a></li>
14964 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (
20)
</a></li>
14966 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (
4)
</a></li>
14968 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (
296)
</a></li>
14970 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (
23)
</a></li>
14972 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (
12)
</a></li>
14974 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (
24)
</a></li>
14976 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (
9)
</a></li>
14978 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (
16)
</a></li>
14980 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (
20)
</a></li>
14982 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (
42)
</a></li>
14984 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (
10)
</a></li>
14986 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (
19)
</a></li>
14988 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (
9)
</a></li>
14990 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (
8)
</a></li>
14992 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (
2)
</a></li>
14994 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (
1)
</a></li>
14996 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (
8)
</a></li>
14998 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (
36)
</a></li>
15000 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (
271)
</a></li>
15002 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (
177)
</a></li>
15004 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (
22)
</a></li>
15006 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (
2)
</a></li>
15008 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (
58)
</a></li>
15010 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (
92)
</a></li>
15012 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (
1)
</a></li>
15014 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (
1)
</a></li>
15016 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (
11)
</a></li>
15018 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (
3)
</a></li>
15020 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (
9)
</a></li>
15022 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (
1)
</a></li>
15024 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (
4)
</a></li>
15026 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (
2)
</a></li>
15028 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (
44)
</a></li>
15030 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (
4)
</a></li>
15032 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (
4)
</a></li>
15034 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (
48)
</a></li>
15036 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (
3)
</a></li>
15038 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (
10)
</a></li>
15040 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (
36)
</a></li>
15042 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (
2)
</a></li>
15044 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (
2)
</a></li>
15046 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (
8)
</a></li>
15048 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (
54)
</a></li>
15050 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (
4)
</a></li>
15052 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (
37)
</a></li>
15058 <p style=
"text-align: right">
15059 Created by
<a href=
"http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6
</a>