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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_move_orphaned_Debian_packages_to_git.html">Time to move orphaned Debian packages to git</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         14th April 2024
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>There are several packages in Debian without a associated git
  32 repository with the packaging history.  This is unfortunate and it
  33 would be nice if more of these would do so.  Quote a lot of these are
  34 without a maintainer, ie listed as maintained by the
  35 '<a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=packages%40qa.debian.org">Debian
  36 QA Group</a>' place holder.  In fact, 438 packages have this property
  37 according to UDD (<tt>SELECT source FROM sources WHERE release = 'sid'
  38 AND (vcs_url ilike '%anonscm.debian.org%' OR vcs_browser ilike
  39 '%anonscm.debian.org%' or vcs_url IS NULL OR vcs_browser IS NULL) AND
  40 maintainer ilike '%packages@qa.debian.org%';</tt>).  Such packages can
  41 be updated without much coordination by any Debian developer, as they
  42 are considered orphaned.</p>
  43
  44 <p>To try to improve the situation and reduce the number of packages
  45 without associated git repository, I started a few days ago to search
  46 out candiates and provide them with a git repository under the
  47 'debian' collaborative Salsa project.  I started with the packages
  48 pointing to obsolete Alioth git repositories, and am now working my
  49 way across the ones completely without git references.  In addition to
  50 updating the Vcs-* debian/control fields, I try to update
  51 Standards-Version, debhelper compat level, simplify d/rules, switch to
  52 Rules-Requires-Root: no and fix lintian issues reported.  I only
  53 implement those that are trivial to fix, to avoid spending too much
  54 time on each orphaned package.  So far my experience is that it take
  55 aproximately 20 minutes to convert a package without any git
  56 references, and a lot more for packages with existing git repositories
  57 incompatible with git-buildpackages.</p>
  58
  59 <p>So far I have converted 10 packages, and I will keep going until I
  60 run out of steam.  As should be clear from the numbers, there is
  61 enough packages remaining for more people to do the same without
  62 stepping on each others toes.  I find it useful to start by searching
  63 for a git repo already on salsa, as I find that some times a git repo
  64 has already been created, but no new version is uploaded to Debian
  65 yet.  In those cases I start with the existing git repository.  I
  66 convert to the git-buildpackage+pristine-tar workflow, and ensure a
  67 debian/gbp.conf file with "pristine-tar=True" is added early, to avoid
  68 uploading a orig.tar.gz with the wrong checksum by mistake.  Did that
  69 three times in the begin before I remembered my mistake.</p>
  70
  71 <p>So, if you are a Debian Developer and got some spare time, perhaps
  72 considering migrating some orphaned packages to git?</p>
  73
  74 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  75 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  76 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
  77
  78       </div>
  79       <div class="tags">
  80
  81
  82         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
  83
  84
  85       </div>
  86     </div>
  87     <div class="padding"></div>
  88
  89     <div class="entry">
  90       <div class="title">
  91         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_and_improved_sqlcipher_in_Debian_for_accessing_Signal_database.html">New and improved sqlcipher in Debian for accessing Signal database</a>
  92       </div>
  93       <div class="date">
  94         12th November 2023
  95       </div>
  96       <div class="body">
  97         <p>For a while now I wanted to have direct access to the
  98 <a href="https://signal.org/">Signal</a> database of messages and
  99 channels of my Desktop edition of Signal.  I prefer the enforced end
 100 to end encryption of Signal these days for my communication with
 101 friends and family, to increase the level of safety and privacy as
 102 well as raising the cost of the mass surveillance government and
 103 non-government entities practice these days.  In August I came across
 104 a nice
 105 <a href="https://www.yoranbrondsema.com/post/the-guide-to-extracting-statistics-from-your-signal-conversations/">recipe
 106 on how to use sqlcipher to extract statistics from the Signal
 107 database</a> explaining how to do this.  Unfortunately this did not
 108 work with the version of sqlcipher in Debian.  The
 109 <a href="http://tracker.debian.org/sqlcipher/">sqlcipher</a>
 110 package is a "fork" of the sqlite package with added support for
 111 encrypted databases.  Sadly the current Debian maintainer
 112 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/961598">announced more than three
 113 years ago that he did not have time to maintain sqlcipher</a>, so it
 114 seemed unlikely to be upgraded by the maintainer.  I was reluctant to
 115 take on the job myself, as I have very limited experience maintaining
 116 shared libraries in Debian.  After waiting and hoping for a few
 117 months, I gave up the last  week, and set out to update the package.  In
 118 the process I orphaned it to make it more obvious for the next person
 119 looking at it that the package need proper maintenance.</p>
 120
 121 <p>The version in Debian was around five years old, and quite a lot of
 122 changes had taken place upstream into the Debian maintenance git
 123 repository.  After spending a few days importing the new upstream
 124 versions, realising that upstream did not care much for SONAME
 125 versioning as I saw library symbols being both added and removed with
 126 minor version number changes to the project, I concluded that I had to
 127 do a SONAME bump of the library package to avoid surprising the
 128 reverse dependencies.  I even added a simple
 129 autopkgtest script to ensure the package work as intended.  Dug deep
 130 into the hole of learning shared library maintenance, I set out a few
 131 days ago to upload the new version to Debian experimental to see what
 132 the quality assurance framework in Debian had to say about the result.
 133 The feedback told me the pacakge was not too shabby, and yesterday I
 134 uploaded the latest version to Debian unstable.  It should enter
 135 testing today or tomorrow, perhaps delayed by
 136 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1055812">a small library
 137 transition</a>.</p>
 138
 139 <p>Armed with a new version of sqlcipher, I can now have a look at the
 140 SQL database in ~/.config/Signal/sql/db.sqlite.  First, one need to
 141 fetch the encryption key from the Signal configuration using this
 142 simple JSON extraction command:</p>
 143
 144 <pre>/usr/bin/jq -r '."key"' ~/.config/Signal/config.json</pre>
 145
 146 <p>Assuming the result from that command is 'secretkey', which is a
 147 hexadecimal number representing the key used to encrypt the database.
 148 Next, one can now connect to the database and inject the encryption
 149 key for access via SQL to fetch information from the database.  Here
 150 is an example dumping the database structure:</p>
 151
 152 <pre>
 153 % sqlcipher ~/.config/Signal/sql/db.sqlite
 154 sqlite> PRAGMA key = "x'secretkey'";
 155 sqlite> .schema
 156 CREATE TABLE sqlite_stat1(tbl,idx,stat);
 157 CREATE TABLE conversations(
 158       id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
 159       json TEXT,
 160
 161       active_at INTEGER,
 162       type STRING,
 163       members TEXT,
 164       name TEXT,
 165       profileName TEXT
 166     , profileFamilyName TEXT, profileFullName TEXT, e164 TEXT, serviceId TEXT, groupId TEXT, profileLastFetchedAt INTEGER);
 167 CREATE TABLE identityKeys(
 168       id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
 169       json TEXT
 170     );
 171 CREATE TABLE items(
 172       id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
 173       json TEXT
 174     );
 175 CREATE TABLE sessions(
 176       id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
 177       conversationId TEXT,
 178       json TEXT
 179     , ourServiceId STRING, serviceId STRING);
 180 CREATE TABLE attachment_downloads(
 181     id STRING primary key,
 182     timestamp INTEGER,
 183     pending INTEGER,
 184     json TEXT
 185   );
 186 CREATE TABLE sticker_packs(
 187     id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
 188     key TEXT NOT NULL,
 189
 190     author STRING,
 191     coverStickerId INTEGER,
 192     createdAt INTEGER,
 193     downloadAttempts INTEGER,
 194     installedAt INTEGER,
 195     lastUsed INTEGER,
 196     status STRING,
 197     stickerCount INTEGER,
 198     title STRING
 199   , attemptedStatus STRING, position INTEGER DEFAULT 0 NOT NULL, storageID STRING, storageVersion INTEGER, storageUnknownFields BLOB, storageNeedsSync
 200       INTEGER DEFAULT 0 NOT NULL);
 201 CREATE TABLE stickers(
 202     id INTEGER NOT NULL,
 203     packId TEXT NOT NULL,
 204
 205     emoji STRING,
 206     height INTEGER,
 207     isCoverOnly INTEGER,
 208     lastUsed INTEGER,
 209     path STRING,
 210     width INTEGER,
 211
 212     PRIMARY KEY (id, packId),
 213     CONSTRAINT stickers_fk
 214       FOREIGN KEY (packId)
 215       REFERENCES sticker_packs(id)
 216       ON DELETE CASCADE
 217   );
 218 CREATE TABLE sticker_references(
 219     messageId STRING,
 220     packId TEXT,
 221     CONSTRAINT sticker_references_fk
 222       FOREIGN KEY(packId)
 223       REFERENCES sticker_packs(id)
 224       ON DELETE CASCADE
 225   );
 226 CREATE TABLE emojis(
 227     shortName TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
 228     lastUsage INTEGER
 229   );
 230 CREATE TABLE messages(
 231         rowid INTEGER PRIMARY KEY ASC,
 232         id STRING UNIQUE,
 233         json TEXT,
 234         readStatus INTEGER,
 235         expires_at INTEGER,
 236         sent_at INTEGER,
 237         schemaVersion INTEGER,
 238         conversationId STRING,
 239         received_at INTEGER,
 240         source STRING,
 241         hasAttachments INTEGER,
 242         hasFileAttachments INTEGER,
 243         hasVisualMediaAttachments INTEGER,
 244         expireTimer INTEGER,
 245         expirationStartTimestamp INTEGER,
 246         type STRING,
 247         body TEXT,
 248         messageTimer INTEGER,
 249         messageTimerStart INTEGER,
 250         messageTimerExpiresAt INTEGER,
 251         isErased INTEGER,
 252         isViewOnce INTEGER,
 253         sourceServiceId TEXT, serverGuid STRING NULL, sourceDevice INTEGER, storyId STRING, isStory INTEGER
 254         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (type IS 'story'), isChangeCreatedByUs INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, isTimerChangeFromSync INTEGER
 255         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
 256           json_extract(json, '$.expirationTimerUpdate.fromSync') IS 1
 257         ), seenStatus NUMBER default 0, storyDistributionListId STRING, expiresAt INT
 258         GENERATED ALWAYS
 259         AS (ifnull(
 260           expirationStartTimestamp + (expireTimer * 1000),
 261           9007199254740991
 262         )), shouldAffectActivity INTEGER
 263         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
 264           type IS NULL
 265           OR
 266           type NOT IN (
 267             'change-number-notification',
 268             'contact-removed-notification',
 269             'conversation-merge',
 270             'group-v1-migration',
 271             'keychange',
 272             'message-history-unsynced',
 273             'profile-change',
 274             'story',
 275             'universal-timer-notification',
 276             'verified-change'
 277           )
 278         ), shouldAffectPreview INTEGER
 279         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
 280           type IS NULL
 281           OR
 282           type NOT IN (
 283             'change-number-notification',
 284             'contact-removed-notification',
 285             'conversation-merge',
 286             'group-v1-migration',
 287             'keychange',
 288             'message-history-unsynced',
 289             'profile-change',
 290             'story',
 291             'universal-timer-notification',
 292             'verified-change'
 293           )
 294         ), isUserInitiatedMessage INTEGER
 295         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
 296           type IS NULL
 297           OR
 298           type NOT IN (
 299             'change-number-notification',
 300             'contact-removed-notification',
 301             'conversation-merge',
 302             'group-v1-migration',
 303             'group-v2-change',
 304             'keychange',
 305             'message-history-unsynced',
 306             'profile-change',
 307             'story',
 308             'universal-timer-notification',
 309             'verified-change'
 310           )
 311         ), mentionsMe INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, isGroupLeaveEvent INTEGER
 312         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
 313           type IS 'group-v2-change' AND
 314           json_array_length(json_extract(json, '$.groupV2Change.details')) IS 1 AND
 315           json_extract(json, '$.groupV2Change.details[0].type') IS 'member-remove' AND
 316           json_extract(json, '$.groupV2Change.from') IS NOT NULL AND
 317           json_extract(json, '$.groupV2Change.from') IS json_extract(json, '$.groupV2Change.details[0].aci')
 318         ), isGroupLeaveEventFromOther INTEGER
 319         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
 320           isGroupLeaveEvent IS 1
 321           AND
 322           isChangeCreatedByUs IS 0
 323         ), callId TEXT
 324         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
 325           json_extract(json, '$.callId')
 326         ));
 327 CREATE TABLE sqlite_stat4(tbl,idx,neq,nlt,ndlt,sample);
 328 CREATE TABLE jobs(
 329         id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
 330         queueType TEXT STRING NOT NULL,
 331         timestamp INTEGER NOT NULL,
 332         data STRING TEXT
 333       );
 334 CREATE TABLE reactions(
 335         conversationId STRING,
 336         emoji STRING,
 337         fromId STRING,
 338         messageReceivedAt INTEGER,
 339         targetAuthorAci STRING,
 340         targetTimestamp INTEGER,
 341         unread INTEGER
 342       , messageId STRING);
 343 CREATE TABLE senderKeys(
 344         id TEXT PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
 345         senderId TEXT NOT NULL,
 346         distributionId TEXT NOT NULL,
 347         data BLOB NOT NULL,
 348         lastUpdatedDate NUMBER NOT NULL
 349       );
 350 CREATE TABLE unprocessed(
 351         id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
 352         timestamp INTEGER,
 353         version INTEGER,
 354         attempts INTEGER,
 355         envelope TEXT,
 356         decrypted TEXT,
 357         source TEXT,
 358         serverTimestamp INTEGER,
 359         sourceServiceId STRING
 360       , serverGuid STRING NULL, sourceDevice INTEGER, receivedAtCounter INTEGER, urgent INTEGER, story INTEGER);
 361 CREATE TABLE sendLogPayloads(
 362         id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY ASC,
 363
 364         timestamp INTEGER NOT NULL,
 365         contentHint INTEGER NOT NULL,
 366         proto BLOB NOT NULL
 367       , urgent INTEGER, hasPniSignatureMessage INTEGER DEFAULT 0 NOT NULL);
 368 CREATE TABLE sendLogRecipients(
 369         payloadId INTEGER NOT NULL,
 370
 371         recipientServiceId STRING NOT NULL,
 372         deviceId INTEGER NOT NULL,
 373
 374         PRIMARY KEY (payloadId, recipientServiceId, deviceId),
 375
 376         CONSTRAINT sendLogRecipientsForeignKey
 377           FOREIGN KEY (payloadId)
 378           REFERENCES sendLogPayloads(id)
 379           ON DELETE CASCADE
 380       );
 381 CREATE TABLE sendLogMessageIds(
 382         payloadId INTEGER NOT NULL,
 383
 384         messageId STRING NOT NULL,
 385
 386         PRIMARY KEY (payloadId, messageId),
 387
 388         CONSTRAINT sendLogMessageIdsForeignKey
 389           FOREIGN KEY (payloadId)
 390           REFERENCES sendLogPayloads(id)
 391           ON DELETE CASCADE
 392       );
 393 CREATE TABLE preKeys(
 394         id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
 395         json TEXT
 396       , ourServiceId NUMBER
 397         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (json_extract(json, '$.ourServiceId')));
 398 CREATE TABLE signedPreKeys(
 399         id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
 400         json TEXT
 401       , ourServiceId NUMBER
 402         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (json_extract(json, '$.ourServiceId')));
 403 CREATE TABLE badges(
 404         id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
 405         category TEXT NOT NULL,
 406         name TEXT NOT NULL,
 407         descriptionTemplate TEXT NOT NULL
 408       );
 409 CREATE TABLE badgeImageFiles(
 410         badgeId TEXT REFERENCES badges(id)
 411           ON DELETE CASCADE
 412           ON UPDATE CASCADE,
 413         'order' INTEGER NOT NULL,
 414         url TEXT NOT NULL,
 415         localPath TEXT,
 416         theme TEXT NOT NULL
 417       );
 418 CREATE TABLE storyReads (
 419         authorId STRING NOT NULL,
 420         conversationId STRING NOT NULL,
 421         storyId STRING NOT NULL,
 422         storyReadDate NUMBER NOT NULL,
 423
 424         PRIMARY KEY (authorId, storyId)
 425       );
 426 CREATE TABLE storyDistributions(
 427         id STRING PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
 428         name TEXT,
 429
 430         senderKeyInfoJson STRING
 431       , deletedAtTimestamp INTEGER, allowsReplies INTEGER, isBlockList INTEGER, storageID STRING, storageVersion INTEGER, storageUnknownFields BLOB, storageNeedsSync INTEGER);
 432 CREATE TABLE storyDistributionMembers(
 433         listId STRING NOT NULL REFERENCES storyDistributions(id)
 434           ON DELETE CASCADE
 435           ON UPDATE CASCADE,
 436         serviceId STRING NOT NULL,
 437
 438         PRIMARY KEY (listId, serviceId)
 439       );
 440 CREATE TABLE uninstalled_sticker_packs (
 441         id STRING NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
 442         uninstalledAt NUMBER NOT NULL,
 443         storageID STRING,
 444         storageVersion NUMBER,
 445         storageUnknownFields BLOB,
 446         storageNeedsSync INTEGER NOT NULL
 447       );
 448 CREATE TABLE groupCallRingCancellations(
 449         ringId INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
 450         createdAt INTEGER NOT NULL
 451       );
 452 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'messages_fts_data'(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, block BLOB);
 453 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'messages_fts_idx'(segid, term, pgno, PRIMARY KEY(segid, term)) WITHOUT ROWID;
 454 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'messages_fts_content'(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, c0);
 455 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'messages_fts_docsize'(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, sz BLOB);
 456 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'messages_fts_config'(k PRIMARY KEY, v) WITHOUT ROWID;
 457 CREATE TABLE edited_messages(
 458         messageId STRING REFERENCES messages(id)
 459           ON DELETE CASCADE,
 460         sentAt INTEGER,
 461         readStatus INTEGER
 462       , conversationId STRING);
 463 CREATE TABLE mentions (
 464         messageId REFERENCES messages(id) ON DELETE CASCADE,
 465         mentionAci STRING,
 466         start INTEGER,
 467         length INTEGER
 468       );
 469 CREATE TABLE kyberPreKeys(
 470         id STRING PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
 471         json TEXT NOT NULL, ourServiceId NUMBER
 472         GENERATED ALWAYS AS (json_extract(json, '$.ourServiceId')));
 473 CREATE TABLE callsHistory (
 474         callId TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
 475         peerId TEXT NOT NULL, -- conversation id (legacy) | uuid | groupId | roomId
 476         ringerId TEXT DEFAULT NULL, -- ringer uuid
 477         mode TEXT NOT NULL, -- enum "Direct" | "Group"
 478         type TEXT NOT NULL, -- enum "Audio" | "Video" | "Group"
 479         direction TEXT NOT NULL, -- enum "Incoming" | "Outgoing
 480         -- Direct: enum "Pending" | "Missed" | "Accepted" | "Deleted"
 481         -- Group: enum "GenericGroupCall" | "OutgoingRing" | "Ringing" | "Joined" | "Missed" | "Declined" | "Accepted" | "Deleted"
 482         status TEXT NOT NULL,
 483         timestamp INTEGER NOT NULL,
 484         UNIQUE (callId, peerId) ON CONFLICT FAIL
 485       );
 486 [ dropped all indexes to save space in this blog post ]
 487 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_view_once_update AFTER UPDATE ON messages
 488       WHEN
 489         new.body IS NOT NULL AND new.isViewOnce = 1
 490       BEGIN
 491         DELETE FROM messages_fts WHERE rowid = old.rowid;
 492       END;
 493 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_insert AFTER INSERT ON messages
 494       WHEN new.isViewOnce IS NOT 1 AND new.storyId IS NULL
 495       BEGIN
 496         INSERT INTO messages_fts
 497           (rowid, body)
 498         VALUES
 499           (new.rowid, new.body);
 500       END;
 501 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_delete AFTER DELETE ON messages BEGIN
 502         DELETE FROM messages_fts WHERE rowid = old.rowid;
 503         DELETE FROM sendLogPayloads WHERE id IN (
 504           SELECT payloadId FROM sendLogMessageIds
 505           WHERE messageId = old.id
 506         );
 507         DELETE FROM reactions WHERE rowid IN (
 508           SELECT rowid FROM reactions
 509           WHERE messageId = old.id
 510         );
 511         DELETE FROM storyReads WHERE storyId = old.storyId;
 512       END;
 513 CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE messages_fts USING fts5(
 514         body,
 515         tokenize = 'signal_tokenizer'
 516       );
 517 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_update AFTER UPDATE ON messages
 518       WHEN
 519         (new.body IS NULL OR old.body IS NOT new.body) AND
 520          new.isViewOnce IS NOT 1 AND new.storyId IS NULL
 521       BEGIN
 522         DELETE FROM messages_fts WHERE rowid = old.rowid;
 523         INSERT INTO messages_fts
 524           (rowid, body)
 525         VALUES
 526           (new.rowid, new.body);
 527       END;
 528 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_insert_insert_mentions AFTER INSERT ON messages
 529       BEGIN
 530         INSERT INTO mentions (messageId, mentionAci, start, length)
 531
 532     SELECT messages.id, bodyRanges.value ->> 'mentionAci' as mentionAci,
 533       bodyRanges.value ->> 'start' as start,
 534       bodyRanges.value ->> 'length' as length
 535     FROM messages, json_each(messages.json ->> 'bodyRanges') as bodyRanges
 536     WHERE bodyRanges.value ->> 'mentionAci' IS NOT NULL
 537
 538         AND messages.id = new.id;
 539       END;
 540 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_update_update_mentions AFTER UPDATE ON messages
 541       BEGIN
 542         DELETE FROM mentions WHERE messageId = new.id;
 543         INSERT INTO mentions (messageId, mentionAci, start, length)
 544
 545     SELECT messages.id, bodyRanges.value ->> 'mentionAci' as mentionAci,
 546       bodyRanges.value ->> 'start' as start,
 547       bodyRanges.value ->> 'length' as length
 548     FROM messages, json_each(messages.json ->> 'bodyRanges') as bodyRanges
 549     WHERE bodyRanges.value ->> 'mentionAci' IS NOT NULL
 550
 551         AND messages.id = new.id;
 552       END;
 553 sqlite>
 554 </pre>
 555
 556 <p>Finally I have the tool needed to inspect and process Signal
 557 messages that I need, without using the vendor provided client.  Now
 558 on to transforming it to a more useful format.</p>
 559
 560 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 561 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 562 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 563
 564       </div>
 565       <div class="tags">
 566
 567
 568         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 569
 570
 571       </div>
 572     </div>
 573     <div class="padding"></div>
 574
 575     <div class="entry">
 576       <div class="title">
 577         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_17.html">New chrpath release 0.17</a>
 578       </div>
 579       <div class="date">
 580         10th November 2023
 581       </div>
 582       <div class="body">
 583         <p>The chrpath package provide a simple command line tool to remove or
 584 modify the rpath or runpath of compiled ELF program.  It is almost 10
 585 years since I updated the code base, but I stumbled over the tool
 586 today, and decided it was time to move the code base from Subversion
 587 to git and find a new home for it, as the previous one (Debian Alioth)
 588 has been shut down.  I decided to go with
 589 <a href="https://codeberg.org/">Codeberg</a> this time, as it is my git
 590 service of choice these days, did a quick and dirty migration to git
 591 and updated the code with a few patches I found in the Debian bug
 592 tracker.  These are the release notes:</p>
 593
 594 <p>New in 0.17 released 2023-11-10:</p>
 595
 596 <ul>
 597 <li>Moved project to Codeberg, as Alioth is shut down.</li>
 598 <li>Add Solaris support (use &lt;sys/byteorder.h> instead of &lt;byteswap.h>).
 599    Patch from Rainer Orth.</li>
 600 <li>Added missing newline from printf() line.  Patch from Frank Dana.</li>
 601 <li>Corrected handling of multiple ELF sections. Patch from Frank Dana.</li>
 602 <li>Updated build rules for .deb.  Partly based on patch from djcj.</li>
 603 </ul>
 604
 605 <p>The latest edition is tagged and available from
 606 <a href="https://codeberg.org/pere/chrpath">https://codeberg.org/pere/chrpath</a>.
 607
 608 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 609 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 610 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 611
 612       </div>
 613       <div class="tags">
 614
 615
 616         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 617
 618
 619       </div>
 620     </div>
 621     <div class="padding"></div>
 622
 623     <div class="entry">
 624       <div class="title">
 625         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Test_framework_for_DocBook_processors___formatters.html">Test framework for DocBook processors / formatters</a>
 626       </div>
 627       <div class="date">
 628          5th November 2023
 629       </div>
 630       <div class="body">
 631         <p>All the books I have published so far has been using
 632 <a href="https://docbook.org/">DocBook</a> somewhere in the process.
 633 For the first book, the source format was DocBook, while for every
 634 later book it was an intermediate format used as the stepping stone to
 635 be able to present the same manuscript in several formats, on paper,
 636 as ebook in ePub format, as a HTML page and as a PDF file either for
 637 paper production or for Internet consumption.  This is made possible
 638 with a wide variety of free software tools with DocBook support in
 639 Debian.  The source format of later books have been docx via rst,
 640 Markdown, Filemaker and Asciidoc, and for all of these I was able to
 641 generate a suitable DocBook file for further processing using
 642 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/pandoc">pandoc</a>,
 643 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/asciidoc">a2x</a> and
 644 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/asciidoctor">asciidoctor</a>,
 645 as well as rendering using
 646 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/xmlto">xmlto</a>,
 647 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dbtoepub">dbtoepub</a>,
 648 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dblatex">dblatex</a>,
 649 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/docbook-xsl">docbook-xsl</a> and
 650 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/fop">fop</a>.</p>
 651
 652 <p>Most of the <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/publisher/">books I
 653 have published</a> are translated books, with English as the source
 654 language.  The use of
 655 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/po4a">po4a</a> to
 656 handle translations using the gettext PO format has been a blessing,
 657 but publishing translated books had triggered the need to ensure the
 658 DocBook tools handle relevant languages correctly.  For every new
 659 language I have published, I had to submit patches dblatex, dbtoepub
 660 and docbook-xsl fixing incorrect language and country specific issues
 661 in the framework themselves.  Typically this has been missing keywords
 662 like 'figure' or sort ordering of index entries.  After a while it
 663 became tiresome to only discover issues like this by accident, and I
 664 decided to write a DocBook "test framework" exercising various
 665 features of DocBook and allowing me to see all features exercised for
 666 a given language.  It consist of a set of DocBook files, a version 4
 667 book, a version 5 book, a v4 book set, a v4 selection of problematic
 668 tables, one v4 testing sidefloat and finally one v4 testing a book of
 669 articles.  The DocBook files are accompanied with a set of build rules
 670 for building PDF using dblatex and docbook-xsl/fop, HTML using xmlto
 671 or docbook-xsl and epub using dbtoepub.  The result is a set of files
 672 visualizing footnotes, indexes, table of content list, figures,
 673 formulas and other DocBook features, allowing for a quick review on
 674 the completeness of the given locale settings.  To build with a
 675 different language setting, all one need to do is edit the lang= value
 676 in the .xml file to pick a different ISO 639 code value and run
 677 'make'.</p>
 678
 679 <p>The <a href="https://codeberg.org/pere/docbook-example/">test framework
 680 source code</a> is available from Codeberg, and a generated set of
 681 presentations of the various examples is available as Codeberg static
 682 web pages at
 683 <a href="https://pere.codeberg.page/docbook-example/">https://pere.codeberg.page/docbook-example/</a>.
 684 Using this test framework I have been able to discover and report
 685 several bugs and missing features in various tools, and got a lot of
 686 them fixed.  For example I got Northern Sami keywords added to both
 687 docbook-xsl and dblatex, fixed several typos in Norwegian bokmål and
 688 Norwegian Nynorsk, support for non-ascii title IDs added to pandoc,
 689 Norwegian index sorting support fixed in xindy and initial Norwegian
 690 Bokmål support added to dblatex.  Some issues still remains, though.
 691 Default index sorting rules are still broken in several tools, so the
 692 Norwegian letters æ, ø and å are more often than not sorted properly
 693 in the book index.</p>
 694
 695 <p>The test framework recently received some more polish, as part of
 696 publishing my latest book.  This book contained a lot of fairly
 697 complex tables, which exposed bugs in some of the tools.  This made me
 698 add a new test file with various tables, as well as spend some time to
 699 brush up the build rules.  My goal is for the test framework to
 700 exercise all DocBook features to make it easier to see which features
 701 work with different processors, and hopefully get them all to support
 702 the full set of DocBook features.  Feel free to send patches to extend
 703 the test set, and test it with your favorite DocBook processor.
 704 Please visit these two URLs to learn more:</p>
 705
 706 <ul>
 707 <li><a href="https://codeberg.org/pere/docbook-example/">https://codeberg.org/pere/docbook-example/</a></li>
 708 <li><a href="https://pere.codeberg.page/docbook-example/">https://pere.codeberg.page/docbook-example/</a></li>
 709 </ul>
 710
 711 <p>If you want to learn more on Docbook and translations, I recommend
 712 having a look at the <a href="https://docbook.org/">the DocBook
 713 web site</a>,
 714 <a href="https://doccookbook.sourceforge.net/html/en/">the DoCookBook
 715 site<a/> and my earlier blog post on
 716 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">how
 717 the Skolelinux project process and translate documentation</a>,  a talk I gave earlier this year on
 718 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20230314-oversetting-og-publisering-av-b%c3%b8ker-med-fri-programvare/">how
 719 to translate and publish books using free software</a> (Norwegian
 720 only).</p>
 721
 722 <!--
 723
 724 https://github.com/docbook/xslt10-stylesheets/issues/205 (docbook-xsl: sme support)
 725 https://bugs.debian.org/968437 (xindy: index sorting rules for nb/nn)
 726 https://bugs.debian.org/856123 (pandoc: markdown to docbook with non-english titles)
 727 https://bugs.debian.org/864813 (dblatex: missing nb words)
 728 https://bugs.debian.org/756386 (dblatex: index sorting rules for nb/nn)
 729 https://bugs.debian.org/796871 (dbtoepub: index sorting rules for nb/nn)
 730 https://bugs.debian.org/792616 (dblatex: PDF metadata)
 731 https://bugs.debian.org/686908 (docbook-xsl: index sorting rules for nb/nn)
 732 https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=373747&aid=3556630&group_id=21935 (docbook-xsl: nb/nn support)
 733 https://bugs.debian.org/684391 (dblatex: initial nb support)
 734
 735 -->
 736
 737 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 738 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 739 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 740
 741       </div>
 742       <div class="tags">
 743
 744
 745         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 746
 747
 748       </div>
 749     </div>
 750     <div class="padding"></div>
 751
 752     <div class="entry">
 753       <div class="title">
 754         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_did_I_learn_from_OpenSnitch_this_summer_.html">What did I learn from OpenSnitch this summer?</a>
 755       </div>
 756       <div class="date">
 757         11th June 2023
 758       </div>
 759       <div class="body">
 760         <p>With yesterdays
 761 <a href="https://www.debian.org/News/2023/20230610">release of Debian
 762 12 Bookworm</a>, I am happy to know the
 763 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch">the interactive
 764 application firewall OpenSnitch</a> is available for a wider audience.
 765 I have been running it for a few weeks now, and have been surprised
 766 about some of the programs connecting to the Internet.  Some programs
 767 are obviously calling out from my machine, like the NTP network based
 768 clock adjusting system and Tor to reach other Tor clients, but others
 769 were more dubious.  For example, the KDE Window manager try to look up
 770 the host name in DNS, for no apparent reason, but if this lookup is
 771 blocked the KDE desktop get periodically stuck when I use it.  Another
 772 surprise was how much Firefox call home directly to mozilla.com,
 773 mozilla.net and googleapis.com, to mention a few, when I visit other
 774 web pages.  This direct connection happen even if I told Firefox to
 775 always use a proxy, and the proxy setting is ignored for this traffic.
 776 Other surprising connections come from audacity and dirmngr (I do not
 777 use Gnome).  It took some trial and error to get a good default set of
 778 permissions.  Without it, I would get popups asking for permissions at
 779 any time, also the most inconvenient ones where I am in the middle of
 780 a time sensitive gaming session.</p>
 781
 782 <p>I suspect some application developers should rethink when then need
 783 to use network connections or DNS lookups, and recommend testing
 784 OpenSnitch (only <tt>apt install opensnitch</tt> away in Debian
 785 Bookworm) to locate and report any surprising Internet connections on
 786 your desktop machine.</p>
 787
 788 <p>At the moment the upstream developer and Debian package maintainer
 789 is working on making the system more reliable in Debian, by enabling
 790 the eBPF kernel module to track processes and connections instead of
 791 depending in content in /proc/.  This should enter unstable fairly
 792 soon.</p>
 793
 794 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 795 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 796 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 797
 798 <p><strong>Update 2023-06-12</strong>: I got a tip about
 799 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/PrivacyIssues">a list of privacy
 800 issues in Free Software</a> and the
 801 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-privacy">#debian-privacy IRC
 802 channel</a> discussing these topics.</p>
 803
 804
 805       </div>
 806       <div class="tags">
 807
 808
 809         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opensnitch">opensnitch</a>.
 810
 811
 812       </div>
 813     </div>
 814     <div class="padding"></div>
 815
 816     <div class="entry">
 817       <div class="title">
 818         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/wmbusmeters__parse_data_from_your_utility_meter___nice_free_software.html">wmbusmeters, parse data from your utility meter - nice free software</a>
 819       </div>
 820       <div class="date">
 821         19th May 2023
 822       </div>
 823       <div class="body">
 824         <p>There is a European standard for reading utility meters like water,
 825 gas, electricity or heat distribution meters.  The
 826 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meter-Bus">Meter-Bus standard
 827 (EN 13757-2, EN 13757-3 and EN 13757–4)</a> provide a cross vendor way
 828 to talk to and collect meter data.  I ran into this standard when I
 829 wanted to monitor some heat distribution meters, and managed to find
 830 free software that could do the job.  The meters in question broadcast
 831 encrypted messages with meter information via radio, and the hardest
 832 part was to track down the encryption keys from the vendor.  With this
 833 in place I could set up a MQTT gateway to submit the meter data for
 834 graphing.</p>
 835
 836 <p>The free software systems in question,
 837 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/rtl-wmbus">rtl-wmbus</a> to
 838 read the messages from a software defined radio, and
 839 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/wmbusmeters">wmbusmeters</a> to
 840 decrypt and decode the content of the messages, is working very well
 841 and allowe me to get frequent updates from my meters.  I got in touch
 842 with upstream last year to see if there was any interest in publishing
 843 the packages via Debian.  I was very happy to learn that Fredrik
 844 Öhrström volunteered to maintain the packages, and I have since
 845 assisted him in getting Debian package build rules in place as well as
 846 sponsoring the packages into the Debian archive.  Sadly we completed
 847 it too late for them to become part of the next stable Debian release
 848 (Bookworm).  The wmbusmeters package just cleared the NEW queue.  It
 849 will need some work to fix a built problem, but I expect Fredrik will
 850 find a solution soon.</p>
 851
 852 <p>If you got a infrastructure meter supporting the Meter Bus
 853 standard, I strongly recommend having a look at these nice
 854 packages.</p>
 855
 856 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 857 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 858 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 859
 860       </div>
 861       <div class="tags">
 862
 863
 864         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
 865
 866
 867       </div>
 868     </div>
 869     <div class="padding"></div>
 870
 871     <div class="entry">
 872       <div class="title">
 873         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_2023_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html">The 2023 LinuxCNC Norwegian developer gathering</a>
 874       </div>
 875       <div class="date">
 876         14th May 2023
 877       </div>
 878       <div class="body">
 879         <p>The LinuxCNC project is making headway these days.  A lot of
 880 patches and issues have seen activity on
 881 <a href="https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/">the project github
 882 pages</a> recently.  A few weeks ago there was a developer gathering
 883 over at the <a href="https://tormach.com/">Tormach</a> headquarter in
 884 Wisconsin, and now we are planning a new gathering in Norway.  If you
 885 wonder what LinuxCNC is, lets quote Wikipedia:</p>
 886
 887 <blockquote>
 888 "LinuxCNC is a software system for numerical control of
 889 machines such as milling machines, lathes, plasma cutters, routers,
 890 cutting machines, robots and hexapods. It can control up to 9 axes or
 891 joints of a CNC machine using G-code (RS-274NGC) as input. It has
 892 several GUIs suited to specific kinds of usage (touch screen,
 893 interactive development)."
 894 </blockquote>
 895
 896 <p>The Norwegian developer gathering take place the weekend June 16th
 897 to 18th this year, and is open for everyone interested in contributing
 898 to LinuxCNC.  Up to date information about the gathering can be found
 899 in
 900 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/emc/mailman/emc-developers/thread/sa64jp06nob.fsf%40hjemme.reinholdtsen.name/#msg37837251">the
 901 developer mailing list thread</a> where the gathering was announced.
 902 Thanks to the good people at
 903 <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>,
 904 <a href="https://www.redpill-linpro.com/">Redpill-Linpro</a> and
 905 <a href="https://www.nuugfoundation.no/no/">NUUG Foundation</a>, we
 906 have enough sponsor funds to pay for food, and shelter for the people
 907 traveling from afar to join us.  If you would like to join the
 908 gathering, get in touch.</p>
 909
 910 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 911 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 912 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 913
 914       </div>
 915       <div class="tags">
 916
 917
 918         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc</a>.
 919
 920
 921       </div>
 922     </div>
 923     <div class="padding"></div>
 924
 925     <div class="entry">
 926       <div class="title">
 927         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenSnitch_in_Debian_ready_for_prime_time.html">OpenSnitch in Debian ready for prime time</a>
 928       </div>
 929       <div class="date">
 930         13th May 2023
 931       </div>
 932       <div class="body">
 933         <p>A bit delayed,
 934 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch">the interactive
 935 application firewall OpenSnitch</a> package in Debian now got the
 936 latest fixes ready for Debian Bookworm.  Because it depend on a
 937 package missing on some architectures, the autopkgtest check of the
 938 testing migration script did not understand that the tests were
 939 actually working, so the migration was delayed.  A bug in the package
 940 dependencies is also fixed, so those installing the firewall package
 941 (opensnitch) now also get the GUI admin tool (python3-opensnitch-ui)
 942 installed by default.  I am very grateful to Gustavo Iñiguez Goya for
 943 his work on getting the package ready for Debian Bookworm.</p>
 944
 945 <p>Armed with this package I have discovered some surprising
 946 connections from programs I believed were able to work completly
 947 offline, and it has already proven its worth, at least to me.  If you
 948 too want to get more familiar with the kind of programs using
 949 Internett connections on your machine, I recommend testing <tt>apt
 950 install opensnitch</tt> in Bookworm and see what you think.</p>
 951
 952 <p>The package is still not able to build its eBPF module within
 953 Debian.  Not sure how much work it would be to get it working, but
 954 suspect some kernel related packages need to be extended with more
 955 header files to get it working.</p>
 956
 957 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 958 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 959 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 960
 961       </div>
 962       <div class="tags">
 963
 964
 965         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opensnitch">opensnitch</a>.
 966
 967
 968       </div>
 969     </div>
 970     <div class="padding"></div>
 971
 972     <div class="entry">
 973       <div class="title">
 974         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speech_to_text__she_APTly_whispered__how_hard_can_it_be_.html">Speech to text, she APTly whispered, how hard can it be?</a>
 975       </div>
 976       <div class="date">
 977         23rd April 2023
 978       </div>
 979       <div class="body">
 980         <p>While visiting a convention during Easter, it occurred to me that
 981 it would be great if I could have a digital Dictaphone with
 982 transcribing capabilities, providing me with texts to cut-n-paste into
 983 stuff I need to write.  The background is that long drives often bring
 984 up the urge to write on texts I am working on, which of course is out
 985 of the question while driving.  With the release of
 986 <a href="https://github.com/openai/whisper/">OpenAI Whisper</a>, this
 987 seem to be within reach with Free Software, so I decided to give it a
 988 go.  OpenAI Whisper is a Linux based neural network system to read in
 989 audio files and provide text representation of the speech in that
 990 audio recording.  It handle multiple languages and according to its
 991 creators even can translate into a different language than the spoken
 992 one.  I have not tested the latter feature.  It can either use the CPU
 993 or a GPU with CUDA support.  As far as I can tell, CUDA in practice
 994 limit that feature to NVidia graphics cards.  I have few of those, as
 995 they do not work great with free software drivers, and have not tested
 996 the GPU option.  While looking into the matter, I did discover some
 997 work to provide CUDA support on non-NVidia GPUs, and some work with
 998 the library used by Whisper to port it to other GPUs, but have not
 999 spent much time looking into GPU support yet.  I've so far used an old
1000 X220 laptop as my test machine, and only transcribed using its
1001 CPU.</p>
1002
1003 <p>As it from a privacy standpoint is unthinkable to use computers
1004 under control of someone else (aka a "cloud" service) to transcribe
1005 ones thoughts and personal notes, I want to run the transcribing
1006 system locally on my own computers.  The only sensible approach to me
1007 is to make the effort I put into this available for any Linux user and
1008 to upload the needed packages into Debian.  Looking at Debian Bookworm, I
1009 discovered that only three packages were missing,
1010 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1034307">tiktoken</a>,
1011 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1034144">triton</a>, and
1012 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1034091">openai-whisper</a>.  For a while
1013 I also believed
1014 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1034286">ffmpeg-python</a> was
1015 needed, but as its
1016 <a href="https://github.com/kkroening/ffmpeg-python/issues/760">upstream
1017 seem to have vanished</a> I found it safer
1018 <a href="https://github.com/openai/whisper/pull/1242">to rewrite
1019 whisper</a> to stop depending on in than to introduce ffmpeg-python
1020 into Debian.  I decided to place these packages under the umbrella of
1021 <a href="https://salsa.debian.org/deeplearning-team">the Debian Deep
1022 Learning Team</a>, which seem like the best team to look after such
1023 packages.  Discussing the topic within the group also made me aware
1024 that the triton package was already a future dependency of newer
1025 versions of the torch package being planned, and would be needed after
1026 Bookworm is released.</p>
1027
1028 <p>All required code packages have been now waiting in
1029 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the Debian NEW
1030 queue</a> since Wednesday, heading for Debian Experimental until
1031 Bookworm is released.  An unsolved issue is how to handle the neural
1032 network models used by Whisper.  The default behaviour of Whisper is
1033 to require Internet connectivity and download the model requested to
1034 <tt>~/.cache/whisper/</tt> on first invocation.  This obviously would
1035 fail <a href="https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html">the
1036 deserted island test of free software</a> as the Debian packages would
1037 be unusable for someone stranded with only the Debian archive and solar
1038 powered computer on a deserted island.</p>
1039
1040 <p>Because of this, I would love to include the models in the Debian
1041 mirror system.  This is problematic, as the models are very large
1042 files, which would put a heavy strain on the Debian mirror
1043 infrastructure around the globe.  The strain would be even higher if
1044 the models change often, which luckily as far as I can tell they do
1045 not.  The small model, which according to its creator is most useful
1046 for English and in my experience is not doing a great job there
1047 either, is 462 MiB (deb is 414 MiB).  The medium model, which to me
1048 seem to handle English speech fairly well is 1.5 GiB (deb is 1.3 GiB)
1049 and the large model is 2.9 GiB (deb is 2.6 GiB).  I would assume
1050 everyone with enough resources would prefer to use the large model for
1051 highest quality.  I believe the models themselves would have to go
1052 into the non-free part of the Debian archive, as they are not really
1053 including any useful source code for updating the models.  The
1054 "source", aka the model training set, according to the creators
1055 consist of "680,000 hours of multilingual and multitask supervised
1056 data collected from the web", which to me reads material with both
1057 unknown copyright terms, unavailable to the general public.  In other
1058 words, the source is not available according to the Debian Free
1059 Software Guidelines and the model should be considered non-free.</p>
1060
1061 <p>I asked the Debian FTP masters for advice regarding uploading a
1062 model package on their IRC channel, and based on the feedback there it
1063 is still unclear to me if such package would be accepted into the
1064 archive.  In any case I wrote build rules for a
1065 <a href="https://salsa.debian.org/deeplearning-team/openai-whisper-model">OpenAI
1066 Whisper model package</a> and
1067 <a href="https://github.com/openai/whisper/pull/1257">modified the
1068 Whisper code base</a> to prefer shared files under <tt>/usr/</tt> and
1069 <tt>/var/</tt> over user specific files in <tt>~/.cache/whisper/</tt>
1070 to be able to use these model packages, to prepare for such
1071 possibility.  One solution might be to include only one of the models
1072 (small or medium, I guess) in the Debian archive, and ask people to
1073 download the others from the Internet.  Not quite sure what to do
1074 here, and advice is most welcome (use the debian-ai mailing list).</p>
1075
1076 <p>To make it easier to test the new packages while I wait for them to
1077 clear the NEW queue, I created an APT source targeting bookworm.  I
1078 selected Bookworm instead of Bullseye, even though I know the latter
1079 would reach more users, is that some of the required dependencies are
1080 missing from Bullseye and I during this phase of testing did not want
1081 to backport a lot of packages just to get up and running.</p>
1082
1083 <p>Here is a recipe to run as user root if you want to test OpenAI
1084 Whisper using Debian packages on your Debian Bookworm installation,
1085 first adding the APT repository GPG key to the list of trusted keys,
1086 then setting up the APT repository and finally installing the packages
1087 and one of the models:</p>
1088
1089 <p><pre>
1090 curl https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/D78F5C4796F353D211B119E28200D9B589641240.asc \
1091   -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/pere-whisper.asc
1092 mkdir -p /etc/apt/sources.list.d
1093 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pere-whisper.list &lt;&lt;EOF
1094 deb https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/ bookworm main
1095 deb-src https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/ bookworm main
1096 EOF
1097 apt update
1098 apt install openai-whisper
1099 </pre></p>
1100
1101 <p>The package work for me, but have not yet been tested on any other
1102 computer than my own.  With it, I have been able to (badly) transcribe
1103 a 2 minute 40 second Norwegian audio clip to test using the small
1104 model.  This took 11 minutes and around 2.2 GiB of RAM.  Transcribing
1105 the same file with the medium model gave a accurate text in 77 minutes
1106 using around 5.2 GiB of RAM.  My test machine had too little memory to
1107 test the large model, which I believe require 11 GiB of RAM.  In
1108 short, this now work for me using Debian packages, and I hope it will
1109 for you and everyone else once the packages enter Debian.</p>
1110
1111 <p>Now I can start on the audio recording part of this project.</p>
1112
1113 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1114 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1115 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1116
1117       </div>
1118       <div class="tags">
1119
1120
1121         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1122
1123
1124       </div>
1125     </div>
1126     <div class="padding"></div>
1127
1128     <div class="entry">
1129       <div class="title">
1130         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/rtlsdr_scanner__software_defined_radio_frequency_scanner_for_Linux____nice_free_software.html">rtlsdr-scanner, software defined radio frequency scanner for Linux  - nice free software</a>
1131       </div>
1132       <div class="date">
1133          7th April 2023
1134       </div>
1135       <div class="body">
1136         <p>Today I finally found time to track down a useful radio frequency
1137 scanner for my software defined radio.  Just for fun I tried to locate
1138 the radios used in the areas, and a good start would be to scan all
1139 the frequencies to see what is in use.  I've tried to find a useful
1140 program earlier, but ran out of time before I managed to find a useful
1141 tool.  This time I was more successful, and after a few false leads I
1142 found a description of
1143 <a href="https://www.kali.org/tools/rtlsdr-scanner/">rtlsdr-scanner
1144 over at the Kali site</a>, and was able to track down
1145 <a href="https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/rtlsdr-scanner.git">the
1146 Kali package git repository</a> to build a deb package for the
1147 scanner.  Sadly the package is missing from the Debian project itself,
1148 at least in Debian Bullseye.  Two runtime dependencies,
1149 <a href="https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/python-visvis.git">python-visvis</a>
1150 and
1151 <a href="https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/python-rtlsdr.git">python-rtlsdr</a>
1152 had to be built and installed separately.  Luckily '<tt>gbp
1153 buildpackage</tt>' handled them just fine and no further packages had
1154 to be manually built.  The end result worked out of the box after
1155 installation.</p>
1156
1157 <p>My initial scans for FM channels worked just fine, so I knew the
1158 scanner was functioning.  But when I tried to scan every frequency
1159 from 100 to 1000 MHz, the program stopped unexpectedly near the
1160 completion.  After some debugging I discovered USB software radio I
1161 used rejected frequencies above 948 MHz, triggering a unreported
1162 exception breaking the scan.  Changing the scan to end at 957 worked
1163 better.  I similarly found the lower limit to be around 15, and ended
1164 up with the following full scan:</p>
1165
1166 <p><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2023-04-07-radio-freq-scanning.png"><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2023-04-07-radio-freq-scanning.png" width="100%"></a></p>
1167
1168 <p>Saving the scan did not work, but exporting it as a CSV file worked
1169 just fine.  I ended up with around 477k CVS lines with dB level for
1170 the given frequency.</p>
1171
1172 <p>The save failure seem to be a missing UTF-8 encoding issue in the
1173 python code.  Will see if I can find time to send a patch
1174 <a href="https://github.com/CdeMills/RTLSDR-Scanner/">upstream</a>
1175 later to fix this exception:</p>
1176
1177 <pre>
1178 Traceback (most recent call last):
1179   File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/main_window.py", line 485, in __on_save
1180     save_plot(fullName, self.scanInfo, self.spectrum, self.locations)
1181   File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/file.py", line 408, in save_plot
1182     handle.write(json.dumps(data, indent=4))
1183 TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'
1184 Traceback (most recent call last):
1185   File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/main_window.py", line 485, in __on_save
1186     save_plot(fullName, self.scanInfo, self.spectrum, self.locations)
1187   File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/file.py", line 408, in save_plot
1188     handle.write(json.dumps(data, indent=4))
1189 TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'
1190 </pre>
1191
1192 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1193 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1194 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1195
1196       </div>
1197       <div class="tags">
1198
1199
1200         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
1201
1202
1203       </div>
1204     </div>
1205     <div class="padding"></div>
1206
1207     <div class="entry">
1208       <div class="title">
1209         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenSnitch_available_in_Debian_Sid_and_Bookworm.html">OpenSnitch available in Debian Sid and Bookworm</a>
1210       </div>
1211       <div class="date">
1212         25th February 2023
1213       </div>
1214       <div class="body">
1215         <p>Thanks to the efforts of the OpenSnitch lead developer Gustavo
1216 Iñiguez Goya allowing me to sponsor the upload,
1217 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch">the interactive
1218 application firewall OpenSnitch</a> is now available in Debian
1219 Testing, soon to become the next stable release of Debian.</p>
1220
1221 <p>This is a package which set up a network firewall on one or more
1222 machines, which is controlled by a graphical user interface that will
1223 ask the user if a program should be allowed to connect to the local
1224 network or the Internet.  If some background daemon is trying to dial
1225 home, it can be blocked from doing so with a simple mouse click, or by
1226 default simply by not doing anything when the GUI question dialog pop
1227 up.  A list of all programs discovered using the network is provided
1228 in the GUI, giving the user an overview of how the machine(s) programs
1229 use the network.</p>
1230
1231 <p>OpenSnitch was uploaded for NEW processing about a month ago, and I
1232 had little hope of it getting accepted and shaping up in time for the
1233 package freeze, but the Debian ftpmasters proved to be amazingly quick
1234 at checking out the package and it was accepted into the archive about
1235 week after the first upload.  It is now team maintained under the Go
1236 language team umbrella.  A few fixes to the default setup is only in
1237 Sid, and should migrate to Testing/Bookworm in a week.</p>
1238
1239 <p>During testing I ran into an
1240 <a href="https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch/issues/813">issue
1241 with Minecraft server broadcasts disappearing</a>, which was quickly
1242 resolved by the developer with a patch and a proposed configuration
1243 change.  I've been told this was caused by the Debian packages default
1244 use if /proc/ information to track down kernel status, instead of the
1245 newer eBPF module that can be used.  The reason is simply that
1246 upstream and I have failed to find a way to build the eBPF modules for
1247 OpenSnitch without a complete configured Linux kernel source tree,
1248 which as far as we can tell is unavailable as a build dependency in
1249 Debian.  We tried unsuccessfully so far to use the kernel-headers
1250 package.  It would be great if someone could provide some clues how to
1251 build eBPF modules on build daemons in Debian, possibly without the full
1252 kernel source.</p>
1253
1254 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1255 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1256 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1257
1258       </div>
1259       <div class="tags">
1260
1261
1262         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opensnitch">opensnitch</a>.
1263
1264
1265       </div>
1266     </div>
1267     <div class="padding"></div>
1268
1269     <div class="entry">
1270       <div class="title">
1271         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_the_desktop_recommending_your_program_for_opening_its_files_.html">Is the desktop recommending your program for opening its files?</a>
1272       </div>
1273       <div class="date">
1274         29th January 2023
1275       </div>
1276       <div class="body">
1277         <p>Linux desktop systems
1278 <a href="https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html">have
1279 standardized</a> how programs present themselves to the desktop
1280 system.  If a package include a .desktop file in
1281 /usr/share/applications/, Gnome, KDE, LXDE, Xfce and the other desktop
1282 environments will pick up the file and use its content to generate the
1283 menu of available programs in the system.  A lesser known fact is that
1284 a package can also explain to the desktop system how to recognize the
1285 files created by the program in question, and use it to open these
1286 files on request, for example via a GUI file browser.</p>
1287
1288 <p>A while back I ran into a package that did not tell the desktop
1289 system how to recognize its files and was not used to open its files
1290 in the file browser and fixed it.  In the process I wrote a simple
1291 debian/tests/ script to ensure the setup keep working.  It might be
1292 useful for other packages too, to ensure any future version of the
1293 package keep handling its own files.</p>
1294
1295 <p>For this to work the file format need a useful MIME type that can
1296 be used to identify the format.  If the file format do not yet have a
1297 MIME type, it should define one and preferably also
1298 <a href="https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">register
1299 it with IANA</a> to ensure the MIME type string is reserved.</p>
1300
1301 <p>The script uses the <tt>xdg-mime</tt> program from xdg-utils to
1302 query the database of standardized package information and ensure it
1303 return sensible values.  It also need the location of an example file
1304 for xdg-mime to guess the format of.</p>
1305
1306 <pre>
1307 #!/bin/sh
1308 #
1309 # Author: Petter Reinholdtsen
1310 # License: GPL v2 or later at your choice.
1311 #
1312 # Validate the MIME setup, making sure motor types have
1313 # application/vnd.openmotor+yaml associated with them and is connected
1314 # to the openmotor desktop file.
1315
1316 retval=0
1317
1318 mimetype="application/vnd.openmotor+yaml"
1319 testfile="test/data/real/o3100/motor.ric"
1320 mydesktopfile="openmotor.desktop"
1321
1322 filemime="$(xdg-mime query filetype "$testfile")"
1323
1324 if [ "$mimetype" != "$filemime" ] ; then
1325     retval=1
1326     echo "error: xdg-mime claim motor file MIME type is $filemine, not $mimetype"
1327 else
1328     echo "success: xdg-mime report correct mime type $mimetype for motor file"
1329 fi
1330
1331 desktop=$(xdg-mime query default "$mimetype")
1332
1333 if [ "$mydesktopfile" != "$desktop" ]; then
1334     retval=1
1335     echo "error: xdg-mime claim motor file should be handled by $desktop, not $mydesktopfile"
1336 else
1337     echo "success: xdg-mime agree motor file should be handled by $mydesktopfile"
1338 fi
1339
1340 exit $retval
1341 </pre>
1342
1343 <p>It is a simple way to ensure your users are not very surprised when
1344 they try to open one of your file formats in their file browser.</p>
1345
1346 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1347 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1348 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1349
1350       </div>
1351       <div class="tags">
1352
1353
1354         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1355
1356
1357       </div>
1358     </div>
1359     <div class="padding"></div>
1360
1361     <div class="entry">
1362       <div class="title">
1363         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Opensnitch__the_application_level_interactive_firewall__heading_into_the_Debian_archive.html">Opensnitch, the application level interactive firewall, heading into the Debian archive</a>
1364       </div>
1365       <div class="date">
1366         22nd January 2023
1367       </div>
1368       <div class="body">
1369         <p>While reading a
1370 <a href="https://sneak.berlin/20230115/macos-scans-your-local-files-now/">blog
1371 post claiming MacOS X recently started scanning local files and
1372 reporting information about them to Apple</a>, even on a machine where
1373 all such callback features had been disabled, I came across a
1374 description of the Little Snitch application for MacOS X.  It seemed
1375 like a very nice tool to have in the tool box, and I decided to see if
1376 something similar was available for Linux.</p>
1377
1378 <p>It did not take long to find
1379 <a href="https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch">the OpenSnitch
1380 package</a>, which has been in development since 2017, and now is in
1381 version 1.5.0.  It has had a
1382 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/909567">request for Debian
1383 packaging</a> since 2018, but no-one completed the job so far.  Just
1384 for fun, I decided to see if I could help, and I was very happy to
1385 discover that
1386 <a href="https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch/issues/304">upstream
1387 want a Debian package too</a>.</p>
1388
1389 <p>After struggling a bit with getting the program to run, figuring
1390 out building Go programs (and a little failed detour to look at eBPF
1391 builds too - help needed), I am very happy to report that I am
1392 sponsoring upstream to maintain the package in Debian, and it has
1393 since this morning been waiting in NEW for the ftpmasters to have a
1394 look.  Perhaps it can get into the archive in time for the Bookworm
1395 release?</p>
1396
1397 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1398 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1399 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1400
1401       </div>
1402       <div class="tags">
1403
1404
1405         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opensnitch">opensnitch</a>.
1406
1407
1408       </div>
1409     </div>
1410     <div class="padding"></div>
1411
1412     <div class="entry">
1413       <div class="title">
1414         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LinuxCNC_MQTT_publisher_component.html">LinuxCNC MQTT publisher component</a>
1415       </div>
1416       <div class="date">
1417          8th January 2023
1418       </div>
1419       <div class="body">
1420         <p>I watched <a href="https://yewtu.be/watch?v=jmKUV3aNLjk">a 2015
1421 video from Andreas Schiffler</a> the other day, where he set up
1422 <a href="https://linuxcnc.org/">LinuxCNC</a> to send status
1423 information to the MQTT broker IBM Bluemix.  As I also use MQTT for
1424 graphing, it occured to me that a generic MQTT LinuxCNC component
1425 would be useful and I set out to implement it.  Today I got the first
1426 draft limping along and submitted as
1427 <a href="https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/pull/2253">a patch to the
1428 LinuxCNC project</a>.</p>
1429
1430 <p>The simple part was setting up the MQTT publishing code in Python.
1431 I already have set up other parts submitting data to my Mosquito MQTT
1432 broker, so I could reuse that code.  Writing a LinuxCNC component in
1433 Python as new to me, but using existing examples in the code
1434 repository and the extensive documentation, this was fairly straight
1435 forward.  The hardest part was creating a automated test for the
1436 component to ensure it was working.  Testing it in a simulated
1437 LinuxCNC machine proved very useful, as I discovered features I needed
1438 that I had not thought of yet, and adjusted the code quite a bit to
1439 make it easier to test without a operational MQTT broker
1440 available.</p>
1441
1442 <p>The draft is ready and working, but I am unsure which LinuxCNC HAL
1443 pins I should collect and publish by default (in other words, the
1444 default set of information pieces published), and how to get the
1445 machine name from the LinuxCNC INI file.  The latter is a minor
1446 detail, but I expect it would be useful in a setup with several
1447 machines available.  I am hoping for feedback from the experienced
1448 LinuxCNC developers and users, to make the component even better
1449 before it can go into the mainland LinuxCNC code base.</p>
1450
1451 <p>Since I started on the MQTT component, I came across
1452 <a href="https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Bqa2grG0XtA">another video from Kent
1453 VanderVelden</a> where he combine LinuxCNC with a set of screen glasses
1454 controlled by a Raspberry Pi, and it occured to me that it would
1455 be useful for such use cases if LinuxCNC also provided a REST API for
1456 querying its status.  I hope to start on such component once the MQTT
1457 component is working well.</p>
1458
1459 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1460 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1461 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1462
1463       </div>
1464       <div class="tags">
1465
1466
1467         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
1468
1469
1470       </div>
1471     </div>
1472     <div class="padding"></div>
1473
1474     <div class="entry">
1475       <div class="title">
1476         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ONVIF_IP_camera_management_tool_finally_in_Debian.html">ONVIF IP camera management tool finally in Debian</a>
1477       </div>
1478       <div class="date">
1479         24th December 2022
1480       </div>
1481       <div class="body">
1482         <p>Merry Christmas to you all.  Here is a small gift to all those with
1483 IP cameras following the <a href="https://www.onvif.org/">ONVIF
1484 specification</a>.  There is finally a nice command line and GUI tool
1485 in Debian to manage ONVIF IP cameras.  After working with upstream for
1486 a few months and sponsoring the upload, I am very happy to report that
1487 the <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/libonvif">libonvif package</a>
1488 entered Debian Sid last night.</p>
1489
1490 <p>The package provide a C library to communicate with such cameras, a
1491 command line tool to locate and update settings of (like password) the
1492 cameras and a GUI tool to configure and control the units as well as
1493 preview the video from the camera.  Libonvif is available on Both
1494 Linux and Windows and the GUI tool uses the Qt library.  The main
1495 competitors are non-free software, while libonvif is GNU GPL licensed.
1496 I am very glad Debian users in the future can control their cameras
1497 using a free software system provided by Debian.  But the ONVIF world
1498 is full of slightly broken firmware, where the cameras pretend to
1499 follow the ONVIF specification but fail to set some configuration
1500 values or refuse to provide video to more than one recipient at the
1501 time, and the onvif project is quite young and might take a while
1502 before it completely work with your camera.  Upstream seem eager to
1503 improve the library, so handling any broken camera might be just <a
1504 href="https://github.com/sr99622/libonvif/">a bug report away</a>.</p>
1505
1506 <p>The package just cleared NEW, and need a new source only upload
1507 before it can enter testing.  This will happen in the next few
1508 days.</p>
1509
1510 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1511 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1512 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1513
1514       </div>
1515       <div class="tags">
1516
1517
1518         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1519
1520
1521       </div>
1522     </div>
1523     <div class="padding"></div>
1524
1525     <div class="entry">
1526       <div class="title">
1527         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Managing_and_using_ONVIF_IP_cameras_with_Linux.html">Managing and using ONVIF IP cameras with Linux</a>
1528       </div>
1529       <div class="date">
1530         19th October 2022
1531       </div>
1532       <div class="body">
1533         <p>Recently I have been looking at how to control and collect data
1534 from a handful IP cameras using Linux.  I both wanted to change their
1535 settings and to make their imagery available via a free software
1536 service under my control.  Here is a summary of the tools I found.</p>
1537
1538 <p>First I had to identify the cameras and their protocols.  As far as
1539 I could tell, they were using some SOAP looking protocol and their
1540 internal web server seem to only work with Microsoft Internet Explorer
1541 with some proprietary binary plugin, which in these days of course is
1542 a security disaster and also made it impossible for me to use the
1543 camera web interface.  Luckily I discovered that the SOAP looking
1544 protocol is actually following <a href="https://www.onvif.org/">the
1545 ONVIF specification</a>, which seem to be supported by a lot of IP
1546 cameras these days.</p>
1547
1548 <p>Once the protocol was identified, I was able to find what appear to
1549 be the most popular way to configure ONVIF cameras, the free software
1550 Windows tool named
1551 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/onvifdm/">ONVIF Device
1552 Manager</a>.  Lacking any other options at the time, I tried
1553 unsuccessfully to get it running using Wine, but was missing a dotnet
1554 40 library and I found no way around it to run it on Linux.</p>
1555
1556 <p>The next tool I found to configure the cameras were a non-free Linux Qt
1557 client <a href="https://www.lingodigit.com/onvif_nvcdemo.html">ONVIF
1558 Device Tool</a>.  I did not like its terms of use, so did not spend
1559 much time on it.</p>
1560
1561 <p>To collect the video and make it available in a web interface, I
1562 found the Zoneminder tool in Debian.  A recent version was able to
1563 automatically detect and configure ONVIF devices, so I could use it to
1564 set up motion detection in and collection of the camera output.  I had
1565 initial problems getting the ONVIF autodetection to work, as both
1566 Firefox and Chromium <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1001188">refused
1567 the inter-tab communication</a> being used by the Zoneminder web
1568 pages, but managed to get konqueror to work.  Apparently the "Enhanced
1569 Tracking Protection" in Firefox cause the problem.  I ended up
1570 upgrading to the Bookworm edition of Zoneminder in the process to try
1571 to fix the issue, and believe the problem might be solved now.</p>
1572
1573 <p>In the process I came across the nice Linux GUI tool
1574 <a href="https://gitlab.com/caspermeijn/onvifviewer/">ONVIF Viewer</a>
1575 allowing me to preview the camera output and validate the login
1576 passwords required.  Sadly its author has grown tired of maintaining
1577 the software, so it might not see any future updates.  Which is sad,
1578 as the viewer is sightly unstable and the picture tend to lock up.
1579 Note, this lockup might be due to limitations in the cameras and not
1580 the viewer implementation.  I suspect the camera is only able to
1581 provide pictures to one client at the time, and the Zoneminder feed
1582 might interfere with the GUI viewer.  I have
1583 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1000820">asked for the tool to be
1584 included in Debian</a>.</p>
1585
1586 <p>Finally, I found what appear to be very nice Linux free software
1587 replacement for the Windows tool, named
1588 <a href="https://github.com/sr99622/libonvif/">libonvif</a>.  It
1589 provide a C library to talk to ONVIF devices as well as a command line
1590 and GUI tool using the library.  Using the GUI tool I was able to change
1591 the admin passwords and update other settings of the cameras.  I have
1592 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1021980">asked for the package to be
1593 included in Debian</a>.</p>
1594
1595 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1596 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1597 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1598
1599 <p><strong>Update 2022-10-20</strong>: Since my initial publication of
1600 this text, I got several suggestions for more free software Linux
1601 tools.  There is <a href="https://github.com/quatanium/python-onvif">a
1602 ONVIF python library</a> (already
1603 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/824240">requested into Debian</a>) and
1604 <a href="https://github.com/FalkTannhaeuser/python-onvif-zeep">a python 3
1605 fork</a> using a different SOAP dependency.  There is also
1606 <a href="https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/onvif/">support for
1607 ONVIF in Home Assistant</a>, and there is an alternative to Zoneminder
1608 called <a href="https://www.shinobi.video/">Shinobi</a>.  The latter
1609 two are not included in Debian either.  I have not tested any of these
1610 so far.</p>
1611
1612       </div>
1613       <div class="tags">
1614
1615
1616         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1617
1618
1619       </div>
1620     </div>
1621     <div class="padding"></div>
1622
1623     <div class="entry">
1624       <div class="title">
1625         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_translate_the_Bullseye_edition_of_the_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Time to translate the Bullseye edition of the Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
1626       </div>
1627       <div class="date">
1628         12th September 2022
1629       </div>
1630       <div class="body">
1631         <p align="center"><img align="center" src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2020-10-20-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.jpeg" width="60%"/></p>
1632
1633 <p>(The picture is of the previous edition.)</p>
1634
1635 <p>Almost two years after the previous Norwegian Bokmål translation of
1636 the "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
1637 Handbook</a>" was published, a new edition is finally being prepared.  The
1638 english text is updated, and it is time to start working on the
1639 translations.  Around 37 percent of the strings have been updated, one
1640 way or another, and the translations starting from a complete Debian Buster
1641 edition now need to bring their translation up from 63% to 100%.  The
1642 complete book is licensed using a Creative Commons license, and has
1643 been published in several languages over the years.  The translations
1644 are done by volunteers to bring Linux in their native tongue.  The
1645 last time I checked, it complete text was available in English,
1646 Norwegian Bokmål, German, Indonesian, Brazil Portuguese and Spanish.
1647 In addition, work has been started for Arabic (Morocco), Catalan,
1648 Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish,
1649 Dutch, French, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish,
1650 Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Turkish and Vietnamese.</p>
1651
1652 <p>The translation is conducted on
1653 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
1654 hosted weblate project page</a>.  Prospective translators are
1655 recommeded to subscribe to
1656 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
1657 translators mailing list</a> and should also check out
1658 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
1659 contributors</a>.</p>
1660
1661 <p>I am one of the Norwegian Bokmål translators of this book, and we
1662 have just started.  Your contribution is most welcome.</p>
1663
1664 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1665 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1666 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1667
1668       </div>
1669       <div class="tags">
1670
1671
1672         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1673
1674
1675       </div>
1676     </div>
1677     <div class="padding"></div>
1678
1679     <div class="entry">
1680       <div class="title">
1681         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_LinuxCNC_servo_PID_tuning_.html">Automatic LinuxCNC servo PID tuning?</a>
1682       </div>
1683       <div class="date">
1684         16th July 2022
1685       </div>
1686       <div class="body">
1687         <p>While working on a CNC with servo motors controlled by the
1688 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxCNC">LinuxCNC</a>
1689 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller">PID
1690 controller</a>, I recently had to learn how to tune the collection of values
1691 that control such mathematical machinery that a PID controller is.  It
1692 proved to be a lot harder than I hoped, and I still have not succeeded
1693 in getting the Z PID controller to successfully defy gravity, nor X
1694 and Y to move accurately and reliably.  But while climbing up this
1695 rather steep learning curve, I discovered that some motor control
1696 systems are able to tune their PID controllers.  I got the impression
1697 from the documentation that LinuxCNC were not.  This proved to be not
1698 true.</p>
1699
1700 <p>The LinuxCNC
1701 <a href="http://linuxcnc.org/docs/html/man/man9/pid.9.html">pid
1702 component</a> is the recommended PID controller to use.  It uses eight
1703 constants <tt>Pgain</tt>, <tt>Igain</tt>, <tt>Dgain</tt>,
1704 <tt>bias</tt>, <tt>FF0</tt>, <tt>FF1</tt>, <tt>FF2</tt> and
1705 <tt>FF3</tt> to calculate the output value based on current and wanted
1706 state, and all of these need to have a sensible value for the
1707 controller to behave properly.  Note, there are even more values
1708 involved, theser are just the most important ones.  In my case I need
1709 the X, Y and Z axes to follow the requested path with little error.
1710 This has proved quite a challenge for someone who have never tuned a
1711 PID controller before, but there is at least some help to be found.
1712
1713 <p>I discovered that included in LinuxCNC was this old PID component
1714 at_pid claiming to have auto tuning capabilities.  Sadly it had been
1715 neglected since 2011, and could not be used as a plug in replacement
1716 for the default pid component.  One would have to rewriting the
1717 LinuxCNC HAL setup to test at_pid.  This was rather sad, when I wanted
1718 to quickly test auto tuning to see if it did a better job than me at
1719 figuring out good P, I and D values to use.</p>
1720
1721 <p>I decided to have a look if the situation could be improved.  This
1722 involved trying to understand the code and history of the pid and
1723 at_pid components.  Apparently they had a common ancestor, as code
1724 structure, comments and variable names were quite close to each other.
1725 Sadly this was not reflected in the git history, making it hard to
1726 figure out what really happened.  My guess is that the author of
1727 <a href="https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/blob/master/src/hal/components/at_pid.c">at_pid.c</a>
1728 took a version of
1729 <a href="https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/blob/master/src/hal/components/pid.c">pid.c</a>,
1730 rewrote it to follow the structure he wished pid.c to have, then added
1731 support for auto tuning and finally got it included into the LinuxCNC
1732 repository.  The restructuring and lack of early history made it
1733 harder to figure out which part of the code were relevant to the auto
1734 tuning, and which part of the code needed to be updated to work the
1735 same way as the current pid.c implementation.  I started by trying to
1736 isolate relevant changes in pid.c, and applying them to at_pid.c.  My
1737 aim was to make sure the at_pid component could replace the pid
1738 component with a simple change in the HAL setup loadrt line, without
1739 having to "rewire" the rest of the HAL configuration.  After a few
1740 hours following this approach, I had learned quite a lot about the
1741 code structure of both components, while concluding I was heading down
1742 the wrong rabbit hole, and should get back to the surface and find a
1743 different path.</p>
1744
1745 <p>For the second attempt, I decided to throw away all the PID control
1746 related part of the original at_pid.c, and instead isolate and lift
1747 the auto tuning part of the code and inject it into a copy of pid.c.
1748 This ensured compatibility with the current pid component, while
1749 adding auto tuning as a run time option.  To make it easier to identify
1750 the relevant parts in the future, I wrapped all the auto tuning code
1751 with '#ifdef AUTO_TUNER'.  The end result behave just like the current
1752 pid component by default, as that part of the code is identical.  The
1753 <a href="https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/pull/1820">end result
1754 entered the LinuxCNC master branch</a> a few days ago.</p>
1755
1756 <p>To enable auto tuning, one need to set a few HAL pins in the PID
1757 component.  The most important ones are <tt>tune-effort</tt>,
1758 <tt>tune-mode</tt> and <tt>tune-start</tt>.  But lets take a step
1759 back, and see what the auto tuning code will do.  I do not know the
1760 mathematical foundation of the at_pid algorithm, but from observation
1761 I can tell that the algorithm will, when enabled, produce a square
1762 wave pattern centered around the <tt>bias</tt> value on the output pin
1763 of the PID controller.  This can be seen using the HAL Scope provided
1764 by LinuxCNC.  In my case, this is translated into voltage (+-10V) sent
1765 to the motor controller, which in turn is translated into motor speed.
1766 So at_pid will ask the motor to move the axis back and forth.  The
1767 number of cycles in the pattern is controlled by the
1768 <tt>tune-cycles</tt> pin, and the extremes of the wave pattern is
1769 controlled by the <tt>tune-effort</tt> pin.  Of course, trying to
1770 change the direction of a physical object instantly (as in going
1771 directly from a positive voltage to the equivalent negative voltage)
1772 do not change velocity instantly, and it take some time for the object
1773 to slow down and move in the opposite direction.  This result in a
1774 more smooth movement wave form, as the axis in question were vibrating
1775 back and forth.  When the axis reached the target speed in the
1776 opposing direction, the auto tuner change direction again.  After
1777 several of these changes, the average time delay between the 'peaks'
1778 and 'valleys' of this movement graph is then used to calculate
1779 proposed values for Pgain, Igain and Dgain, and insert them into the
1780 HAL model to use by the pid controller.  The auto tuned settings are
1781 not great, but htye work a lot better than the values I had been able
1782 to cook up on my own, at least for the horizontal X and Y axis.  But I
1783 had to use very small <tt>tune-effort<tt> values, as my motor
1784 controllers error out if the voltage change too quickly.  I've been
1785 less lucky with the Z axis, which is moving a heavy object up and
1786 down, and seem to confuse the algorithm.  The Z axis movement became a
1787 lot better when I introduced a <tt>bias</tt> value to counter the
1788 gravitational drag, but I will have to work a lot more on the Z axis
1789 PID values.</p>
1790
1791 <p>Armed with this knowledge, it is time to look at how to do the
1792 tuning.  Lets say the HAL configuration in question load the PID
1793 component for X, Y and Z like this:</p>
1794
1795 <blockquote><pre>
1796 loadrt pid names=pid.x,pid.y,pid.z
1797 </pre></blockquote>
1798
1799 <p>Armed with the new and improved at_pid component, the new line will
1800 look like this:</p>
1801
1802 <blockquote><pre>
1803 loadrt at_pid names=pid.x,pid.y,pid.z
1804 </pre></blockquote>
1805
1806 <p>The rest of the HAL setup can stay the same.  This work because the
1807 components are referenced by name.  If the component had used count=3
1808 instead, all use of pid.# had to be changed to at_pid.#.</p>
1809
1810 <p>To start tuning the X axis, move the axis to the middle of its
1811 range, to make sure it do not hit anything when it start moving back
1812 and forth.  Next, set the <tt>tune-effort</tt> to a low number in the
1813 output range.  I used 0.1 as my initial value.  Next, assign 1 to the
1814 <tt>tune-mode</tt> value. Note, this will disable the pid controlling
1815 part and feed 0 to the output pin, which in my case initially caused a
1816 lot of drift.  In my case it proved to be a good idea with X and Y to
1817 tune the motor driver to make sure 0 voltage stopped the motor
1818 rotation.  On the other hand, for the Z axis this proved to be a bad
1819 idea, so it will depend on your setup.  It might help to set the
1820 <tt>bias</tt> value to a output value that reduce or eliminate the
1821 axis drift.  Finally, after setting <tt>tune-mode</tt>, set
1822 <tt>tune-start</tt> to 1 to activate the auto tuning.  If all go well,
1823 your axis will vibrate for a few seconds and when it is done, new
1824 values for Pgain, Igain and Dgain will be active.  To test them,
1825 change <tt>tune-mode</tt> back to 0.  Note that this might cause the
1826 machine to suddenly jerk as it bring the axis back to its commanded
1827 position, which it might have drifted away from during tuning.  To
1828 summarize with some halcmd lines:</p>
1829
1830 <blockquote><pre>
1831 setp pid.x.tune-effort 0.1
1832 setp pid.x.tune-mode 1
1833 setp pid.x.tune-start 1
1834 # wait for the tuning to complete
1835 setp pid.x.tune-mode 0
1836 </pre></blockquote>
1837
1838 <p>After doing this task quite a few times while trying to figure out
1839 how to properly tune the PID controllers on the machine in, I decided
1840 to figure out if this process could be automated, and wrote a script
1841 to do the entire tuning process from power on.  The end result will
1842 ensure the machine is powered on and ready to run, home all axis if it
1843 is not already done, check that the extra tuning pins are available,
1844 move the axis to its mid point, run the auto tuning and re-enable the
1845 pid controller when it is done.  It can be run several times.  Check
1846 out the
1847 <a href="https://github.com/SebKuzminsky/MazakVQC1540/blob/bon-dev/scripts/run-auto-pid-tuner">run-auto-pid-tuner</a>
1848 script on github if you want to learn how it is done.</p>
1849
1850 <p>My hope is that this little adventure can inspire someone who know
1851 more about motor PID controller tuning can implement even better
1852 algorithms for automatic PID tuning in LinuxCNC, making life easier
1853 for both me and all the others that want to use LinuxCNC but lack the
1854 in depth knowledge needed to tune PID controllers well.</p>
1855
1856 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1857 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1858 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1859
1860       </div>
1861       <div class="tags">
1862
1863
1864         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
1865
1866
1867       </div>
1868     </div>
1869     <div class="padding"></div>
1870
1871     <div class="entry">
1872       <div class="title">
1873         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LinuxCNC_translators_life_just_got_a_bit_easier.html">LinuxCNC translators life just got a bit easier</a>
1874       </div>
1875       <div class="date">
1876          3rd June 2022
1877       </div>
1878       <div class="body">
1879         <p>Back in oktober last year, when I started looking at the
1880 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxCNC">LinuxCNC</a> system, I
1881 proposed to change the documentation build system make life easier for
1882 translators.  The original system consisted of independently written
1883 documentation files for each language, with no automated way to track
1884 changes done in other translations and no help for the translators to
1885 know how much was left to translated.  By using
1886 <a href="https://po4a.org/">the po4a system</a> to generate POT and PO
1887 files from the English documentation, this can be improved.  A small
1888 team of LinuxCNC contributors got together and today our labour
1889 finally payed off.  Since a few hours ago, it is now possible to
1890 translate <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/linuxcnc/">the
1891 LinuxCNC documentation on Weblate</a>, alongside the program itself.</p>
1892
1893 <p>The effort to migrate the documentation to use po4a has been both
1894 slow and frustrating.  I am very happy we finally made it.</p>
1895
1896 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1897 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1898 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1899
1900       </div>
1901       <div class="tags">
1902
1903
1904         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
1905
1906
1907       </div>
1908     </div>
1909     <div class="padding"></div>
1910
1911     <div class="entry">
1912       <div class="title">
1913         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/geteltorito_make_CD_firmware_upgrades_a_breeze.html">geteltorito make CD firmware upgrades a breeze</a>
1914       </div>
1915       <div class="date">
1916         20th April 2022
1917       </div>
1918       <div class="body">
1919         <p>Recently I wanted to upgrade the firmware of my thinkpad, and
1920 located the firmware download page from Lenovo (which annoyingly do
1921 not allow access via Tor, forcing me to hand them more personal
1922 information that I would like).  The
1923 <a href="https://support.lenovo.com/no/en/search?query=thinkpad firmware bios upgrade iso&SearchType=Customer search&searchLocation=Masthead">download
1924 from Lenovo</a> is a bootable ISO image, which is a bit of a problem
1925 when all I got available is a USB memory stick.  I tried booting the
1926 ISO as a USB stick, but this did not work.  But genisoimage came to
1927 the rescue.</p>
1928
1929 <P>The geteltorito program in
1930 <a href="http://tracker.debian.org/cdrkit">the genisoimage binary
1931 package</a> is able to convert the bootable ISO image to a bootable
1932 USB stick using a simple command line recipe, which I then can write
1933 to the most recently inserted USB stick:</p>
1934
1935 <blockquote><pre>
1936 geteltorito -o usbstick.img lenovo-firmware.iso
1937 sudo dd bs=10M if=usbstick.img of=$(ls -tr /dev/sd?|tail -1)
1938 </pre></blockquote>
1939
1940 <p>This USB stick booted the firmware upgrader just fine, and in a few
1941 minutes my machine had the latest and greatest BIOS firmware in place.</p>
1942
1943       </div>
1944       <div class="tags">
1945
1946
1947         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1948
1949
1950       </div>
1951     </div>
1952     <div class="padding"></div>
1953
1954     <div class="entry">
1955       <div class="title">
1956         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Run_your_industrial_metal_working_machine_using_Debian_.html">Run your industrial metal working machine using Debian?</a>
1957       </div>
1958       <div class="date">
1959          2nd March 2022
1960       </div>
1961       <div class="body">
1962         <p>After many months of hard work by the good people involved in
1963 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxCNC">LinuxCNC</a>, the
1964 system was accepted Sunday
1965 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/linuxcnc">into Debian</a>.
1966 Once it was available from Debian, I was surprised to discover from
1967 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=linuxcnc">its
1968 popularity-contest numbers</a> that people have been reporting its use
1969 since 2012.  <a href="http://linuxcnc.org/">Its project site</a> might
1970 be a good place to check out, but sadly is not working when visiting
1971 via Tor.</p>
1972
1973 <p>But what is LinuxCNC, you are probably wondering?  Perhaps a
1974 Wikipedia quote is in place?</p>
1975
1976 <blockquote>
1977 "LinuxCNC is a software system for numerical control of
1978 machines such as milling machines, lathes, plasma cutters, routers,
1979 cutting machines, robots and hexapods. It can control up to 9 axes or
1980 joints of a CNC machine using G-code (RS-274NGC) as input. It has
1981 several GUIs suited to specific kinds of usage (touch screen,
1982 interactive development)."
1983 </blockquote>
1984
1985 <p>It can even control 3D printers.  And even though the Wikipedia
1986 page indicate that it can only work with hard real time kernel
1987 features, it can also work with the user space soft real time features
1988 provided by the Debian kernel.
1989 <a href="https://github.com/linuxcnc/linuxcnc">The source code</a> is
1990 available from Github.  The last few months I've been involved in the
1991 translation setup for the program and documentation.  Translators are
1992 most welcome to
1993 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/engage/linuxcnc/">join the
1994 effort</a> using Weblate.</p>
1995
1996 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1997 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1998 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1999
2000       </div>
2001       <div class="tags">
2002
2003
2004         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
2005
2006
2007       </div>
2008     </div>
2009     <div class="padding"></div>
2010
2011     <div class="entry">
2012       <div class="title">
2013         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_still_an_excellent_choice_for_Lego_builders.html">Debian still an excellent choice for Lego builders</a>
2014       </div>
2015       <div class="date">
2016         24th October 2021
2017       </div>
2018       <div class="body">
2019         <p>The Debian Lego team saw a lot of activity the last few weeks.  All
2020 the packages under the team umbrella has been updated to fix
2021 packaging, lintian issues and BTS reports.  In addition, a new and
2022 inspiring team member appeared on both the
2023 <a href="https://alioth-lists.debian.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/debian-lego-team">debian-lego-team
2024 Team mailing list</a> and
2025 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC channel
2026 #debian-lego</a>.  If you are interested in Lego CAD design and LEGO
2027 Mindstorms programming, check out the
2028 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">team wiki page</a> to
2029 see what Debian can offer the Lego enthusiast.</p>
2030
2031 <p>Patches has been sent upstream, causing new upstream releases, one
2032 even the first one in more than ten years, and old upstreams was
2033 released with new ones.  There are still a lot of work left, and the
2034 team welcome more members to help us make sure Debian is the Linux
2035 distribution of choice for Lego builders.  If you want to contribute,
2036 join us in the IRC channel and become part of
2037 <a href="https://salsa.debian.org/debian-lego-team/">the team on
2038 Salsa</a>.</p>
2039
2040 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2041 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2042 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2043
2044       </div>
2045       <div class="tags">
2046
2047
2048         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
2049
2050
2051       </div>
2052     </div>
2053     <div class="padding"></div>
2054
2055     <div class="entry">
2056       <div class="title">
2057         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Six_complete_translations_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_for_Buster.html">Six complete translations of The Debian Administrator's Handbook for Buster</a>
2058       </div>
2059       <div class="date">
2060          5th July 2021
2061       </div>
2062       <div class="body">
2063         <p>I am happy observe that the <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The
2064 Debian Administrator's Handbook</a> is available in six languages now.
2065 I am not sure which one of these are completely proof read, but the
2066 complete book is available in these languages:
2067
2068 <ul>
2069
2070 <li>English</li>
2071 <li>Norwegian Bokmål</li>
2072 <li>German</li>
2073 <li>Indonesian</li>
2074 <li>Brazil Portuguese</li>
2075 <li>Spanish</li>
2076
2077 </ul>
2078
2079 <p>This is the list of languages more than 70% complete, in other
2080 words with not too much left to do:</p>
2081
2082 <ul>
2083
2084 <li>Chinese (Simplified) - 90%</li>
2085 <li>French - 79%</li>
2086 <li>Italian - 79%</li>
2087 <li>Japanese - 77%</li>
2088 <li>Arabic (Morocco) - 75%</li>
2089 <li>Persian - 71%</li>
2090
2091 </ul>
2092
2093 <p>I wonder how long it will take to bring these to 100%.</p>
2094
2095 <p>Then there is the list of languages about halfway done:</p>
2096
2097 <ul>
2098
2099 <li>Russian - 63%</li>
2100 <li>Swedish - 53%</li>
2101 <li>Chinese (Traditional) - 46%</li>
2102 <li>Catalan - 45%</li>
2103
2104 </ul>
2105
2106 <p>Several are on to a good start:</p>
2107
2108 <ul>
2109
2110 <li>Dutch - 26%</li>
2111 <li>Vietnamese - 25%</li>
2112 <li>Polish - 23%</li>
2113 <li>Czech - 22%</li>
2114 <li>Turkish - 18%</li>
2115
2116 </ul>
2117
2118 <p>Finally, there are the ones just getting started:</p>
2119
2120 <ul>
2121
2122 <li>Korean - 4%</li>
2123 <li>Croatian - 2%</li>
2124 <li>Greek - 2%</li>
2125 <li>Danish - 1%</li>
2126 <li>Romanian - 1%</li>
2127
2128 </ul>
2129
2130 <p>If you want to help provide a Debian instruction book in your own
2131 language, visit
2132 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/#languages">Weblate</a>
2133 to contribute to the translations.</p>
2134
2135 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2136 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2137 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2138
2139       </div>
2140       <div class="tags">
2141
2142
2143         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2144
2145
2146       </div>
2147     </div>
2148     <div class="padding"></div>
2149
2150     <div class="entry">
2151       <div class="title">
2152         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Latest_Jami_back_in_Debian_Testing__and_scriptable_using_dbus.html">Latest Jami back in Debian Testing, and scriptable using dbus</a>
2153       </div>
2154       <div class="date">
2155         12th January 2021
2156       </div>
2157       <div class="body">
2158         <p>After a lot of hard work by its maintainer Alexandre Viau and
2159 others, the decentralized communication platform
2160 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jami_(software)">Jami</a>
2161 (earlier known as Ring), managed to get
2162 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">its latest version</a>
2163 into Debian Testing.  Several of its dependencies has caused build and
2164 propagation problems, which all seem to be solved now.</p>
2165
2166 <p>In addition to the fact that Jami is decentralized, similar to how
2167 bittorrent is decentralized, I first of all like how it is not
2168 connected to external IDs like phone numbers.  This allow me to set up
2169 computers to send me notifications using Jami without having to find
2170 get a phone number for each computer.  Automatic notification via Jami
2171 is also made trivial thanks to the provided client side API (as a DBus
2172 service).  Here is my bourne shell script demonstrating how to let any
2173 system send a message to any Jami address.  It will create a new
2174 identity before sending the message, if no Jami identity exist
2175 already:</p>
2176
2177 <p><pre>
2178 #!/bin/sh
2179 #
2180 # Usage: $0 <jami-address> <message>
2181 #
2182 # Send <message> to <jami-address>, create local jami account if
2183 # missing.
2184 #
2185 # License: GPL v2 or later at your choice
2186 # Author: Petter Reinholdtsen
2187
2188
2189 if [ -z "$HOME" ] ; then
2190     echo "error: missing \$HOME, required for dbus to work"
2191     exit 1
2192 fi
2193
2194 # First, get dbus running if not already running
2195 DBUSLAUNCH=/usr/bin/dbus-launch
2196 PIDFILE=/run/asterisk/dbus-session.pid
2197 if [ -e $PIDFILE ] ; then
2198     . $PIDFILE
2199     if ! kill -0 $DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID 2>/dev/null ; then
2200         unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
2201     fi
2202 fi
2203 if [ -z "$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS" ] && [ -x "$DBUSLAUNCH" ]; then
2204     DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS="unix:path=$HOME/.dbus"
2205     dbus-daemon --session --address="$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS" --nofork --nopidfile --syslog-only < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 3>&1 &
2206     DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID=$!
2207     (
2208         echo DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID=$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID
2209         echo DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=\""$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS"\"
2210         echo export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
2211     ) > $PIDFILE
2212     . $PIDFILE
2213 fi &
2214
2215 dringop() {
2216     part="$1"; shift
2217     op="$1"; shift
2218     dbus-send --session \
2219         --dest="cx.ring.Ring" /cx/ring/Ring/$part cx.ring.Ring.$part.$op $*
2220 }
2221
2222 dringopreply() {
2223     part="$1"; shift
2224     op="$1"; shift
2225     dbus-send --session --print-reply \
2226         --dest="cx.ring.Ring" /cx/ring/Ring/$part cx.ring.Ring.$part.$op $*
2227 }
2228
2229 firstaccount() {
2230     dringopreply ConfigurationManager getAccountList | \
2231       grep string | awk -F'"' '{print $2}' | head -n 1
2232 }
2233
2234 account=$(firstaccount)
2235
2236 if [ -z "$account" ] ; then
2237     echo "Missing local account, trying to create it"
2238     dringop ConfigurationManager addAccount \
2239       dict:string:string:"Account.type","RING","Account.videoEnabled","false"
2240     account=$(firstaccount)
2241     if [ -z "$account" ] ; then
2242         echo "unable to create local account"
2243         exit 1
2244     fi
2245 fi
2246
2247 # Not using dringopreply to ensure $2 can contain spaces
2248 dbus-send --print-reply --session \
2249   --dest=cx.ring.Ring \
2250   /cx/ring/Ring/ConfigurationManager \
2251   cx.ring.Ring.ConfigurationManager.sendTextMessage \
2252   string:"$account" string:"$1" \
2253   dict:string:string:"text/plain","$2"
2254 </pre></p>
2255
2256 <p>If you want to check it out yourself, visit the
2257 <a href="https://jami.net/">the Jami system project page</a> to learn
2258 more, and install the latest Jami client from Debian Unstable or
2259 Testing.</p>
2260
2261 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2262 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2263 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2264
2265       </div>
2266       <div class="tags">
2267
2268
2269         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2270
2271
2272       </div>
2273     </div>
2274     <div class="padding"></div>
2275
2276     <div class="entry">
2277       <div class="title">
2278         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Buster_based_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Buster based Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
2279       </div>
2280       <div class="date">
2281         20th October 2020
2282       </div>
2283       <div class="body">
2284         <p align="center"><img align="center" src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2020-10-20-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.jpeg" width="60%"/></p>
2285
2286 <p>I am happy to report that we finally made it!  Norwegian Bokmål
2287 became the first translation published on paper of the new Buster
2288 based edition of "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian
2289 Administrator's Handbook</a>".  The print proof reading copy arrived
2290 some days ago, and it looked good, so now the book is approved for
2291 general distribution.  This updated paperback edition <a
2292 href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/#norwegian">is available from
2293 lulu.com</a>.  The book is also available for download in electronic
2294 form as PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, and can also be
2295 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/">read online</a>.</p>
2296
2297 <p>I am very happy to wrap up this Creative Common licensed project,
2298 which concludes several months of work by several volunteers. The
2299 number of Linux related books published in Norwegian are few, and I
2300 really hope this one will gain many readers, as it is packed with deep
2301 knowledge on Linux and the Debian ecosystem.  The book will be
2302 available for various Internet book stores like Amazon and Barnes &
2303 Noble soon, but I recommend buying
2304 "<a href="https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/roland-mas-and-rapha%C3%ABl-hertzog/h%C3%A5ndbok-for-debian-administratoren/paperback/product-9j7qwq.html">Håndbok
2305 for Debian-administratoren</a>" directly from the source at Lulu.
2306
2307 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2308 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2309 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2310
2311       </div>
2312       <div class="tags">
2313
2314
2315         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2316
2317
2318       </div>
2319     </div>
2320     <div class="padding"></div>
2321
2322     <div class="entry">
2323       <div class="title">
2324         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Buster_update_of_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_almost_done.html">Buster update of Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook almost done</a>
2325       </div>
2326       <div class="date">
2327         11th September 2020
2328       </div>
2329       <div class="body">
2330         <p>Thanks to the good work of several volunteers, the updated edition
2331 of the Norwegian translation for
2332 "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
2333 Handbook</a>" is now almost completed.  After many months of proof
2334 reading, I consider the proof reading complete enough for us to move
2335 to the next step, and have asked for the print version to be prepared
2336 and sent of to the print on demand service lulu.com.  While it is
2337 still not to late if you find any incorrect translations on
2338 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/languages/nb_NO/debian-handbook/">the
2339 hosted Weblate service</a>, but it will be soon. :) You can check out
2340 <a href=" https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/">the Buster
2341 edition on the web</a> until the print edition is ready.</p>
2342
2343 <p>The book will be for sale on lulu.com and various web book stores,
2344 with links available from the web site for the book linked to above.
2345 I hope a lot of readers find it useful.</p>
2346
2347 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2348 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2349 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2350
2351       </div>
2352       <div class="tags">
2353
2354
2355         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2356
2357
2358       </div>
2359     </div>
2360     <div class="padding"></div>
2361
2362     <div class="entry">
2363       <div class="title">
2364         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Working_on_updated_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Working on updated Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
2365       </div>
2366       <div class="date">
2367          4th July 2020
2368       </div>
2369       <div class="body">
2370         <p>Three years ago, the first Norwegian Bokmål edition of
2371 "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
2372 Handbook</a>" was published.  This was based on Debian Jessie.  Now a
2373 new and updated version based on Buster is getting ready.  Work on the
2374 updated Norwegian Bokmål edition has been going on for a few months
2375 now, and yesterday, we reached the first mile stone, with 100% of the
2376 texts being translated.  A lot of proof reading remains, of course,
2377 but a major step towards a new edition has been taken.</p>
2378
2379 <p>The book is translated by volunteers, and we would love to get some
2380 help with the proof reading.  The translation uses
2381 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/languages/nb_NO/debian-handbook/">the
2382 hosted Weblate service</a>, and we welcome everyone to have a look and
2383 submit improvements and suggestions.  There is also a proof readers
2384 PDF available on request, get in touch if you want to help out that
2385 way.</p>
2386
2387 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2388 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2389 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2390
2391       </div>
2392       <div class="tags">
2393
2394
2395         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2396
2397
2398       </div>
2399     </div>
2400     <div class="padding"></div>
2401
2402     <div class="entry">
2403       <div class="title">
2404         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Secure_Socket_API___a_simple_and_powerful_approach_for_TLS_support_in_software.html">Secure Socket API - a simple and powerful approach for TLS support in software</a>
2405       </div>
2406       <div class="date">
2407          6th June 2020
2408       </div>
2409       <div class="body">
2410         <p>As a member of the <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix
2411 User Group</a>, I have the pleasure of receiving the
2412 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a> magazine
2413 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/">;login:</a>
2414 several times a year.  I rarely have time to read all the articles,
2415 but try to at least skim through them all as there is a lot of nice
2416 knowledge passed on there.  I even carry the latest issue with me most
2417 of the time to try to get through all the articles when I have a few
2418 spare minutes.</p>
2419
2420 <p>The other day I came across a nice article titled
2421 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/winter2018/oneill">The
2422 Secure Socket API: TLS as an Operating System Service</a>" with a
2423 marvellous idea I hope can make it all the way into the POSIX standard.
2424 The idea is as simple as it is powerful.  By introducing a new
2425 socket() option IPPROTO_TLS to use TLS, and a system wide service to
2426 handle setting up TLS connections, one both make it trivial to add TLS
2427 support to any program currently using the POSIX socket API, and gain
2428 system wide control over certificates, TLS versions and encryption
2429 systems used.  Instead of doing this:</p>
2430
2431 <p><blockquote><pre>
2432 int socket = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP);
2433 </pre></blockquote></p>
2434
2435 <p>the program code would be doing this:<p>
2436
2437 <p><blockquote><pre>
2438 int socket = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TLS);
2439 </pre></blockquote></p>
2440
2441 <p>According to the ;login: article, converting a C program to use TLS
2442 would normally modify only 5-10 lines in the code, which is amazing
2443 when compared to using for example the OpenSSL API.</p>
2444
2445 <p>The project has set up the
2446 <a href="https://securesocketapi.org/">https://securesocketapi.org/</a>
2447 web site to spread the idea, and the code for a kernel module and the
2448 associated system daemon is available from two github repositories:
2449 <a href="https://github.com/markoneill/ssa">ssa</a> and
2450 <a href="https://github.com/markoneill/ssa-daemon">ssa-daemon</a>.
2451 Unfortunately there is no explicit license information with the code,
2452 so its copyright status is unclear.  A
2453 <a href="https://github.com/markoneill/ssa/issues/2">request to solve
2454 this</a> about it has been unsolved since 2018-08-17.</p>
2455
2456 <p>I love the idea of extending socket() to gain TLS support, and
2457 understand why it is an advantage to implement this as a kernel module
2458 and system wide service daemon, but can not help to think that it
2459 would be a lot easier to get projects to move to this way of setting
2460 up TLS if it was done with a user space approach where programs
2461 wanting to use this API approach could just link with a wrapper
2462 library.</p>
2463
2464 <p>I recommend you check out this simple and powerful approach to more
2465 secure network connections. :)</p>
2466
2467 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2468 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2469 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2470
2471       </div>
2472       <div class="tags">
2473
2474
2475         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
2476
2477
2478       </div>
2479     </div>
2480     <div class="padding"></div>
2481
2482     <div class="entry">
2483       <div class="title">
2484         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_as_a_Zoom_client__a_trick_for_password_protected_rooms___.html">Jami as a Zoom client, a trick for password protected rooms...</a>
2485       </div>
2486       <div class="date">
2487          8th May 2020
2488       </div>
2489       <div class="body">
2490         <p>Half a year ago,
2491 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_Ring__finally_functioning_peer_to_peer_communication_client.html">I
2492 wrote</a> about <a href="https://jami.net/">the Jami communication
2493 client</a>, capable of peer-to-peer encrypted communication.  It
2494 handle both messages, audio and video.  It uses distributed hash
2495 tables instead of central infrastructure to connect its users to each
2496 other, which in my book is a plus.  I mentioned briefly that it could
2497 also work as a SIP client, which came in handy when the higher
2498 educational sector in Norway started to promote Zoom as its video
2499 conferencing solution.  I am reluctant to use the official Zoom client
2500 software, due to their <a href="https://zoom.us/terms">copyright
2501 license clauses</a> prohibiting users to reverse engineer (for example
2502 to check the security) and benchmark it, and thus prefer to connect to
2503 Zoom meetings with free software clients.</p>
2504
2505 <p>Jami worked OK as a SIP client to Zoom as long as there was no
2506 password set on the room.  The Jami daemon leak memory like crazy
2507 (approximately 1 GiB a minute) when I am connected to the video
2508 conference, so I had to restart the client every 7-10 minutes, which
2509 is not great.  I tried to get other SIP Linux clients to work
2510 without success, so I decided I would have to live with this wart
2511 until someone managed to fix the leak in the dring code base.  But
2512 another problem showed up once the rooms were password protected.  I
2513 could not get my dial tone signaling through from Jami to Zoom, and
2514 dial tone signaling is used to enter the password when connecting to
2515 Zoom.  I tried a lot of different permutations with my Jami and
2516 Asterisk setup to try to figure out why the signaling did not get
2517 through, only to finally discover that the fundamental problem seem to
2518 be that Zoom is simply not able to receive dial tone signaling when
2519 connecting via SIP.  There seem to be nothing wrong with the Jami and
2520 Asterisk end, it is simply broken in the Zoom end.  I got help from a
2521 very skilled VoIP engineer figuring out this last part.  And being a
2522 very skilled engineer, he was also able to locate a solution for me.
2523 Or to be exact, a workaround that solve my initial problem of
2524 connecting to password protected Zoom rooms using Jami.</p>
2525
2526 <p>So, how do you do this, I am sure you are wondering by now.  The
2527 trick is already
2528 <a href="https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/202405539-H-323-SIP-Room-Connector-Dial-Strings#sip">documented
2529 from Zoom</a>, and it is to modify the SIP address to include the room
2530 password.  What is most surprising about this is that the
2531 automatically generated email from Zoom with instructions on how to
2532 connect via SIP do not mention this.  The SIP address to use normally
2533 consist of the room ID (a number), an @ character and the IP address
2534 of the Zoom SIP gateway.  But Zoom understand a lot more than just the
2535 room ID in front of the at sign.  The format is "<tt>[Meeting
2536 ID].[Password].[Layout].[Host Key]</tt>", and you can here see how you
2537 can both enter password, control the layout (full screen, active
2538 presence and gallery) and specify the host key to start the meeting.
2539 The full SIP address entered into Jami to provide the password will
2540 then look like this (all using made up numbers):</p>
2541
2542 <p><blockquote>
2543 <tt>sip:657837644.522827@192.168.169.170</tt>
2544 </blockquote></p>
2545
2546 <p>Now if only jami would reduce its memory usage, I could even
2547 recommend this setup to others. :)</p>
2548
2549 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2550 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2551 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2552
2553       </div>
2554       <div class="tags">
2555
2556
2557         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2558
2559
2560       </div>
2561     </div>
2562     <div class="padding"></div>
2563
2564     <div class="entry">
2565       <div class="title">
2566         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/GnuCOBOL__a_free_platform_to_learn_and_use_COBOL___nice_free_software.html">GnuCOBOL, a free platform to learn and use COBOL - nice free software</a>
2567       </div>
2568       <div class="date">
2569         29th April 2020
2570       </div>
2571       <div class="body">
2572         <p>The curiosity got the better of me when
2573 <a href="https://developers.slashdot.org/story/20/04/06/1424246/new-jersey-desperately-needs-cobol-programmers">Slashdot
2574 reported</a> that New Jersey was desperately looking for
2575 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL">COBOL</a> programmers,
2576 and a few days later it was reported that
2577 <a href="https://onezero.medium.com/ibm-rallies-cobol-engineers-to-save-overloaded-unemployment-systems-eeadf13eddce">IBM
2578 tried to locate COBOL programmers</a>.</p>
2579
2580 <p>I thus decided to have a look at free software alternatives to
2581 learn COBOL, and had the pleasure to find
2582 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/open-cobol/">GnuCOBOL</a> was
2583 already <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gnucobol">in
2584 Debian</a>.  It used to be called Open Cobol, and is a "compiler"
2585 transforming COBOL code to C or C++ before giving it to GCC or Visual
2586 Studio to build binaries.</p>
2587
2588 <p>I managed to get in touch with upstream, and was impressed with the
2589 quick response, and also was happy to see a new Debian maintainer
2590 taking over when the original one recently asked to be replaced.  A
2591 new Debian upload was done as recently as yesterday.</p>
2592
2593 <p>Using the Debian package, I was able to follow a simple COBOL
2594 introduction and make and run simple COBOL programs.  It was fun to
2595 learn a new programming language.  If you want to test for yourself,
2596 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuCOBOL">the GnuCOBOL Wikipedia
2597 page</a> have a few simple examples to get you startet.</p>
2598
2599 <p>As I do not have much experience with COBOL, I do not know how
2600 standard compliant it is, but it claim to pass most tests from COBOL
2601 test suite, which sound good to me.  It is nice to know it is possible
2602 to learn COBOL using software without any usage restrictions, and I am
2603 very happy such nice free software project as this is available.  If
2604 you as me is curious about COBOL, check it out.</p>
2605
2606 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2607 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2608 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2609
2610       </div>
2611       <div class="tags">
2612
2613
2614         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
2615
2616
2617       </div>
2618     </div>
2619     <div class="padding"></div>
2620
2621     <div class="entry">
2622       <div class="title">
2623         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_Ring__finally_functioning_peer_to_peer_communication_client.html">Jami/Ring, finally functioning peer to peer communication client</a>
2624       </div>
2625       <div class="date">
2626         19th June 2019
2627       </div>
2628       <div class="body">
2629         <p>Some years ago, in 2016, I
2630 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">wrote
2631 for the first time about</a> the Ring peer to peer messaging system.
2632 It would provide messaging without any central server coordinating the
2633 system and without requiring all users to register a phone number or
2634 own a mobile phone.  Back then, I could not get it to work, and put it
2635 aside until it had seen more development.  A few days ago I decided to
2636 give it another try, and am happy to report that this time I am able
2637 to not only send and receive messages, but also place audio and video
2638 calls.  But only if UDP is not blocked into your network.</p>
2639
2640 <p>The Ring system changed name earlier this year to
2641 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jami_(software)">Jami</a>.  I
2642 tried doing web search for 'ring' when I discovered it for the first
2643 time, and can only applaud this change as it is impossible to find
2644 something called Ring among the noise of other uses of that word.  Now
2645 you can search for 'jami' and this client and
2646 <a href="https://jami.net/">the Jami system</a> is the first hit at
2647 least on duckduckgo.</p>
2648
2649 <p>Jami will by default encrypt messages as well as audio and video
2650 calls, and try to send them directly between the communicating parties
2651 if possible.  If this proves impossible (for example if both ends are
2652 behind NAT), it will use a central SIP TURN server maintained by the
2653 Jami project.  Jami can also be a normal SIP client.  If the SIP
2654 server is unencrypted, the audio and video calls will also be
2655 unencrypted.  This is as far as I know the only case where Jami will
2656 do anything without encryption.</p>
2657
2658 <p>Jami is available for several platforms: Linux, Windows, MacOSX,
2659 Android, iOS, and Android TV.  It is included in Debian already.  Jami
2660 also work for those using F-Droid without any Google connections,
2661 while Signal do not.
2662 <a href="https://git.jami.net/savoirfairelinux/ring-project/wikis/technical/Protocol">The
2663 protocol</a> is described in the Ring project wiki.  The system uses a
2664 distributed hash table (DHT) system (similar to BitTorrent) running
2665 over UDP.  On one of the networks I use, I discovered Jami failed to
2666 work.  I tracked this down to the fact that incoming UDP packages
2667 going to ports 1-49999 were blocked, and the DHT would pick a random
2668 port and end up in the low range most of the time.  After talking to
2669 the developers, I solved this by enabling the dhtproxy in the
2670 settings, thus using TCP to talk to a central DHT proxy instead of
2671
2672 peering directly with others.  I've been told the developers are
2673 working on allowing DHT to use TCP to avoid this problem.  I also ran
2674 into a problem when trying to talk to the version of Ring included in
2675 Debian Stable (Stretch).  Apparently the protocol changed between
2676 beta2 and the current version, making these clients incompatible.
2677 Hopefully the protocol will not be made incompatible in the
2678 future.</p>
2679
2680 <p>It is worth noting that while looking at Jami and its features, I
2681 came across another communication platform I have not tested yet.  The
2682 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tox_(protocol)">Tox protocol</a>
2683 and <a href="https://tox.chat/">family of Tox clients</a>.  It might
2684 become the topic of a future blog post.</p>
2685
2686 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2687 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2688 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2689
2690       </div>
2691       <div class="tags">
2692
2693
2694         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2695
2696
2697       </div>
2698     </div>
2699     <div class="padding"></div>
2700
2701     <div class="entry">
2702       <div class="title">
2703         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Strategispillet_Unknown_Horizons_n__tilgjengelig_p__bokm_l.html">Strategispillet Unknown Horizons nå tilgjengelig på bokmål</a>
2704       </div>
2705       <div class="date">
2706         23rd January 2019
2707       </div>
2708       <div class="body">
2709         <p>I høst ble jeg inspirert til å bidra til oversettelsen av
2710 <a href="http://unknown-horizons.org/">strategispillet Unknown
2711 Horizons</a>, og oversatte de nesten 200 strengene i prosjektet til
2712 bokmål.  Deretter har jeg gått å ventet på at det kom en ny utgave som
2713 inneholdt disse oversettelsene.  Nå er endelig ventetiden over.  Den
2714 nye versjonen kom på nyåret, og ble
2715 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/unknown-horizons">lastet opp i
2716 Debian</a> for noen få dager siden.  I går kveld fikk jeg testet det ut, og
2717 må innrømme at oversettelsene fungerer fint.  Fant noen få tekster som
2718 måtte justeres, men ikke noe alvorlig.  Har oppdatert
2719 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/uh/">oversettelsen på
2720 Weblate</a>, slik at neste utgave vil være enda bedre. :)</p>
2721
2722 <p>Spillet er et ressursstyringsspill ala Civilization, og er morsomt
2723 å spille for oss som liker slikt. :)</p>
2724
2725 <p>Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
2726 det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner
2727 til min adresse
2728 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.
2729 Merk, betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)</p>
2730
2731       </div>
2732       <div class="tags">
2733
2734
2735         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
2736
2737
2738       </div>
2739     </div>
2740     <div class="padding"></div>
2741
2742     <div class="entry">
2743       <div class="title">
2744         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_got_everything_you_need_to_program_Micro_bit.html">Debian now got everything you need to program Micro:bit</a>
2745       </div>
2746       <div class="date">
2747         22nd January 2019
2748       </div>
2749       <div class="body">
2750         <p>I am amazed and very pleased to discover that since a few days ago,
2751 everything you need to program the <a href="https://microbit.org/">BBC
2752 micro:bit</a> is available from the Debian archive.  All this is
2753 thanks to the hard work of Nick Morrott and the Debian python
2754 packaging team.  The micro:bit project recommend the mu-editor to
2755 program the microcomputer, as this editor will take care of all the
2756 machinery required to injekt/flash micropython alongside the program
2757 into the micro:bit, as long as the pieces are available.</p>
2758
2759 <p>There are three main pieces involved.  The first to enter Debian
2760 was
2761 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/python-uflash">python-uflash</a>,
2762 which was accepted into the archive 2019-01-12.  The next one was
2763 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/mu-editor">mu-editor</a>, which
2764 showed up 2019-01-13.  The final and hardest part to to into the
2765 archive was
2766 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/firmware-microbit-micropython">firmware-microbit-micropython</a>,
2767 which needed to get its build system and dependencies into Debian
2768 before it was accepted 2019-01-20.  The last one is already in Debian
2769 Unstable and should enter Debian Testing / Buster in three days.  This
2770 all allow any user of the micro:bit to get going by simply running
2771 'apt install mu-editor' when using Testing or Unstable, and once
2772 Buster is released as stable, all the users of Debian stable will be
2773 catered for.</p>
2774
2775 <p>As a minor final touch, I added rules to
2776 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">the isenkram
2777 package</a> for recognizing micro:bit and recommend the mu-editor
2778 package.  This make sure any user of the isenkram desktop daemon will
2779 get a popup suggesting to install mu-editor then the USB cable from
2780 the micro:bit is inserted for the first time.</p>
2781
2782 <p>This should make it easier to have fun.</p>
2783
2784 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2785 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2786 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2787
2788       </div>
2789       <div class="tags">
2790
2791
2792         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
2793
2794
2795       </div>
2796     </div>
2797     <div class="padding"></div>
2798
2799     <div class="entry">
2800       <div class="title">
2801         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Learn_to_program_with_Minetest_on_Debian.html">Learn to program with Minetest on Debian</a>
2802       </div>
2803       <div class="date">
2804         15th December 2018
2805       </div>
2806       <div class="body">
2807         <p>A fun way to learn how to program
2808 <a href="https://www.python.org/">Python</a> is to follow the
2809 instructions in the book
2810 "<a href="https://nostarch.com/programwithminecraft">Learn to program
2811 with Minecraft</a>", which introduces programming in Python to people
2812 who like to play with Minecraft.  The book uses a Python library to
2813 talk to a TCP/IP socket with an API accepting build instructions and
2814 providing information about the current players in a Minecraft world.
2815 The TCP/IP API was first created for the Minecraft implementation for
2816 Raspberry Pi, and has since been ported to some server versions of
2817 Minecraft.  The book contain recipes for those using Windows, MacOSX
2818 and Raspian.  But a little known fact is that you can follow the same
2819 recipes using the free software construction game
2820 <a href="https://minetest.net/">Minetest</a>.</p>
2821
2822 <p>There is <a href="https://github.com/sprintingkiwi/pycraft_mod">a
2823 Minetest module implementing the same API</a>, making it possible to
2824 use the Python programs coded to talk to Minecraft with Minetest too.
2825 I
2826 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new/minetest-mod-pycraft_0.20%2Bgit20180331.0376a0a%2Bdfsg-1.html">uploaded
2827 this module</a> to Debian two weeks ago, and as soon as it clears the
2828 FTP masters NEW queue, learning to program Python with Minetest on
2829 Debian will be a simple 'apt install' away.  The Debian package is
2830 maintained as part of the Debian Games team, and
2831 <a href="https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/unfinished/minetest-mod-pycraft">the
2832 packaging rules</a> are currently located under 'unfinished' on
2833 Salsa.</p>
2834
2835 <p>You will most likely need to install several of the Minetest
2836 modules in Debian for the examples included with the library to work
2837 well, as there are several blocks used by the example scripts that are
2838 provided via modules in Minetest.  Without the required blocks, a
2839 simple stone block is used instead.  My initial testing with a analog
2840 clock did not get gold arms as instructed in the python library, but
2841 instead used stone arms.</p>
2842
2843 <p>I tried to find a way to add the API to the desktop version of
2844 Minecraft, but were unable to find any working recipes.  The
2845 <a href="https://www.epiphanydigest.com/tag/minecraft-python-api/">recipes</a>
2846 I <a href="https://github.com/kbsriram/mcpiapi">found</a> are only
2847 working with a standalone Minecraft server setup.  Are there any
2848 options to use with the normal desktop version?</p>
2849
2850 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2851 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2852 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2853
2854       </div>
2855       <div class="tags">
2856
2857
2858         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2859
2860
2861       </div>
2862     </div>
2863     <div class="padding"></div>
2864
2865     <div class="entry">
2866       <div class="title">
2867         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_an_official_MIME_type_for_patches_.html">Time for an official MIME type for patches?</a>
2868       </div>
2869       <div class="date">
2870          1st November 2018
2871       </div>
2872       <div class="body">
2873         <p>As part of my involvement in
2874 <a href="https://gitlab.com/OsloMet-ABI/nikita-noark5-core">the Nikita
2875 archive API project</a>, I've been importing a fairly large lump of
2876 emails into a test instance of the archive to see how well this would
2877 go.  I picked a subset of <a href="https://notmuchmail.org/">my
2878 notmuch email database</a>, all public emails sent to me via
2879 @lists.debian.org, giving me a set of around 216 000 emails to import.
2880 In the process, I had a look at the various attachments included in
2881 these emails, to figure out what to do with attachments, and noticed
2882 that one of the most common attachment formats do not have
2883 <a href="https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">an
2884 official MIME type</a> registered with IANA/IETF.  The output from
2885 diff, ie the input for patch, is on the top 10 list of formats
2886 included in these emails.  At the moment people seem to use either
2887 text/x-patch or text/x-diff, but neither is officially registered.  It
2888 would be better if one official MIME type were registered and used
2889 everywhere.</p>
2890
2891 <p>To try to get one official MIME type for these files, I've brought
2892 up the topic on
2893 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/media-types">the
2894 media-types mailing list</a>.  If you are interested in discussion
2895 which MIME type to use as the official for patch files, or involved in
2896 making software using a MIME type for patches, perhaps you would like
2897 to join the discussion?</p>
2898
2899 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2900 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2901 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2902
2903       </div>
2904       <div class="tags">
2905
2906
2907         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/noark5">noark5</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
2908
2909
2910       </div>
2911     </div>
2912     <div class="padding"></div>
2913
2914     <div class="entry">
2915       <div class="title">
2916         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Google_Drive_sync_using_grive_in_Debian.html">Automatic Google Drive sync using grive in Debian</a>
2917       </div>
2918       <div class="date">
2919          4th October 2018
2920       </div>
2921       <div class="body">
2922         <p>A few days, I rescued a Windows victim over to Debian.  To try to
2923 rescue the remains, I helped set up automatic sync with Google Drive.
2924 I did not find any sensible Debian package handling this
2925 automatically, so I rebuild the grive2 source from
2926 <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/">the Ubuntu UPD8 PPA</a> to do the
2927 task and added a autostart desktop entry and a small shell script to
2928 run in the background while the user is logged in to do the sync.
2929 Here is a sketch of the setup for future reference.</p>
2930
2931 <p>I first created <tt>~/googledrive</tt>, entered the directory and
2932 ran '<tt>grive -a</tt>' to authenticate the machine/user.  Next, I
2933 created a autostart hook in <tt>~/.config/autostart/grive.desktop</tt>
2934 to start the sync when the user log in:</p>
2935
2936 <p><blockquote><pre>
2937 [Desktop Entry]
2938 Name=Google drive autosync
2939 Type=Application
2940 Exec=/home/user/bin/grive-sync
2941 </pre></blockquote></p>
2942
2943 <p>Finally, I wrote the <tt>~/bin/grive-sync</tt> script to sync
2944 ~/googledrive/ with the files in Google Drive.</p>
2945
2946 <p><blockquote><pre>
2947 #!/bin/sh
2948 set -e
2949 cd ~/
2950 cleanup() {
2951     if [ "$syncpid" ] ; then
2952         kill $syncpid
2953     fi
2954 }
2955 trap cleanup EXIT INT QUIT
2956 /usr/lib/grive/grive-sync.sh listen googledrive 2>&1 | sed "s%^%$0:%" &
2957 syncpdi=$!
2958 while true; do
2959     if ! xhost >/dev/null 2>&1 ; then
2960         echo "no DISPLAY, exiting as the user probably logged out"
2961         exit 1
2962     fi
2963     if [ ! -e /run/user/1000/grive-sync.sh_googledrive ] ; then
2964         /usr/lib/grive/grive-sync.sh sync googledrive
2965     fi
2966     sleep 300
2967 done 2>&1 | sed "s%^%$0:%"
2968 </pre></blockquote></p>
2969
2970 <p>Feel free to use the setup if you want.  It can be assumed to be
2971 GNU GPL v2 licensed (or any later version, at your leisure), but I
2972 doubt this code is possible to claim copyright on.</p>
2973
2974 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2975 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2976 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2977
2978       </div>
2979       <div class="tags">
2980
2981
2982         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2983
2984
2985       </div>
2986     </div>
2987     <div class="padding"></div>
2988
2989     <div class="entry">
2990       <div class="title">
2991         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_the_Kodi_API_to_play_Youtube_videos.html">Using the Kodi API to play Youtube videos</a>
2992       </div>
2993       <div class="date">
2994          2nd September 2018
2995       </div>
2996       <div class="body">
2997         <p>I continue to explore my Kodi installation, and today I wanted to
2998 tell it to play a youtube URL I received in a chat, without having to
2999 insert search terms using the on-screen keyboard.  After searching the
3000 web for API access to the Youtube plugin and testing a bit, I managed
3001 to find a recipe that worked.  If you got a kodi instance with its API
3002 available from http://kodihost/jsonrpc, you can try the following to
3003 have check out a nice cover band.</p>
3004
3005 <p><blockquote><pre>curl --silent --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
3006   --data-binary '{ "id": 1, "jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "Player.Open",
3007   "params": {"item": { "file":
3008   "plugin://plugin.video.youtube/play/?video_id=LuRGVM9O0qg" } } }' \
3009   http://projector.local/jsonrpc</pre></blockquote></p>
3010
3011 <p>I've extended kodi-stream program to take a video source as its
3012 first argument.  It can now handle direct video links, youtube links
3013 and 'desktop' to stream my desktop to Kodi.  It is almost like a
3014 Chromecast. :)</p>
3015
3016 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3017 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3018 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3019
3020       </div>
3021       <div class="tags">
3022
3023
3024         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3025
3026
3027       </div>
3028     </div>
3029     <div class="padding"></div>
3030
3031     <div class="entry">
3032       <div class="title">
3033         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sharing_images_with_friends_and_family_using_RSS_and_EXIF_XMP_metadata.html">Sharing images with friends and family using RSS and EXIF/XMP metadata</a>
3034       </div>
3035       <div class="date">
3036         31st July 2018
3037       </div>
3038       <div class="body">
3039         <p>For a while now, I have looked for a sensible way to share images
3040 with my family using a self hosted solution, as it is unacceptable to
3041 place images from my personal life under the control of strangers
3042 working for data hoarders like Google or Dropbox.  The last few days I
3043 have drafted an approach that might work out, and I would like to
3044 share it with you.  I would like to publish images on a server under
3045 my control, and point some Internet connected display units using some
3046 free and open standard to the images I published.  As my primary
3047 language is not limited to ASCII, I need to store metadata using
3048 UTF-8.  Many years ago, I hoped to find a digital photo frame capable
3049 of reading a RSS feed with image references (aka using the
3050 &lt;enclosure&gt; RSS tag), but was unable to find a current supplier
3051 of such frames.  In the end I gave up that approach.</p>
3052
3053 <p>Some months ago, I discovered that
3054 <a href="https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/">XScreensaver</a> is able to
3055 read images from a RSS feed, and used it to set up a screen saver on
3056 my home info screen, showing images from the Daily images feed from
3057 NASA.  This proved to work well.  More recently I discovered that
3058 <a href="https://kodi.tv">Kodi</a> (both using
3059 <a href="https://www.openelec.tv/">OpenELEC</a> and
3060 <a href="https://libreelec.tv">LibreELEC</a>) provide the
3061 <a href="https://github.com/grinsted/script.screensaver.feedreader">Feedreader</a>
3062 screen saver capable of reading a RSS feed with images and news.  For
3063 fun, I used it this summer to test Kodi on my parents TV by hooking up
3064 a Raspberry PI unit with LibreELEC, and wanted to provide them with a
3065 screen saver showing selected pictures from my selection.</p>
3066
3067 <p>Armed with motivation and a test photo frame, I set out to generate
3068 a RSS feed for the Kodi instance.  I adjusted my <a
3069 href="https://freedombox.org/">Freedombox</a> instance, created
3070 /var/www/html/privatepictures/, wrote a small Perl script to extract
3071 title and description metadata from the photo files and generate the
3072 RSS file.  I ended up using Perl instead of python, as the
3073 libimage-exiftool-perl Debian package seemed to handle the EXIF/XMP
3074 tags I ended up using, while python3-exif did not.  The relevant EXIF
3075 tags only support ASCII, so I had to find better alternatives.  XMP
3076 seem to have the support I need.</p>
3077
3078 <p>I am a bit unsure which EXIF/XMP tags to use, as I would like to
3079 use tags that can be easily added/updated using normal free software
3080 photo managing software.  I ended up using the tags set using this
3081 exiftool command, as these tags can also be set using digiKam:</p>
3082
3083 <blockquote><pre>
3084 exiftool -headline='The RSS image title' \
3085   -description='The RSS image description.' \
3086   -subject+=for-family photo.jpeg
3087 </pre></blockquote>
3088
3089 <p>I initially tried the "-title" and "keyword" tags, but they were
3090 invisible in digiKam, so I changed to "-headline" and "-subject".  I
3091 use the keyword/subject 'for-family' to flag that the photo should be
3092 shared with my family.  Images with this keyword set are located and
3093 copied into my Freedombox for the RSS generating script to find.</p>
3094
3095 <p>Are there better ways to do this?  Get in touch if you have better
3096 suggestions.</p>
3097
3098 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3099 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3100 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3101
3102       </div>
3103       <div class="tags">
3104
3105
3106         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3107
3108
3109       </div>
3110     </div>
3111     <div class="padding"></div>
3112
3113     <div class="entry">
3114       <div class="title">
3115         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simple_streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_GStreamer_and_RTP.html">Simple streaming the Linux desktop to Kodi using GStreamer and RTP</a>
3116       </div>
3117       <div class="date">
3118         12th July 2018
3119       </div>
3120       <div class="body">
3121         <p>Last night, I wrote
3122 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html">a
3123 recipe to stream a Linux desktop using VLC to a instance of Kodi</a>.
3124 During the day I received valuable feedback, and thanks to the
3125 suggestions I have been able to rewrite the recipe into a much simpler
3126 approach requiring no setup at all.  It is a single script that take
3127 care of it all.</p>
3128
3129 <p>This new script uses GStreamer instead of VLC to capture the
3130 desktop and stream it to Kodi.  This fixed the video quality issue I
3131 saw initially.  It further removes the need to add a m3u file on the
3132 Kodi machine, as it instead connects to
3133 <a href="https://kodi.wiki/view/JSON-RPC_API/v8">the JSON-RPC API in
3134 Kodi</a> and simply ask Kodi to play from the stream created using
3135 GStreamer.  Streaming the desktop to Kodi now become trivial.  Copy
3136 the script below, run it with the DNS name or IP address of the kodi
3137 server to stream to as the only argument, and watch your screen show
3138 up on the Kodi screen.  Note, it depend on multicast on the local
3139 network, so if you need to stream outside the local network, the
3140 script must be modified.  Also note, I have no idea if audio work, as
3141 I only care about the picture part.</p>
3142
3143 <blockquote><pre>
3144 #!/bin/sh
3145 #
3146 # Stream the Linux desktop view to Kodi.  See
3147 # https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html
3148 # for backgorund information.
3149
3150 # Make sure the stream is stopped in Kodi and the gstreamer process is
3151 # killed if something go wrong (for example if curl is unable to find the
3152 # kodi server).  Do the same when interrupting this script.
3153 kodicmd() {
3154     host="$1"
3155     cmd="$2"
3156     params="$3"
3157     curl --silent --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
3158          --data-binary "{ \"id\": 1, \"jsonrpc\": \"2.0\", \"method\": \"$cmd\", \"params\": $params }" \
3159          "http://$host/jsonrpc"
3160 }
3161 cleanup() {
3162     if [ -n "$kodihost" ] ; then
3163         # Stop the playing when we end
3164         playerid=$(kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.GetActivePlayers "{}" |
3165                             jq .result[].playerid)
3166         kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.Stop "{ \"playerid\" : $playerid }" > /dev/null
3167     fi
3168     if [ "$gstpid" ] && kill -0 "$gstpid" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
3169         kill "$gstpid"
3170     fi
3171 }
3172 trap cleanup EXIT INT
3173
3174 if [ -n "$1" ]; then
3175     kodihost=$1
3176     shift
3177 else
3178     kodihost=kodi.local
3179 fi
3180
3181 mcast=239.255.0.1
3182 mcastport=1234
3183 mcastttl=1
3184
3185 pasrc=$(pactl list | grep -A2 'Source #' | grep 'Name: .*\.monitor$' | \
3186   cut -d" " -f2|head -1)
3187 gst-launch-1.0 ximagesrc use-damage=0 ! video/x-raw,framerate=30/1 ! \
3188   videoconvert ! queue2 ! \
3189   x264enc bitrate=8000 speed-preset=superfast tune=zerolatency qp-min=30 \
3190   key-int-max=15 bframes=2 ! video/x-h264,profile=high ! queue2 ! \
3191   mpegtsmux alignment=7 name=mux ! rndbuffersize max=1316 min=1316 ! \
3192   udpsink host=$mcast port=$mcastport ttl-mc=$mcastttl auto-multicast=1 sync=0 \
3193   pulsesrc device=$pasrc ! audioconvert ! queue2 ! avenc_aac ! queue2 ! mux. \
3194   > /dev/null 2>&1 &
3195 gstpid=$!
3196
3197 # Give stream a second to get going
3198 sleep 1
3199
3200 # Ask kodi to start streaming using its JSON-RPC API
3201 kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.Open \
3202         "{\"item\": { \"file\": \"udp://@$mcast:$mcastport\" } }" > /dev/null
3203
3204 # wait for gst to end
3205 wait "$gstpid"
3206 </pre></blockquote>
3207
3208 <p>I hope you find the approach useful.  I know I do.</p>
3209
3210 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3211 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3212 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3213
3214       </div>
3215       <div class="tags">
3216
3217
3218         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3219
3220
3221       </div>
3222     </div>
3223     <div class="padding"></div>
3224
3225     <div class="entry">
3226       <div class="title">
3227         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html">Streaming the Linux desktop to Kodi using VLC and RTSP</a>
3228       </div>
3229       <div class="date">
3230         12th July 2018
3231       </div>
3232       <div class="body">
3233         <p>PS: See
3234 <ahref="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simple_streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_GStreamer_and_RTP.html">the
3235 followup post</a> for a even better approach.</p>
3236
3237 <p>A while back, I was asked by a friend how to stream the desktop to
3238 my projector connected to Kodi.  I sadly had to admit that I had no
3239 idea, as it was a task I never had tried.  Since then, I have been
3240 looking for a way to do so, preferable without much extra software to
3241 install on either side.  Today I found a way that seem to kind of
3242 work.  Not great, but it is a start.</p>
3243
3244 <p>I had a look at several approaches, for example
3245 <a href="https://github.com/mfoetsch/dlna_live_streaming">using uPnP
3246 DLNA as described in 2011</a>, but it required a uPnP server, fuse and
3247 local storage enough to store the stream locally.  This is not going
3248 to work well for me, lacking enough free space, and it would
3249 impossible for my friend to get working.</p>
3250
3251 <p>Next, it occurred to me that perhaps I could use VLC to create a
3252 video stream that Kodi could play.  Preferably using
3253 broadcast/multicast, to avoid having to change any setup on the Kodi
3254 side when starting such stream.  Unfortunately, the only recipe I
3255 could find using multicast used the rtp protocol, and this protocol
3256 seem to not be supported by Kodi.</p>
3257
3258 <p>On the other hand, the rtsp protocol is working!  Unfortunately I
3259 have to specify the IP address of the streaming machine in both the
3260 sending command and the file on the Kodi server.  But it is showing my
3261 desktop, and thus allow us to have a shared look on the big screen at
3262 the programs I work on.</p>
3263
3264 <p>I did not spend much time investigating codeces.  I combined the
3265 rtp and rtsp recipes from
3266 <a href="https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Streaming_HowTo/Command_Line_Examples/">the
3267 VLC Streaming HowTo/Command Line Examples</a>, and was able to get
3268 this working on the desktop/streaming end.</p>
3269
3270 <blockquote><pre>
3271 vlc screen:// --sout \
3272   '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{dst=projector.local,port=1234,sdp=rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/test.sdp}'
3273 </pre></blockquote>
3274
3275 <p>I ssh-ed into my Kodi box and created a file like this with the
3276 same IP address:</p>
3277
3278 <blockquote><pre>
3279 echo rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/test.sdp \
3280   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
3281 </pre></blockquote>
3282
3283 <p>Note the 192.168.11.4 IP address is my desktops IP address.  As far
3284 as I can tell the IP must be hardcoded for this to work.  In other
3285 words, if someone elses machine is going to do the steaming, you have
3286 to update screenstream.m3u on the Kodi machine and adjust the vlc
3287 recipe.  To get started, locate the file in Kodi and select the m3u
3288 file while the VLC stream is running.  The desktop then show up in my
3289 big screen. :)</p>
3290
3291 <p>When using the same technique to stream a video file with audio,
3292 the audio quality is really bad.  No idea if the problem is package
3293 loss or bad parameters for the transcode.  I do not know VLC nor Kodi
3294 enough to tell.</p>
3295
3296 <p><strong>Update 2018-07-12</strong>: Johannes Schauer send me a few
3297 succestions and reminded me about an important step.  The "screen:"
3298 input source is only available once the vlc-plugin-access-extra
3299 package is installed on Debian.  Without it, you will see this error
3300 message: "VLC is unable to open the MRL 'screen://'.  Check the log
3301 for details."  He further found that it is possible to drop some parts
3302 of the VLC command line to reduce the amount of hardcoded information.
3303 It is also useful to consider using cvlc to avoid having the VLC
3304 window in the desktop view.  In sum, this give us this command line on
3305 the source end
3306
3307 <blockquote><pre>
3308 cvlc screen:// --sout \
3309   '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{sdp=rtsp://:8080/}'
3310 </pre></blockquote>
3311
3312 <p>and this on the Kodi end<p>
3313
3314 <blockquote><pre>
3315 echo rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/ \
3316   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
3317 </pre></blockquote>
3318
3319 <p>Still bad image quality, though.  But I did discover that streaming
3320 a DVD using dvdsimple:///dev/dvd as the source had excellent video and
3321 audio quality, so I guess the issue is in the input or transcoding
3322 parts, not the rtsp part.  I've tried to change the vb and ab
3323 parameters to use more bandwidth, but it did not make a
3324 difference.</p>
3325
3326 <p>I further received a suggestion from Einar Haraldseid to try using
3327 gstreamer instead of VLC, and this proved to work great!  He also
3328 provided me with the trick to get Kodi to use a multicast stream as
3329 its source.  By using this monstrous oneliner, I can stream my desktop
3330 with good video quality in reasonable framerate to the 239.255.0.1
3331 multicast address on port 1234:
3332
3333 <blockquote><pre>
3334 gst-launch-1.0 ximagesrc use-damage=0 ! video/x-raw,framerate=30/1 ! \
3335   videoconvert ! queue2 ! \
3336   x264enc bitrate=8000 speed-preset=superfast tune=zerolatency qp-min=30 \
3337   key-int-max=15 bframes=2 ! video/x-h264,profile=high ! queue2 ! \
3338   mpegtsmux alignment=7 name=mux ! rndbuffersize max=1316 min=1316 ! \
3339   udpsink host=239.255.0.1 port=1234 ttl-mc=1 auto-multicast=1 sync=0 \
3340   pulsesrc device=$(pactl list | grep -A2 'Source #' | \
3341     grep 'Name: .*\.monitor$' |  cut -d" " -f2|head -1) ! \
3342   audioconvert ! queue2 ! avenc_aac ! queue2 ! mux.
3343 </pre></blockquote>
3344
3345 <p>and this on the Kodi end<p>
3346
3347 <blockquote><pre>
3348 echo udp://@239.255.0.1:1234 \
3349   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
3350 </pre></blockquote>
3351
3352 <p>Note the trick to pick a valid pulseaudio source.  It might not
3353 pick the one you need.  This approach will of course lead to trouble
3354 if more than one source uses the same multicast port and address.
3355 Note the ttl-mc=1 setting, which limit the multicast packages to the
3356 local network.  If the value is increased, your screen will be
3357 broadcasted further, one network "hop" for each increase (read up on
3358 multicast to learn more. :)!</p>
3359
3360 <p>Having cracked how to get Kodi to receive multicast streams, I
3361 could use this VLC command to stream to the same multicast address.
3362 The image quality is way better than the rtsp approach, but gstreamer
3363 seem to be doing a better job.</p>
3364
3365 <blockquote><pre>
3366 cvlc screen:// --sout '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{mux=ts,dst=239.255.0.1,port=1234,sdp=sap}'
3367 </pre></blockquote>
3368
3369 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3370 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3371 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3372
3373       </div>
3374       <div class="tags">
3375
3376
3377         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3378
3379
3380       </div>
3381     </div>
3382     <div class="padding"></div>
3383
3384     <div class="entry">
3385       <div class="title">
3386         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2018_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian in 2018?</a>
3387       </div>
3388       <div class="date">
3389          9th July 2018
3390       </div>
3391       <div class="body">
3392         <p>Five years ago,
3393 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">I
3394 measured what the most supported MIME type in Debian was</a>, by
3395 analysing the desktop files in all packages in the archive.  Since
3396 then, the DEP-11 AppStream system has been put into production, making
3397 the task a lot easier.  This made me want to repeat the measurement,
3398 to see how much things changed.  Here are the new numbers, for
3399 unstable only this time:
3400
3401 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
3402
3403 <pre>
3404   count MIME type
3405   ----- -----------------------
3406      56 image/jpeg
3407      55 image/png
3408      49 image/tiff
3409      48 image/gif
3410      39 image/bmp
3411      38 text/plain
3412      37 audio/mpeg
3413      34 application/ogg
3414      33 audio/x-flac
3415      32 audio/x-mp3
3416      30 audio/x-wav
3417      30 audio/x-vorbis+ogg
3418      29 image/x-portable-pixmap
3419      27 inode/directory
3420      27 image/x-portable-bitmap
3421      27 audio/x-mpeg
3422      26 application/x-ogg
3423      25 audio/x-mpegurl
3424      25 audio/ogg
3425      24 text/html
3426 </pre>
3427
3428 <p>The list was created like this using a sid chroot: "cat
3429 /var/lib/apt/lists/*sid*_dep11_Components-amd64.yml.gz| zcat | awk '/^
3430 - \S+\/\S+$/ {print $2 }' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20"</p>
3431
3432 <p>It is interesting to see how image formats have passed text/plain
3433 as the most announced supported MIME type.  These days, thanks to the
3434 AppStream system, if you run into a file format you do not know, and
3435 want to figure out which packages support the format, you can find the
3436 MIME type of the file using "file --mime &lt;filename&gt;", and then
3437 look up all packages announcing support for this format in their
3438 AppStream metadata (XML or .desktop file) using "appstreamcli
3439 what-provides mimetype &lt;mime-type&gt;.  For example if you, like
3440 me, want to know which packages support inode/directory, you can get a
3441 list like this:</p>
3442
3443 <p><blockquote><pre>
3444 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype inode/directory | grep Package: | sort
3445 Package: anjuta
3446 Package: audacious
3447 Package: baobab
3448 Package: cervisia
3449 Package: chirp
3450 Package: dolphin
3451 Package: doublecmd-common
3452 Package: easytag
3453 Package: enlightenment
3454 Package: ephoto
3455 Package: filelight
3456 Package: gwenview
3457 Package: k4dirstat
3458 Package: kaffeine
3459 Package: kdesvn
3460 Package: kid3
3461 Package: kid3-qt
3462 Package: nautilus
3463 Package: nemo
3464 Package: pcmanfm
3465 Package: pcmanfm-qt
3466 Package: qweborf
3467 Package: ranger
3468 Package: sirikali
3469 Package: spacefm
3470 Package: spacefm
3471 Package: vifm
3472 %
3473 </pre></blockquote></p>
3474
3475 <p>Using the same method, I can quickly discover that the Sketchup file
3476 format is not yet supported by any package in Debian:</p>
3477
3478 <p><blockquote><pre>
3479 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype  application/vnd.sketchup.skp
3480 Could not find component providing 'mimetype::application/vnd.sketchup.skp'.
3481 %
3482 </pre></blockquote></p>
3483
3484 <p>Yesterday I used it to figure out which packages support the STL 3D
3485 format:</p>
3486
3487 <p><blockquote><pre>
3488 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype  application/sla|grep Package
3489 Package: cura
3490 Package: meshlab
3491 Package: printrun
3492 %
3493 </pre></blockquote></p>
3494
3495 <p>PS: A new version of Cura was uploaded to Debian yesterday.</p>
3496
3497 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3498 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3499 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3500
3501       </div>
3502       <div class="tags">
3503
3504
3505         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
3506
3507
3508       </div>
3509     </div>
3510     <div class="padding"></div>
3511
3512     <div class="entry">
3513       <div class="title">
3514         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_APT_upgrade_without_enough_free_space_on_the_disk___.html">Debian APT upgrade without enough free space on the disk...</a>
3515       </div>
3516       <div class="date">
3517          8th July 2018
3518       </div>
3519       <div class="body">
3520         <p>Quite regularly, I let my Debian Sid/Unstable chroot stay untouch
3521 for a while, and when I need to update it there is not enough free
3522 space on the disk for apt to do a normal 'apt upgrade'.  I normally
3523 would resolve the issue by doing 'apt install &lt;somepackages&gt;' to
3524 upgrade only some of the packages in one batch, until the amount of
3525 packages to download fall below the amount of free space available.
3526 Today, I had about 500 packages to upgrade, and after a while I got
3527 tired of trying to install chunks of packages manually.  I concluded
3528 that I did not have the spare hours required to complete the task, and
3529 decided to see if I could automate it.  I came up with this small
3530 script which I call 'apt-in-chunks':</p>
3531
3532 <p><blockquote><pre>
3533 #!/bin/sh
3534 #
3535 # Upgrade packages when the disk is too full to upgrade every
3536 # upgradable package in one lump.  Fetching packages to upgrade using
3537 # apt, and then installing using dpkg, to avoid changing the package
3538 # flag for manual/automatic.
3539
3540 set -e
3541
3542 ignore() {
3543     if [ "$1" ]; then
3544         grep -v "$1"
3545     else
3546         cat
3547     fi
3548 }
3549
3550 for p in $(apt list --upgradable | ignore "$@" |cut -d/ -f1 | grep -v '^Listing...'); do
3551     echo "Upgrading $p"
3552     apt clean
3553     apt install --download-only -y $p
3554     for f in /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb; do
3555         if [ -e "$f" ]; then
3556             dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb
3557             break
3558         fi
3559     done
3560 done
3561 </pre></blockquote></p>
3562
3563 <p>The script will extract the list of packages to upgrade, try to
3564 download the packages needed to upgrade one package, install the
3565 downloaded packages using dpkg.  The idea is to upgrade packages
3566 without changing the APT mark for the package (ie the one recording of
3567 the package was manually requested or pulled in as a dependency).  To
3568 use it, simply run it as root from the command line.  If it fail, try
3569 'apt install -f' to clean up the mess and run the script again.  This
3570 might happen if the new packages conflict with one of the old
3571 packages.  dpkg is unable to remove, while apt can do this.</p>
3572
3573 <p>It take one option, a package to ignore in the list of packages to
3574 upgrade.  The option to ignore a package is there to be able to skip
3575 the packages that are simply too large to unpack.  Today this was
3576 'ghc', but I have run into other large packages causing similar
3577 problems earlier (like TeX).</p>
3578
3579 <p>Update 2018-07-08: Thanks to Paul Wise, I am aware of two
3580 alternative ways to handle this.  The "unattended-upgrades
3581 --minimal-upgrade-steps" option will try to calculate upgrade sets for
3582 each package to upgrade, and then upgrade them in order, smallest set
3583 first.  It might be a better option than my above mentioned script.
3584 Also, "aptutude upgrade" can upgrade single packages, thus avoiding
3585 the need for using "dpkg -i" in the script above.</p>
3586
3587 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3588 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3589 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3590
3591       </div>
3592       <div class="tags">
3593
3594
3595         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3596
3597
3598       </div>
3599     </div>
3600     <div class="padding"></div>
3601
3602     <div class="entry">
3603       <div class="title">
3604         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Version_3_1_of_Cura__the_3D_print_slicer__is_now_in_Debian.html">Version 3.1 of Cura, the 3D print slicer, is now in Debian</a>
3605       </div>
3606       <div class="date">
3607         13th February 2018
3608       </div>
3609       <div class="body">
3610         <p>A new version of the
3611 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura">3D printer slicer
3612 software Cura</a>, version 3.1.0, is now available in Debian Testing
3613 (aka Buster) and Debian Unstable (aka Sid).  I hope you find it
3614 useful.  It was uploaded the last few days, and the last update will
3615 enter testing tomorrow.  See the
3616 <a href="https://ultimaker.com/en/products/cura-software/release-notes">release
3617 notes</a> for the list of bug fixes and new features.  Version 3.2
3618 was announced 6 days ago.  We will try to get it into Debian as
3619 well.</p>
3620
3621 <p>More information related to 3D printing is available on the
3622 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/3DPrinting">3D printing</a> and
3623 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/3D-printer">3D printer</a> wiki pages
3624 in Debian.</p>
3625
3626 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3627 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3628 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3629
3630       </div>
3631       <div class="tags">
3632
3633
3634         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3635
3636
3637       </div>
3638     </div>
3639     <div class="padding"></div>
3640
3641     <div class="entry">
3642       <div class="title">
3643         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cura__the_nice_3D_print_slicer__is_now_in_Debian_Unstable.html">Cura, the nice 3D print slicer, is now in Debian Unstable</a>
3644       </div>
3645       <div class="date">
3646         17th December 2017
3647       </div>
3648       <div class="body">
3649         <p>After several months of working and waiting, I am happy to report
3650 that the nice and user friendly 3D printer slicer software Cura just
3651 entered Debian Unstable.  It consist of five packages,
3652 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura">cura</a>,
3653 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura-engine">cura-engine</a>,
3654 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libarcus">libarcus</a>,
3655 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/fdm-materials">fdm-materials</a>,
3656 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libsavitar">libsavitar</a> and
3657 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/uranium">uranium</a>.  The last
3658 two, uranium and cura, entered Unstable yesterday.  This should make
3659 it easier for Debian users to print on at least the Ultimaker class of
3660 3D printers.  My nearest 3D printer is an Ultimaker 2+, so it will
3661 make life easier for at least me. :)</p>
3662
3663 <p>The work to make this happen was done by Gregor Riepl, and I was
3664 happy to assist him in sponsoring the packages.  With the introduction
3665 of Cura, Debian is up to three 3D printer slicers at your service,
3666 Cura, Slic3r and Slic3r Prusa.  If you own or have access to a 3D
3667 printer, give it a go. :)</p>
3668
3669 <p>The 3D printer software is maintained by the 3D printer Debian
3670 team, flocking together on the
3671 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/3dprinter-general">3dprinter-general</a>
3672 mailing list and the
3673 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-3dprinting">#debian-3dprinting</a>
3674 IRC channel.</p>
3675
3676 <p>The next step for Cura in Debian is to update the cura package to
3677 version 3.0.3 and then update the entire set of packages to version
3678 3.1.0 which showed up the last few days.</p>
3679
3680       </div>
3681       <div class="tags">
3682
3683
3684         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3685
3686
3687       </div>
3688     </div>
3689     <div class="padding"></div>
3690
3691     <div class="entry">
3692       <div class="title">
3693         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Generating_3D_prints_in_Debian_using_Cura_and_Slic3r__prusa_.html">Generating 3D prints in Debian using Cura and Slic3r(-prusa)</a>
3694       </div>
3695       <div class="date">
3696          9th October 2017
3697       </div>
3698       <div class="body">
3699         <p>At my nearby maker space,
3700 <a href="http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Sonen</a>, I heard the story that it
3701 was easier to generate gcode files for theyr 3D printers (Ultimake 2+)
3702 on Windows and MacOS X than Linux, because the software involved had
3703 to be manually compiled and set up on Linux while premade packages
3704 worked out of the box on Windows and MacOS X.  I found this annoying,
3705 as the software involved,
3706 <a href="https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura">Cura</a>, is free software
3707 and should be trivial to get up and running on Linux if someone took
3708 the time to package it for the relevant distributions.  I even found
3709 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/706656">a request for adding into
3710 Debian</a> from 2013, which had seem some activity over the years but
3711 never resulted in the software showing up in Debian.  So a few days
3712 ago I offered my help to try to improve the situation.</p>
3713
3714 <p>Now I am very happy to see that all the packages required by a
3715 working Cura in Debian are uploaded into Debian and waiting in the NEW
3716 queue for the ftpmasters to have a look.  You can track the progress
3717 on
3718 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=3dprinter-general%40lists.alioth.debian.org">the
3719 status page for the 3D printer team</a>.</p>
3720
3721 <p>The uploaded packages are a bit behind upstream, and was uploaded
3722 now to get slots in <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW
3723 queue</a> while we work up updating the packages to the latest
3724 upstream version.</p>
3725
3726 <p>On a related note, two competitors for Cura, which I found harder
3727 to use and was unable to configure correctly for Ultimaker 2+ in the
3728 short time I spent on it, are already in Debian.  If you are looking
3729 for 3D printer "slicers" and want something already available in
3730 Debian, check out
3731 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r">slic3r</a> and
3732 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r-prusa">slic3r-prusa</a>.
3733 The latter is a fork of the former.</p>
3734
3735 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3736 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3737 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3738
3739       </div>
3740       <div class="tags">
3741
3742
3743         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3744
3745
3746       </div>
3747     </div>
3748     <div class="padding"></div>
3749
3750     <div class="entry">
3751       <div class="title">
3752         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Visualizing_GSM_radio_chatter_using_gr_gsm_and_Hopglass.html">Visualizing GSM radio chatter using gr-gsm and Hopglass</a>
3753       </div>
3754       <div class="date">
3755         29th September 2017
3756       </div>
3757       <div class="body">
3758         <p>Every mobile phone announce its existence over radio to the nearby
3759 mobile cell towers.  And this radio chatter is available for anyone
3760 with a radio receiver capable of receiving them.  Details about the
3761 mobile phones with very good accuracy is of course collected by the
3762 phone companies, but this is not the topic of this blog post.  The
3763 mobile phone radio chatter make it possible to figure out when a cell
3764 phone is nearby, as it include the SIM card ID (IMSI).  By paying
3765 attention over time, one can see when a phone arrive and when it leave
3766 an area.  I believe it would be nice to make this information more
3767 available to the general public, to make more people aware of how
3768 their phones are announcing their whereabouts to anyone that care to
3769 listen.</p>
3770
3771 <p>I am very happy to report that we managed to get something
3772 visualizing this information up and running for
3773 <a href="http://norwaymakers.org/osf17">Oslo Skaperfestival 2017</a>
3774 (Oslo Makers Festival) taking place today and tomorrow at Deichmanske
3775 library.  The solution is based on the
3776 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">simple
3777 recipe for listening to GSM chatter</a> I posted a few days ago, and
3778 will show up at the stand of <a href="http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Åpen
3779 Sone from the Computer Science department of the University of
3780 Oslo</a>.  The presentation will show the nearby mobile phones (aka
3781 IMSIs) as dots in a web browser graph, with lines to the dot
3782 representing mobile base station it is talking to. It was working in
3783 the lab yesterday, and was moved into place this morning.</p>
3784
3785 <p>We set up a fairly powerful desktop machine using Debian
3786 Buster/Testing with several (five, I believe) RTL2838 DVB-T receivers
3787 connected and visualize the visible cell phone towers using an
3788 <a href="https://github.com/marlow925/hopglass">English version of
3789 Hopglass</a>.  A fairly powerfull machine is needed as the
3790 grgsm_livemon_headless processes from
3791 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm</a> converting
3792 the radio signal to data packages is quite CPU intensive.</p>
3793
3794 <p>The frequencies to listen to, are identified using a slightly
3795 patched scan-and-livemon (to set the --args values for each receiver),
3796 and the Hopglass data is generated using the
3797 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/IMSI-catcher/tree/meshviewer-output">patches
3798 in my meshviewer-output branch</a>.  For some reason we could not get
3799 more than four SDRs working.  There is also a geographical map trying
3800 to show the location of the base stations, but I believe their
3801 coordinates are hardcoded to some random location in Germany, I
3802 believe.  The code should be replaced with code to look up location in
3803 a text file, a sqlite database or one of the online databases
3804 mentioned in
3805 <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher/issues/14">the github
3806 issue for the topic</a>.
3807
3808 <p>If this sound interesting, visit the stand at the festival!</p>
3809
3810       </div>
3811       <div class="tags">
3812
3813
3814         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3815
3816
3817       </div>
3818     </div>
3819     <div class="padding"></div>
3820
3821     <div class="entry">
3822       <div class="title">
3823         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">Easier recipe to observe the cell phones around you</a>
3824       </div>
3825       <div class="date">
3826         24th September 2017
3827       </div>
3828       <div class="body">
3829         <p>A little more than a month ago I wrote
3830 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">how
3831 to observe the SIM card ID (aka IMSI number) of mobile phones talking
3832 to nearby mobile phone base stations using Debian GNU/Linux and a
3833 cheap USB software defined radio</a>, and thus being able to pinpoint
3834 the location of people and equipment (like cars and trains) with an
3835 accuracy of a few kilometer.  Since then we have worked to make the
3836 procedure even simpler, and it is now possible to do this without any
3837 manual frequency tuning and without building your own packages.</p>
3838
3839 <p>The <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm</a>
3840 package is now included in Debian testing and unstable, and the
3841 IMSI-catcher code no longer require root access to fetch and decode
3842 the GSM data collected using gr-gsm.</p>
3843
3844 <p>Here is an updated recipe, using packages built by Debian and a git
3845 clone of two python scripts:</p>
3846
3847 <ol>
3848
3849 <li>Start with a Debian machine running the Buster version (aka
3850   testing).</li>
3851
3852 <li>Run '<tt>apt install gr-gsm python-numpy python-scipy
3853   python-scapy</tt>' as root to install required packages.</li>
3854
3855 <li>Fetch the code decoding GSM packages using '<tt>git clone
3856   github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher.git</tt>'.</li>
3857
3858 <li>Insert USB software defined radio supported by GNU Radio.</li>
3859
3860 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '<tt>python
3861   scan-and-livemon</tt>' to locate the frequency of nearby base
3862   stations and start listening for GSM packages on one of them.</li>
3863
3864 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '<tt>python
3865   simple_IMSI-catcher.py</tt>' to display the collected information.</li>
3866
3867 </ol>
3868
3869 <p>Note, due to a bug somewhere the scan-and-livemon program (actually
3870 <a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/issues/336">its underlying
3871 program grgsm_scanner</a>) do not work with the HackRF radio.  It does
3872 work with RTL 8232 and other similar USB radio receivers you can get
3873 very cheaply
3874 (<a href="https://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=rtl+2832">for example
3875 from ebay</a>), so for now the solution is to scan using the RTL radio
3876 and only use HackRF for fetching GSM data.</p>
3877
3878 <p>As far as I can tell, a cell phone only show up on one of the
3879 frequencies at the time, so if you are going to track and count every
3880 cell phone around you, you need to listen to all the frequencies used.
3881 To listen to several frequencies, use the --numrecv argument to
3882 scan-and-livemon to use several receivers.  Further, I am not sure if
3883 phones using 3G or 4G will show as talking GSM to base stations, so
3884 this approach might not see all phones around you.  I typically see
3885 0-400 IMSI numbers an hour when looking around where I live.</p>
3886
3887 <p>I've tried to run the scanner on a
3888 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi 2 and 3
3889 running Debian Buster</a>, but the grgsm_livemon_headless process seem
3890 to be too CPU intensive to keep up.  When GNU Radio print 'O' to
3891 stdout, I am told there it is caused by a buffer overflow between the
3892 radio and GNU Radio, caused by the program being unable to read the
3893 GSM data fast enough.  If you see a stream of 'O's from the terminal
3894 where you started scan-and-livemon, you need a give the process more
3895 CPU power.  Perhaps someone are able to optimize the code to a point
3896 where it become possible to set up RPi3 based GSM sniffers?  I tried
3897 using Raspbian instead of Debian, but there seem to be something wrong
3898 with GNU Radio on raspbian, causing glibc to abort().</p>
3899
3900       </div>
3901       <div class="tags">
3902
3903
3904         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3905
3906
3907       </div>
3908     </div>
3909     <div class="padding"></div>
3910
3911     <div class="entry">
3912       <div class="title">
3913         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">Simpler recipe on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher using Debian</a>
3914       </div>
3915       <div class="date">
3916          9th August 2017
3917       </div>
3918       <div class="body">
3919         <p>On friday, I came across an interesting article in the Norwegian
3920 web based ICT news magazine digi.no on
3921 <a href="https://www.digi.no/artikler/sikkerhetsforsker-lagde-enkel-imsi-catcher-for-60-kroner-na-kan-mobiler-kartlegges-av-alle/398588">how
3922 to collect the IMSI numbers of nearby cell phones</a> using the cheap
3923 DVB-T software defined radios.  The article refered to instructions
3924 and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjwgNd_as30">a recipe by
3925 Keld Norman on Youtube on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher</a>, and I decided to test them out.</p>
3926
3927 <p>The instructions said to use Ubuntu, install pip using apt (to
3928 bypass apt), use pip to install pybombs (to bypass both apt and pip),
3929 and the ask pybombs to fetch and build everything you need from
3930 scratch.  I wanted to see if I could do the same on the most recent
3931 Debian packages, but this did not work because pybombs tried to build
3932 stuff that no longer build with the most recent openssl library or
3933 some other version skew problem.  While trying to get this recipe
3934 working, I learned that the apt->pip->pybombs route was a long detour,
3935 and the only piece of software dependency missing in Debian was the
3936 gr-gsm package.  I also found out that the lead upstream developer of
3937 gr-gsm (the name stand for GNU Radio GSM) project already had a set of
3938 Debian packages provided in an Ubuntu PPA repository.  All I needed to
3939 do was to dget the Debian source package and built it.</p>
3940
3941 <p>The IMSI collector is a python script listening for packages on the
3942 loopback network device and printing to the terminal some specific GSM
3943 packages with IMSI numbers in them.  The code is fairly short and easy
3944 to understand.  The reason this work is because gr-gsm include a tool
3945 to read GSM data from a software defined radio like a DVB-T USB stick
3946 and other software defined radios, decode them and inject them into a
3947 network device on your Linux machine (using the loopback device by
3948 default).  This proved to work just fine, and I've been testing the
3949 collector for a few days now.</p>
3950
3951 <p>The updated and simpler recipe is thus to</p>
3952
3953 <ol>
3954
3955 <li>start with a Debian machine running Stretch or newer,</li>
3956
3957 <li>build and install the gr-gsm package available from
3958 <a href="http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/">http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/</a>,</li>
3959
3960 <li>clone the git repostory from <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher">https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher</a>,</li>
3961
3962 <li>run grgsm_livemon and adjust the frequency until the terminal
3963 where it was started is filled with a stream of text (meaning you
3964 found a GSM station).</li>
3965
3966 <li>go into the IMSI-catcher directory and run 'sudo python simple_IMSI-catcher.py' to extract the IMSI numbers.</li>
3967
3968 </ol>
3969
3970 <p>To make it even easier in the future to get this sniffer up and
3971 running, I decided to package
3972 <a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/">the gr-gsm project</a>
3973 for Debian (<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/871055">WNPP
3974 #871055</a>), and the package was uploaded into the NEW queue today.
3975 Luckily the gnuradio maintainer has promised to help me, as I do not
3976 know much about gnuradio stuff yet.</p>
3977
3978 <p>I doubt this "IMSI cacher" is anywhere near as powerfull as
3979 commercial tools like
3980 <a href="https://www.thespyphone.com/portable-imsi-imei-catcher/">The
3981 Spy Phone Portable IMSI / IMEI Catcher</a> or the
3982 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker">Harris
3983 Stingray</a>, but I hope the existance of cheap alternatives can make
3984 more people realise how their whereabouts when carrying a cell phone
3985 is easily tracked.  Seeing the data flow on the screen, realizing that
3986 I live close to a police station and knowing that the police is also
3987 wearing cell phones, I wonder how hard it would be for criminals to
3988 track the position of the police officers to discover when there are
3989 police near by, or for foreign military forces to track the location
3990 of the Norwegian military forces, or for anyone to track the location
3991 of government officials...</p>
3992
3993 <p>It is worth noting that the data reported by the IMSI-catcher
3994 script mentioned above is only a fraction of the data broadcasted on
3995 the GSM network.  It will only collect one frequency at the time,
3996 while a typical phone will be using several frequencies, and not all
3997 phones will be using the frequencies tracked by the grgsm_livemod
3998 program.  Also, there is a lot of radio chatter being ignored by the
3999 simple_IMSI-catcher script, which would be collected by extending the
4000 parser code.  I wonder if gr-gsm can be set up to listen to more than
4001 one frequency?</p>
4002
4003       </div>
4004       <div class="tags">
4005
4006
4007         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
4008
4009
4010       </div>
4011     </div>
4012     <div class="padding"></div>
4013
4014     <div class="entry">
4015       <div class="title">
4016         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_is_now_available.html">Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook is now available</a>
4017       </div>
4018       <div class="date">
4019         25th July 2017
4020       </div>
4021       <div class="body">
4022         <p align="center"><img align="center" src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-07-25-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.png"/></p>
4023
4024 <p>I finally received a copy of the Norwegian Bokmål edition of
4025 "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
4026 Handbook</a>".  This test copy arrived in the mail a few days ago, and
4027 I am very happy to hold the result in my hand.   We spent around one and a half year translating it. This paperbook edition
4028 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/#norwegian">is available
4029 from lulu.com</a>.  If you buy it quickly, you save 25% on the list
4030 price.  The book is also available for download in electronic form as
4031 PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, as can be
4032 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/">read online
4033 as a web page</a>.</p>
4034
4035 <p>This is the second book I publish (the first was the book
4036 "<a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a>" by Lawrence Lessig
4037 in
4038 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">English</a>,
4039 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">French</a>
4040 and
4041 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Norwegian
4042 Bokmål</a>), and I am very excited to finally wrap up this
4043 project.  I hope
4044 "<a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/rapha%C3%ABl-hertzog-and-roland-mas/h%C3%A5ndbok-for-debian-administratoren/paperback/product-23262290.html">Håndbok
4045 for Debian-administratoren</a>" will be well received.</p>
4046
4047       </div>
4048       <div class="tags">
4049
4050
4051         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4052
4053
4054       </div>
4055     </div>
4056     <div class="padding"></div>
4057
4058     <div class="entry">
4059       <div class="title">
4060         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/N_r_nynorskoversettelsen_svikter_til_eksamen___.html">Når nynorskoversettelsen svikter til eksamen...</a>
4061       </div>
4062       <div class="date">
4063          3rd June 2017
4064       </div>
4065       <div class="body">
4066         <p><a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/norge/Krever-at-elever-ma-fa-annullert-eksamen-etter-rot-med-oppgavetekster-622459b.html">Aftenposten
4067 melder i dag</a> om feil i eksamensoppgavene for eksamen i politikk og
4068 menneskerettigheter, der teksten i bokmåls og nynorskutgaven ikke var
4069 like.  Oppgaveteksten er gjengitt i artikkelen, og jeg ble nysgjerring
4070 på om den fri oversetterløsningen
4071 <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium</a> ville gjort en bedre
4072 jobb enn Utdanningsdirektoratet.  Det kan se slik ut.</p>
4073
4074 <p>Her er bokmålsoppgaven fra eksamenen:</p>
4075
4076 <blockquote>
4077 <p>Drøft utfordringene knyttet til nasjonalstatenes og andre aktørers
4078 rolle og muligheter til å håndtere internasjonale utfordringer, som
4079 for eksempel flykningekrisen.</p>
4080
4081 <p>Vedlegge er eksempler på tekster som kan gi relevante perspektiver
4082 på temaet:</p>
4083 <ol>
4084 <li>Flykningeregnskapet 2016, UNHCR og IDMC
4085 <li>«Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet, 26. november 2015
4086 </ol>
4087
4088 </blockquote>
4089
4090 <p>Dette oversetter Apertium slik:</p>
4091
4092 <blockquote>
4093 <p>Drøft utfordringane knytte til nasjonalstatane sine og rolla til
4094 andre aktørar og høve til å handtera internasjonale utfordringar, som
4095 til dømes *flykningekrisen.</p>
4096
4097 <p>Vedleggja er døme på tekster som kan gje relevante perspektiv på
4098 temaet:</p>
4099
4100 <ol>
4101 <li>*Flykningeregnskapet 2016, *UNHCR og *IDMC</li>
4102 <li>«*Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet, 26. november 2015</li>
4103 </ol>
4104
4105 </blockquote>
4106
4107 <p>Ord som ikke ble forstått er markert med stjerne (*), og trenger
4108 ekstra språksjekk.  Men ingen ord er forsvunnet, slik det var i
4109 oppgaven elevene fikk presentert på eksamen.  Jeg mistenker dog at
4110 "andre aktørers rolle og muligheter til ..." burde vært oversatt til
4111 "rolla til andre aktørar og deira høve til ..." eller noe slikt, men
4112 det er kanskje flisespikking.  Det understreker vel bare at det alltid
4113 trengs korrekturlesning etter automatisk oversettelse.</p>
4114
4115       </div>
4116       <div class="tags">
4117
4118
4119         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
4120
4121
4122       </div>
4123     </div>
4124     <div class="padding"></div>
4125
4126     <div class="entry">
4127       <div class="title">
4128         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Detecting_NFS_hangs_on_Linux_without_hanging_yourself___.html">Detecting NFS hangs on Linux without hanging yourself...</a>
4129       </div>
4130       <div class="date">
4131          9th March 2017
4132       </div>
4133       <div class="body">
4134         <p>Over the years, administrating thousand of NFS mounting linux
4135 computers at the time, I often needed a way to detect if the machine
4136 was experiencing NFS hang.  If you try to use <tt>df</tt> or look at a
4137 file or directory affected by the hang, the process (and possibly the
4138 shell) will hang too.  So you want to be able to detect this without
4139 risking the detection process getting stuck too.  It has not been
4140 obvious how to do this.  When the hang has lasted a while, it is
4141 possible to find messages like these in dmesg:</p>
4142
4143 <p><blockquote>
4144 nfs: server nfsserver not responding, still trying
4145 <br>nfs: server nfsserver OK
4146 </blockquote></p>
4147
4148 <p>It is hard to know if the hang is still going on, and it is hard to
4149 be sure looking in dmesg is going to work.  If there are lots of other
4150 messages in dmesg the lines might have rotated out of site before they
4151 are noticed.</p>
4152
4153 <p>While reading through the nfs client implementation in linux kernel
4154 code, I came across some statistics that seem to give a way to detect
4155 it.  The om_timeouts sunrpc value in the kernel will increase every
4156 time the above log entry is inserted into dmesg.  And after digging a
4157 bit further, I discovered that this value show up in
4158 /proc/self/mountstats on Linux.</p>
4159
4160 <p>The mountstats content seem to be shared between files using the
4161 same file system context, so it is enough to check one of the
4162 mountstats files to get the state of the mount point for the machine.
4163 I assume this will not show lazy umounted NFS points, nor NFS mount
4164 points in a different process context (ie with a different filesystem
4165 view), but that does not worry me.</p>
4166
4167 <p>The content for a NFS mount point look similar to this:</p>
4168
4169 <p><blockquote><pre>
4170 [...]
4171 device /dev/mapper/Debian-var mounted on /var with fstype ext3
4172 device nfsserver:/mnt/nfsserver/home0 mounted on /mnt/nfsserver/home0 with fstype nfs statvers=1.1
4173         opts:   rw,vers=3,rsize=65536,wsize=65536,namlen=255,acregmin=3,acregmax=60,acdirmin=30,acdirmax=60,soft,nolock,proto=tcp,timeo=600,retrans=2,sec=sys,mountaddr=129.240.3.145,mountvers=3,mountport=4048,mountproto=udp,local_lock=all
4174         age:    7863311
4175         caps:   caps=0x3fe7,wtmult=4096,dtsize=8192,bsize=0,namlen=255
4176         sec:    flavor=1,pseudoflavor=1
4177         events: 61063112 732346265 1028140 35486205 16220064 8162542 761447191 71714012 37189 3891185 45561809 110486139 4850138 420353 15449177 296502 52736725 13523379 0 52182 9016896 1231 0 0 0 0 0
4178         bytes:  166253035039 219519120027 0 0 40783504807 185466229638 11677877 45561809
4179         RPC iostats version: 1.0  p/v: 100003/3 (nfs)
4180         xprt:   tcp 925 1 6810 0 0 111505412 111480497 109 2672418560317 0 248 53869103 22481820
4181         per-op statistics
4182                 NULL: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
4183              GETATTR: 61063106 61063108 0 9621383060 6839064400 453650 77291321 78926132
4184              SETATTR: 463469 463470 0 92005440 66739536 63787 603235 687943
4185               LOOKUP: 17021657 17021657 0 3354097764 4013442928 57216 35125459 35566511
4186               ACCESS: 14281703 14290009 5 2318400592 1713803640 1709282 4865144 7130140
4187             READLINK: 125 125 0 20472 18620 0 1112 1118
4188                 READ: 4214236 4214237 0 715608524 41328653212 89884 22622768 22806693
4189                WRITE: 8479010 8494376 22 187695798568 1356087148 178264904 51506907 231671771
4190               CREATE: 171708 171708 0 38084748 46702272 873 1041833 1050398
4191                MKDIR: 3680 3680 0 773980 993920 26 23990 24245
4192              SYMLINK: 903 903 0 233428 245488 6 5865 5917
4193                MKNOD: 80 80 0 20148 21760 0 299 304
4194               REMOVE: 429921 429921 0 79796004 61908192 3313 2710416 2741636
4195                RMDIR: 3367 3367 0 645112 484848 22 5782 6002
4196               RENAME: 466201 466201 0 130026184 121212260 7075 5935207 5961288
4197                 LINK: 289155 289155 0 72775556 67083960 2199 2565060 2585579
4198              READDIR: 2933237 2933237 0 516506204 13973833412 10385 3190199 3297917
4199          READDIRPLUS: 1652839 1652839 0 298640972 6895997744 84735 14307895 14448937
4200               FSSTAT: 6144 6144 0 1010516 1032192 51 9654 10022
4201               FSINFO: 2 2 0 232 328 0 1 1
4202             PATHCONF: 1 1 0 116 140 0 0 0
4203               COMMIT: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
4204
4205 device binfmt_misc mounted on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc with fstype binfmt_misc
4206 [...]
4207 </pre></blockquote></p>
4208
4209 <p>The key number to look at is the third number in the per-op list.
4210 It is the number of NFS timeouts experiences per file system
4211 operation.  Here 22 write timeouts and 5 access timeouts.  If these
4212 numbers are increasing, I believe the machine is experiencing NFS
4213 hang.  Unfortunately the timeout value do not start to increase right
4214 away.  The NFS operations need to time out first, and this can take a
4215 while.  The exact timeout value depend on the setup.  For example the
4216 defaults for TCP and UDP mount points are quite different, and the
4217 timeout value is affected by the soft, hard, timeo and retrans NFS
4218 mount options.</p>
4219
4220 <p>The only way I have been able to get working on Debian and RedHat
4221 Enterprise Linux for getting the timeout count is to peek in /proc/.
4222 But according to
4223 <ahref="http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/816-4555/netmonitor-12/index.html">Solaris
4224 10 System Administration Guide: Network Services</a>, the 'nfsstat -c'
4225 command can be used to get these timeout values.  But this do not work
4226 on Linux, as far as I can tell.  I
4227 <ahref="http://bugs.debian.org/857043">asked Debian about this</a>,
4228 but have not seen any replies yet.</p>
4229
4230 <p>Is there a better way to figure out if a Linux NFS client is
4231 experiencing NFS hangs?  Is there a way to detect which processes are
4232 affected?  Is there a way to get the NFS mount going quickly once the
4233 network problem causing the NFS hang has been cleared?  I would very
4234 much welcome some clues, as we regularly run into NFS hangs.</p>
4235
4236       </div>
4237       <div class="tags">
4238
4239
4240         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
4241
4242
4243       </div>
4244     </div>
4245     <div class="padding"></div>
4246
4247     <div class="entry">
4248       <div class="title">
4249         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_complete__proofreading_in_progress.html">Norwegian Bokmål translation of The Debian Administrator's Handbook complete, proofreading in progress</a>
4250       </div>
4251       <div class="date">
4252          3rd March 2017
4253       </div>
4254       <div class="body">
4255         <p>For almost a year now, we have been working on making a Norwegian
4256 Bokmål edition of <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian
4257 Administrator's Handbook</a>.  Now, thanks to the tireless effort of
4258 Ole-Erik, Ingrid and Andreas, the initial translation is complete, and
4259 we are working on the proof reading to ensure consistent language and
4260 use of correct computer science terms.  The plan is to make the book
4261 available on paper, as well as in electronic form.  For that to
4262 happen, the proof reading must be completed and all the figures need
4263 to be translated.  If you want to help out, get in touch.</p>
4264
4265 <p><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-handbook/debian-handbook-nb-NO.pdf">A
4266
4267 fresh PDF edition</a> in A4 format (the final book will have smaller
4268 pages) of the book created every morning is available for
4269 proofreading.  If you find any errors, please
4270 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">visit
4271 Weblate and correct the error</a>.  The
4272 <a href="http://l.github.io/debian-handbook/stat/nb-NO/index.html">state
4273 of the translation including figures</a> is a useful source for those
4274 provide Norwegian bokmål screen shots and figures.</p>
4275
4276       </div>
4277       <div class="tags">
4278
4279
4280         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4281
4282
4283       </div>
4284     </div>
4285     <div class="padding"></div>
4286
4287     <div class="entry">
4288       <div class="title">
4289         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlimited_randomness_with_the_ChaosKey_.html">Unlimited randomness with the ChaosKey?</a>
4290       </div>
4291       <div class="date">
4292          1st March 2017
4293       </div>
4294       <div class="body">
4295         <p>A few days ago I ordered a small batch of
4296 <a href="http://altusmetrum.org/ChaosKey/">the ChaosKey</a>, a small
4297 USB dongle for generating entropy created by Bdale Garbee and Keith
4298 Packard.  Yesterday it arrived, and I am very happy to report that it
4299 work great!  According to its designers, to get it to work out of the
4300 box, you need the Linux kernel version 4.1 or later.  I tested on a
4301 Debian Stretch machine (kernel version 4.9), and there it worked just
4302 fine, increasing the available entropy very quickly.  I wrote a small
4303 test oneliner to test.  It first print the current entropy level,
4304 drain /dev/random, and then print the entropy level for five seconds.
4305 Here is the situation without the ChaosKey inserted:</p>
4306
4307 <blockquote><pre>
4308 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
4309   dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
4310   for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
4311      cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
4312      sleep 1; \
4313   done
4314 300
4315 0+1 oppføringer inn
4316 0+1 oppføringer ut
4317 28 byte kopiert, 0,000264565 s, 106 kB/s
4318 4
4319 8
4320 12
4321 17
4322 21
4323 %
4324 </pre></blockquote>
4325
4326 <p>The entropy level increases by 3-4 every second.  In such case any
4327 application requiring random bits (like a HTTPS enabled web server)
4328 will halt and wait for more entrpy.  And here is the situation with
4329 the ChaosKey inserted:</p>
4330
4331 <blockquote><pre>
4332 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
4333   dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
4334   for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
4335      cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
4336      sleep 1; \
4337   done
4338 1079
4339 0+1 oppføringer inn
4340 0+1 oppføringer ut
4341 104 byte kopiert, 0,000487647 s, 213 kB/s
4342 433
4343 1028
4344 1031
4345 1035
4346 1038
4347 %
4348 </pre></blockquote>
4349
4350 <p>Quite the difference. :) I bought a few more than I need, in case
4351 someone want to buy one here in Norway. :)</p>
4352
4353 <p>Update: The dongle was presented at Debconf last year.  You might
4354 find <a href="https://debconf16.debconf.org/talks/94/">the talk
4355 recording illuminating</a>.  It explains exactly what the source of
4356 randomness is, if you are unable to spot it from the schema drawing
4357 available from the ChaosKey web site linked at the start of this blog
4358 post.</p>
4359
4360       </div>
4361       <div class="tags">
4362
4363
4364         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4365
4366
4367       </div>
4368     </div>
4369     <div class="padding"></div>
4370
4371     <div class="entry">
4372       <div class="title">
4373         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Where_did_that_package_go___mdash__geolocated_IP_traceroute.html">Where did that package go? &mdash; geolocated IP traceroute</a>
4374       </div>
4375       <div class="date">
4376          9th January 2017
4377       </div>
4378       <div class="body">
4379         <p>Did you ever wonder where the web trafic really flow to reach the
4380 web servers, and who own the network equipment it is flowing through?
4381 It is possible to get a glimpse of this from using traceroute, but it
4382 is hard to find all the details.  Many years ago, I wrote a system to
4383 map the Norwegian Internet (trying to figure out if our plans for a
4384 network game service would get low enough latency, and who we needed
4385 to talk to about setting up game servers close to the users.  Back
4386 then I used traceroute output from many locations (I asked my friends
4387 to run a script and send me their traceroute output) to create the
4388 graph and the map.  The output from traceroute typically look like
4389 this:
4390
4391 <p><pre>
4392 traceroute to www.stortinget.no (85.88.67.10), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
4393  1  uio-gw10.uio.no (129.240.202.1)  0.447 ms  0.486 ms  0.621 ms
4394  2  uio-gw8.uio.no (129.240.24.229)  0.467 ms  0.578 ms  0.675 ms
4395  3  oslo-gw1.uninett.no (128.39.65.17)  0.385 ms  0.373 ms  0.358 ms
4396  4  te3-1-2.br1.fn3.as2116.net (193.156.90.3)  1.174 ms  1.172 ms  1.153 ms
4397  5  he16-1-1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (195.0.244.234)  2.627 ms he16-1-1.cr2.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.244.48)  3.172 ms he16-1-1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (195.0.244.234)  2.857 ms
4398  6  ae1.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.242.39)  0.662 ms  0.637 ms ae0.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.242.23)  0.622 ms
4399  7  89.191.10.146 (89.191.10.146)  0.931 ms  0.917 ms  0.955 ms
4400  8  * * *
4401  9  * * *
4402 [...]
4403 </pre></p>
4404
4405 <p>This show the DNS names and IP addresses of (at least some of the)
4406 network equipment involved in getting the data traffic from me to the
4407 www.stortinget.no server, and how long it took in milliseconds for a
4408 package to reach the equipment and return to me.  Three packages are
4409 sent, and some times the packages do not follow the same path.  This
4410 is shown for hop 5, where three different IP addresses replied to the
4411 traceroute request.</p>
4412
4413 <p>There are many ways to measure trace routes.  Other good traceroute
4414 implementations I use are traceroute (using ICMP packages) mtr (can do
4415 both ICMP, UDP and TCP) and scapy (python library with ICMP, UDP, TCP
4416 traceroute and a lot of other capabilities).  All of them are easily
4417 available in <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>.</p>
4418
4419 <p>This time around, I wanted to know the geographic location of
4420 different route points, to visualize how visiting a web page spread
4421 information about the visit to a lot of servers around the globe.  The
4422 background is that a web site today often will ask the browser to get
4423 from many servers the parts (for example HTML, JSON, fonts,
4424 JavaScript, CSS, video) required to display the content.  This will
4425 leak information about the visit to those controlling these servers
4426 and anyone able to peek at the data traffic passing by (like your ISP,
4427 the ISPs backbone provider, FRA, GCHQ, NSA and others).</p>
4428
4429 <p>Lets pick an example, the Norwegian parliament web site
4430 www.stortinget.no.  It is read daily by all members of parliament and
4431 their staff, as well as political journalists, activits and many other
4432 citizens of Norway.  A visit to the www.stortinget.no web site will
4433 ask your browser to contact 8 other servers: ajax.googleapis.com,
4434 insights.hotjar.com, script.hotjar.com, static.hotjar.com,
4435 stats.g.doubleclick.net, www.google-analytics.com,
4436 www.googletagmanager.com and www.netigate.se.  I extracted this by
4437 asking <a href="http://phantomjs.org/">PhantomJS</a> to visit the
4438 Stortinget web page and tell me all the URLs PhantomJS downloaded to
4439 render the page (in HAR format using
4440 <a href="https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/examples/netsniff.js">their
4441 netsniff example</a>.  I am very grateful to Gorm for showing me how
4442 to do this).  My goal is to visualize network traces to all IP
4443 addresses behind these DNS names, do show where visitors personal
4444 information is spread when visiting the page.</p>
4445
4446 <p align="center"><a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml"><img
4447 src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geoip-small.png" alt="map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using GeoIP"/></a></p>
4448
4449 <p>When I had a look around for options, I could not find any good
4450 free software tools to do this, and decided I needed my own traceroute
4451 wrapper outputting KML based on locations looked up using GeoIP.  KML
4452 is easy to work with and easy to generate, and understood by several
4453 of the GIS tools I have available.  I got good help from by NUUG
4454 colleague Anders Einar with this, and the result can be seen in
4455 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/kmltraceroute">my
4456 kmltraceroute git repository</a>.  Unfortunately, the quality of the
4457 free GeoIP databases I could find (and the for-pay databases my
4458 friends had access to) is not up to the task.  The IP addresses of
4459 central Internet infrastructure would typically be placed near the
4460 controlling companies main office, and not where the router is really
4461 located, as you can see from <a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml">the
4462 KML file I created</a> using the GeoLite City dataset from MaxMind.
4463
4464 <p align="center"><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg"><img
4465 src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy-small.png" alt="scapy traceroute graph for URLs used by www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
4466
4467 <p>I also had a look at the visual traceroute graph created by
4468 <a href="http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/">the scrapy project</a>,
4469 showing IP network ownership (aka AS owner) for the IP address in
4470 question.
4471 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg">The
4472 graph display a lot of useful information about the traceroute in SVG
4473 format</a>, and give a good indication on who control the network
4474 equipment involved, but it do not include geolocation.  This graph
4475 make it possible to see the information is made available at least for
4476 UNINETT, Catchcom, Stortinget, Nordunet, Google, Amazon, Telia, Level
4477 3 Communications and NetDNA.</p>
4478
4479 <p align="center"><a href="https://geotraceroute.com/index.php?node=4&host=www.stortinget.no"><img
4480 src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-small.png" alt="example geotraceroute view for www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
4481
4482 <p>In the process, I came across the
4483 <a href="https://geotraceroute.com/">web service GeoTraceroute</a> by
4484 Salim Gasmi.  Its methology of combining guesses based on DNS names,
4485 various location databases and finally use latecy times to rule out
4486 candidate locations seemed to do a very good job of guessing correct
4487 geolocation.  But it could only do one trace at the time, did not have
4488 a sensor in Norway and did not make the geolocations easily available
4489 for postprocessing.  So I contacted the developer and asked if he
4490 would be willing to share the code (he refused until he had time to
4491 clean it up), but he was interested in providing the geolocations in a
4492 machine readable format, and willing to set up a sensor in Norway.  So
4493 since yesterday, it is possible to run traces from Norway in this
4494 service thanks to a sensor node set up by
4495 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG assosiation</a>, and get the
4496 trace in KML format for further processing.</p>
4497
4498 <p align="center"><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.kml"><img
4499 src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.png" alt="map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using geotraceroute"/></a></p>
4500
4501 <p>Here we can see a lot of trafic passes Sweden on its way to
4502 Denmark, Germany, Holland and Ireland.  Plenty of places where the
4503 Snowden confirmations verified the traffic is read by various actors
4504 without your best interest as their top priority.</p>
4505
4506 <p>Combining KML files is trivial using a text editor, so I could loop
4507 over all the hosts behind the urls imported by www.stortinget.no and
4508 ask for the KML file from GeoTraceroute, and create a combined KML
4509 file with all the traces (unfortunately only one of the IP addresses
4510 behind the DNS name is traced this time.  To get them all, one would
4511 have to request traces using IP number instead of DNS names from
4512 GeoTraceroute).  That might be the next step in this project.</p>
4513
4514 <p>Armed with these tools, I find it a lot easier to figure out where
4515 the IP traffic moves and who control the boxes involved in moving it.
4516 And every time the link crosses for example the Swedish border, we can
4517 be sure Swedish Signal Intelligence (FRA) is listening, as GCHQ do in
4518 Britain and NSA in USA and cables around the globe.  (Hm, what should
4519 we tell them? :) Keep that in mind if you ever send anything
4520 unencrypted over the Internet.</p>
4521
4522 <p>PS: KML files are drawn using
4523 <a href="http://ivanrublev.me/kml/">the KML viewer from Ivan
4524 Rublev<a/>, as it was less cluttered than the local Linux application
4525 Marble.  There are heaps of other options too.</p>
4526
4527 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4528 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4529 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4530
4531       </div>
4532       <div class="tags">
4533
4534
4535         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4536
4537
4538       </div>
4539     </div>
4540     <div class="padding"></div>
4541
4542     <div class="entry">
4543       <div class="title">
4544         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Appstream_just_learned_how_to_map_hardware_to_packages_too_.html">Appstream just learned how to map hardware to packages too!</a>
4545       </div>
4546       <div class="date">
4547         23rd December 2016
4548       </div>
4549       <div class="body">
4550         <p>I received a very nice Christmas present today.  As my regular
4551 readers probably know, I have been working on the
4552 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the Isenkram
4553 system</a> for many years.  The goal of the Isenkram system is to make
4554 it easier for users to figure out what to install to get a given piece
4555 of hardware to work in Debian, and a key part of this system is a way
4556 to map hardware to packages.  Isenkram have its own mapping database,
4557 and also uses data provided by each package using the AppStream
4558 metadata format.  And today,
4559 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/appstream">AppStream</a> in
4560 Debian learned to look up hardware the same way Isenkram is doing it,
4561 ie using fnmatch():</p>
4562
4563 <p><pre>
4564 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias \
4565   usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
4566 Identifier: pymissile [generic]
4567 Name: pymissile
4568 Summary: Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher
4569 Package: pymissile
4570 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias usb:v0694p0002d0000
4571 Identifier: libnxt [generic]
4572 Name: libnxt
4573 Summary: utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick
4574 Package: libnxt
4575 ---
4576 Identifier: t2n [generic]
4577 Name: t2n
4578 Summary: Simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
4579 Package: t2n
4580 ---
4581 Identifier: python-nxt [generic]
4582 Name: python-nxt
4583 Summary: Python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
4584 Package: python-nxt
4585 ---
4586 Identifier: nbc [generic]
4587 Name: nbc
4588 Summary: C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
4589 Package: nbc
4590 %
4591 </pre></p>
4592
4593 <p>A similar query can be done using the combined AppStream and
4594 Isenkram databases using the isenkram-lookup tool:</p>
4595
4596 <p><pre>
4597 % isenkram-lookup usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
4598 pymissile
4599 % isenkram-lookup usb:v0694p0002d0000
4600 libnxt
4601 nbc
4602 python-nxt
4603 t2n
4604 %
4605 </pre></p>
4606
4607 <p>You can find modalias values relevant for your machine using
4608 <tt>cat $(find /sys/devices/ -name modalias)</tt>.
4609
4610 <p>If you want to make this system a success and help Debian users
4611 make the most of the hardware they have, please help
4612 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add AppStream
4613 metadata for your package following the guidelines</a> documented in
4614 the wiki.  So far only 11 packages provide such information, among the
4615 several hundred hardware specific packages in Debian. The Isenkram
4616 database on the other hand contain 101 packages, mostly related to USB
4617 dongles.  Most of the packages with hardware mapping in AppStream are
4618 LEGO Mindstorms related, because I have, as part of my involvement in
4619 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the Debian LEGO
4620 team</a> given priority to making sure LEGO users get proposed the
4621 complete set of packages in Debian for that particular hardware.  The
4622 team also got a nice Christmas present today.  The
4623 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nxt-firmware">nxt-firmware
4624 package</a> made it into Debian.  With this package in place, it is
4625 now possible to use the LEGO Mindstorms NXT unit with only free
4626 software, as the nxt-firmware package contain the source and firmware
4627 binaries for the NXT brick.</p>
4628
4629 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4630 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4631 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4632
4633       </div>
4634       <div class="tags">
4635
4636
4637         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
4638
4639
4640       </div>
4641     </div>
4642     <div class="padding"></div>
4643
4644     <div class="entry">
4645       <div class="title">
4646         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_updated_with_a_lot_more_hardware_package_mappings.html">Isenkram updated with a lot more hardware-package mappings</a>
4647       </div>
4648       <div class="date">
4649         20th December 2016
4650       </div>
4651       <div class="body">
4652         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
4653 system</a> I wrote two years ago to make it easier in Debian to find
4654 and install packages to get your hardware dongles to work, is still
4655 going strong.  It is a system to look up the hardware present on or
4656 connected to the current system, and map the hardware to Debian
4657 packages.  It can either be done using the tools in isenkram-cli or
4658 using the user space daemon in the isenkram package.  The latter will
4659 notify you, when inserting new hardware, about what packages to
4660 install to get the dongle working.  It will even provide a button to
4661 click on to ask packagekit to install the packages.</p>
4662
4663 <p>Here is an command line example from my Thinkpad laptop:</p>
4664
4665 <p><pre>
4666 % isenkram-lookup
4667 bluez
4668 cheese
4669 ethtool
4670 fprintd
4671 fprintd-demo
4672 gkrellm-thinkbat
4673 hdapsd
4674 libpam-fprintd
4675 pidgin-blinklight
4676 thinkfan
4677 tlp
4678 tp-smapi-dkms
4679 tp-smapi-source
4680 tpb
4681 %
4682 </pre></p>
4683
4684 <p>It can also list the firware package providing firmware requested
4685 by the load kernel modules, which in my case is an empty list because
4686 I have all the firmware my machine need:
4687
4688 <p><pre>
4689 % /usr/sbin/isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
4690 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
4691 %
4692 </pre></p>
4693
4694 <p>The last few days I had a look at several of the around 250
4695 packages in Debian with udev rules.  These seem like good candidates
4696 to install when a given hardware dongle is inserted, and I found
4697 several that should be proposed by isenkram.  I have not had time to
4698 check all of them, but am happy to report that now there are 97
4699 packages packages mapped to hardware by Isenkram.  11 of these
4700 packages provide hardware mapping using AppStream, while the rest are
4701 listed in the modaliases file provided in isenkram.</p>
4702
4703 <p>These are the packages with hardware mappings at the moment.  The
4704 <strong>marked packages</strong> are also announcing their hardware
4705 support using AppStream, for everyone to use:</p>
4706
4707 <p>air-quality-sensor, alsa-firmware-loaders, argyll,
4708 <strong>array-info</strong>, avarice, avrdude, b43-fwcutter,
4709 bit-babbler, bluez, bluez-firmware, <strong>brltty</strong>,
4710 <strong>broadcom-sta-dkms</strong>, calibre, cgminer, cheese, colord,
4711 <strong>colorhug-client</strong>, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux,
4712 dfu-util, dolphin-emu, ekeyd, ethtool, firmware-ipw2x00, fprintd,
4713 fprintd-demo, <strong>galileo</strong>, gkrellm-thinkbat, gphoto2,
4714 gpsbabel, gpsbabel-gui, gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, gr-fcdproplus,
4715 gr-osmosdr, gtkpod, hackrf, hdapsd, hdmi2usb-udev, hpijs-ppds, hplip,
4716 ipw3945-source, ipw3945d, kde-config-tablet, kinect-audio-setup,
4717 <strong>libnxt</strong>, libpam-fprintd, <strong>lomoco</strong>,
4718 madwimax, minidisc-utils, mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mtkbabel,
4719 <strong>nbc</strong>, <strong>nqc</strong>, nut-hal-drivers, ola,
4720 open-vm-toolbox, open-vm-tools, openambit, pcgminer, pcmciautils,
4721 pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, printer-driver-splix,
4722 <strong>pymissile</strong>, python-nxt, qlandkartegt,
4723 qlandkartegt-garmin, rosegarden, rt2x00-source, sispmctl,
4724 soapysdr-module-hackrf, solaar, squeak-plugins-scratch, sunxi-tools,
4725 <strong>t2n</strong>, thinkfan, thinkfinger-tools, tlp, tp-smapi-dkms,
4726 tp-smapi-source, tpb, tucnak, uhd-host, usbmuxd, viking,
4727 virtualbox-ose-guest-x11, w1retap, xawtv, xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse,
4728 xserver-xorg-input-wacom, xserver-xorg-video-qxl,
4729 xserver-xorg-video-vmware, yubikey-personalization and
4730 zd1211-firmware</p>
4731
4732 <p>If you know of other packages, please let me know with a wishlist
4733 bug report against the isenkram-cli package, and ask the package
4734 maintainer to
4735 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add AppStream
4736 metadata according to the guidelines</a> to provide the information
4737 for everyone.  In time, I hope to get rid of the isenkram specific
4738 hardware mapping and depend exclusively on AppStream.</p>
4739
4740 <p>Note, the AppStream metadata for broadcom-sta-dkms is matching too
4741 much hardware, and suggest that the package with with any ethernet
4742 card.  See <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/838735">bug #838735</a> for
4743 the details.  I hope the maintainer find time to address it soon.  In
4744 the mean time I provide an override in isenkram.</p>
4745
4746       </div>
4747       <div class="tags">
4748
4749
4750         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
4751
4752
4753       </div>
4754     </div>
4755     <div class="padding"></div>
4756
4757     <div class="entry">
4758       <div class="title">
4759         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oolite__a_life_in_space_as_vagabond_and_mercenary___nice_free_software.html">Oolite, a life in space as vagabond and mercenary - nice free software</a>
4760       </div>
4761       <div class="date">
4762         11th December 2016
4763       </div>
4764       <div class="body">
4765         <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-12-11-nice-oolite.png"/></p>
4766
4767 <p>In my early years, I played
4768 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Classic_Elite">the epic game
4769 Elite</a> on my PC.  I spent many months trading and fighting in
4770 space, and reached the 'elite' fighting status before I moved on.  The
4771 original Elite game was available on Commodore 64 and the IBM PC
4772 edition I played had a 64 KB executable.  I am still impressed today
4773 that the authors managed to squeeze both a 3D engine and details about
4774 more than 2000 planet systems across 7 galaxies into a binary so
4775 small.</p>
4776
4777 <p>I have known about <a href="http://www.oolite.org/">the free
4778 software game Oolite inspired by Elite</a> for a while, but did not
4779 really have time to test it properly until a few days ago.  It was
4780 great to discover that my old knowledge about trading routes were
4781 still valid.  But my fighting and flying abilities were gone, so I had
4782 to retrain to be able to dock on a space station.  And I am still not
4783 able to make much resistance when I am attacked by pirates, so I
4784 bougth and mounted the most powerful laser in the rear to be able to
4785 put up at least some resistance while fleeing for my life. :)</p>
4786
4787 <p>When playing Elite in the late eighties, I had to discover
4788 everything on my own, and I had long lists of prices seen on different
4789 planets to be able to decide where to trade what.  This time I had the
4790 advantages of the
4791 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Main_Page">Elite wiki</a>,
4792 where information about each planet is easily available with common
4793 price ranges and suggested trading routes.  This improved my ability
4794 to earn money and I have been able to earn enough to buy a lot of
4795 useful equipent in a few days.  I believe I originally played for
4796 months before I could get a docking computer, while now I could get it
4797 after less then a week.</p>
4798
4799 <p>If you like science fiction and dreamed of a life as a vagabond in
4800 space, you should try out Oolite.  It is available for Linux, MacOSX
4801 and Windows, and is included in Debian and derivatives since 2011.</p>
4802
4803 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4804 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4805 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4806
4807       </div>
4808       <div class="tags">
4809
4810
4811         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
4812
4813
4814       </div>
4815     </div>
4816     <div class="padding"></div>
4817
4818     <div class="entry">
4819       <div class="title">
4820         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Quicker_Debian_installations_using_eatmydata.html">Quicker Debian installations using eatmydata</a>
4821       </div>
4822       <div class="date">
4823         25th November 2016
4824       </div>
4825       <div class="body">
4826         <p>Two years ago, I did some experiments with eatmydata and the Debian
4827 installation system, observing how using
4828 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">eatmydata
4829 could speed up the installation</a> quite a bit.  My testing measured
4830 speedup around 20-40 percent for Debian Edu, where we install around
4831 1000 packages from within the installer.  The eatmydata package
4832 provide a way to disable/delay file system flushing.  This is a bit
4833 risky in the general case, as files that should be stored on disk will
4834 stay only in memory a bit longer than expected, causing problems if a
4835 machine crashes at an inconvenient time.  But for an installation, if
4836 the machine crashes during installation the process is normally
4837 restarted, and avoiding disk operations as much as possible to speed
4838 up the process make perfect sense.
4839
4840 <p>I added code in the Debian Edu specific installation code to enable
4841 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libeatmydata">eatmydata</a>,
4842 but did not have time to push it any further.  But a few months ago I
4843 picked it up again and worked with the libeatmydata package maintainer
4844 Mattia Rizzolo to make it easier for everyone to get this installation
4845 speedup in Debian.  Thanks to our cooperation There is now an
4846 eatmydata-udeb package in Debian testing and unstable, and simply
4847 enabling/installing it in debian-installer (d-i) is enough to get the
4848 quicker installations.  It can be enabled using preseeding.  The
4849 following untested kernel argument should do the trick:</p>
4850
4851 <blockquote><pre>
4852 preseed/early_command="anna-install eatmydata-udeb"
4853 </pre></blockquote>
4854
4855 <p>This should ask d-i to install the package inside the d-i
4856 environment early in the installation sequence.  Having it installed
4857 in d-i in turn will make sure the relevant scripts are called just
4858 after debootstrap filled /target/ with the freshly installed Debian
4859 system to configure apt to run dpkg with eatmydata.  This is enough to
4860 speed up the installation process.  There is a proposal to
4861 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/841153">extend the idea a bit further
4862 by using /etc/ld.so.preload instead of apt.conf</a>, but I have not
4863 tested its impact.</p>
4864
4865
4866       </div>
4867       <div class="tags">
4868
4869
4870         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4871
4872
4873       </div>
4874     </div>
4875     <div class="padding"></div>
4876
4877     <div class="entry">
4878       <div class="title">
4879         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oversette_bokm_l_til_nynorsk__enklere_enn_du_tror_takket_v_re_Apertium.html">Oversette bokmål til nynorsk, enklere enn du tror takket være Apertium</a>
4880       </div>
4881       <div class="date">
4882         24th November 2016
4883       </div>
4884       <div class="body">
4885         <p>I Norge er det mange som trenger å skrive både bokmål og nynorsk.
4886 Eksamensoppgaver, offentlige brev og nyheter er eksempler på tekster
4887 der det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skoleoppgavene som
4888 elever over det ganske land skal levere inn hvert år.  Det mange ikke
4889 vet er at selv om de kommersielle alternativene
4890 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google Translate</a> og
4891 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing Translator</a> ikke kan
4892 bidra med å oversette mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finnes det et
4893 utmerket fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Oversetterverktøyet
4894 Apertium har støtte for en rekke språkkombinasjoner, og takket være
4895 den utrettelige innsatsen til blant annet Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
4896 en bruke webtjenesten til å fylle inn en tekst på bokmål eller
4897 nynorsk, og få den automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
4898 Resultatet er ikke perfekt, men et svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og til
4899 er resultatet så bra at det kan benyttes uten endringer.  Jeg vet
4900 f.eks. at store deler av Joomla ble oversatt til nynorsk ved hjelp
4901 Apertium.  Høres det ut som noe du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så fall
4902 <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
4903 teksten din i webskjemaet der.
4904
4905 <p>Hvis du trenger maskinell tilgang til den bakenforliggende
4906 teknologien kan du enten installere pakken
4907 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">apertium-nno-nob</a>
4908 på en Debian-maskin eller bruke web-API-et tilgjengelig fra
4909 api.apertium.org.  Se
4910 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">API-dokumentasjonen</a>
4911 for detaljer om web-API-et.  Her kan du se hvordan resultatet blir for
4912 denne teksten som ble skrevet på bokmål over maskinoversatt til
4913 nynorsk.</p>
4914
4915 <hr/>
4916
4917 <p>I Noreg er det mange som treng å skriva både bokmål og nynorsk.
4918 Eksamensoppgåver, offentlege brev og nyhende er døme på tekster der
4919 det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skuleoppgåvene som
4920 elevar over det ganske land skal levera inn kvart år.  Det mange ikkje
4921 veit er at sjølv om dei kommersielle alternativa
4922 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google *Translate</a> og
4923 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing *Translator</a> ikkje
4924 kan bidra med å omsetja mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finst det eit
4925 utmerka fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Omsetjarverktøyet
4926 *Apertium har støtte for ei rekkje språkkombinasjonar, og takka vera
4927 den utrøyttelege innsatsen til blant anna Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
4928 ein bruka *webtjenesten til å fylla inn ei tekst på bokmål eller
4929 nynorsk, og få den *automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
4930 Resultatet er ikkje perfekt, men eit svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og
4931 til er resultatet så bra at det kan nyttast utan endringar.  Eg veit
4932 t.d. at store delar av *Joomla vart omsett til nynorsk ved hjelp
4933 *Apertium.  Høyrast det ut som noko du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så
4934 fall <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">*Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
4935 teksta di i *webskjemaet der.
4936
4937 <p>Viss du treng *maskinell tilgjenge til den *bakenforliggende
4938 teknologien kan du anten installera pakken
4939 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">*apertium-*nno-*nob</a>
4940 på ein *Debian-maskin eller bruka *web-*API-eit tilgjengeleg frå
4941 *api.*apertium.org.  Sjå
4942 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">*API-dokumentasjonen</a>
4943 for detaljar om *web-*API-eit.  Her kan du sjå korleis resultatet vert
4944 for denne teksta som vart skreva på bokmål over *maskinoversatt til
4945 nynorsk.</p>
4946
4947       </div>
4948       <div class="tags">
4949
4950
4951         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
4952
4953
4954       </div>
4955     </div>
4956     <div class="padding"></div>
4957
4958     <div class="entry">
4959       <div class="title">
4960         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_profiler_for_multi_threaded_software_is_now_in_Debian.html">Coz profiler for multi-threaded software is now in Debian</a>
4961       </div>
4962       <div class="date">
4963         13th November 2016
4964       </div>
4965       <div class="body">
4966         <p><a href="http://coz-profiler.org/">The Coz profiler</a>, a nice
4967 profiler able to run benchmarking experiments on the instrumented
4968 multi-threaded program, finally
4969 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/coz-profiler">made it into
4970 Debian unstable yesterday</A>.  Lluís Vilanova and I have spent many
4971 months since
4972 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">I
4973 blogged about the coz tool</a> in August working with upstream to make
4974 it suitable for Debian.  There are still issues with clang
4975 compatibility, inline assembly only working x86 and minimized
4976 JavaScript libraries.</p>
4977
4978 <p>To test it, install 'coz-profiler' using apt and run it like this:</p>
4979
4980 <p><blockquote>
4981 <tt>coz run --- /path/to/binary-with-debug-info</tt>
4982 </blockquote></p>
4983
4984 <p>This will produce a profile.coz file in the current working
4985 directory with the profiling information.  This is then given to a
4986 JavaScript application provided in the package and available from
4987 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">a project web page</a>.
4988 To start the local copy, invoke it in a browser like this:</p>
4989
4990 <p><blockquote>
4991 <tt>sensible-browser /usr/share/coz-profiler/viewer/index.htm</tt>
4992 </blockquote></p>
4993
4994 <p>See the project home page and the
4995 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">USENIX
4996 ;login: article on Coz</a> for more information on how it is
4997 working.</p>
4998
4999       </div>
5000       <div class="tags">
5001
5002
5003         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5004
5005
5006       </div>
5007     </div>
5008     <div class="padding"></div>
5009
5010     <div class="entry">
5011       <div class="title">
5012         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_own_self_balancing_Lego_Segway.html">My own self balancing Lego Segway</a>
5013       </div>
5014       <div class="date">
5015          4th November 2016
5016       </div>
5017       <div class="body">
5018         <p>A while back I received a Gyro sensor for the NXT
5019 <a href="mindstorms.lego.com">Mindstorms</a> controller as a birthday
5020 present.  It had been on my wishlist for a while, because I wanted to
5021 build a Segway like balancing lego robot.  I had already built
5022 <a href="http://www.nxtprograms.com/NXT2/segway/">a simple balancing
5023 robot</a> with the kids, using the light/color sensor included in the
5024 NXT kit as the balance sensor, but it was not working very well.  It
5025 could balance for a while, but was very sensitive to the light
5026 condition in the room and the reflective properties of the surface and
5027 would fall over after a short while.  I wanted something more robust,
5028 and had
5029 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=NGY1044">the
5030 gyro sensor from HiTechnic</a> I believed would solve it on my
5031 wishlist for some years before it suddenly showed up as a gift from my
5032 loved ones. :)</p>
5033
5034 <p>Unfortunately I have not had time to sit down and play with it
5035 since then.  But that changed some days ago, when I was searching for
5036 lego segway information and came across a recipe from HiTechnic for
5037 building
5038 <a href="http://www.hitechnic.com/blog/gyro-sensor/htway/">the
5039 HTWay</a>, a segway like balancing robot.  Build instructions and
5040 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/upload/786-HTWayC.nxc">source
5041 code</a> was included, so it was just a question of putting it all
5042 together.  And thanks to the great work of many Debian developers, the
5043 compiler needed to build the source for the NXT is already included in
5044 Debian, so I was read to go in less than an hour.  The resulting robot
5045 do not look very impressive in its simplicity:</p>
5046
5047 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-robot.jpeg"></p>
5048
5049 <p>Because I lack the infrared sensor used to control the robot in the
5050 design from HiTechnic, I had to comment out the last task
5051 (taskControl).  I simply placed /* and */ around it get the program
5052 working without that sensor present.  Now it balances just fine until
5053 the battery status run low:</p>
5054
5055 <p align="center"><video width="70%" controls="true">
5056    <source src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-balancing.ogv" type="video/ogg">
5057 </video></p>
5058
5059 <p>Now we would like to teach it how to follow a line and take remote
5060 control instructions using the included Bluetooth receiver in the NXT.</p>
5061
5062 <p>If you, like me, love LEGO and want to make sure we find the tools
5063 they need to work with LEGO in Debian and all our derivative
5064 distributions like Ubuntu, check out
5065 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the LEGO designers
5066 project page</a> and join the Debian LEGO team.  Personally I own a
5067 RCX and NXT controller (no EV3), and would like to make sure the
5068 Debian tools needed to program the systems I own work as they
5069 should.</p>
5070
5071       </div>
5072       <div class="tags">
5073
5074
5075         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
5076
5077
5078       </div>
5079     </div>
5080     <div class="padding"></div>
5081
5082     <div class="entry">
5083       <div class="title">
5084         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile phone</a>
5085       </div>
5086       <div class="date">
5087         10th October 2016
5088       </div>
5089       <div class="body">
5090         <p>In July
5091 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">I
5092 wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working</a> without
5093 the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone).  It is
5094 time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.</p>
5095
5096 <p>The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use
5097 it regularly to chat with my loved ones.  I had a major snag at the
5098 end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my
5099 setup, identity and keys.  The reason behind this major mess was
5100 running out of disk space.  To avoid that ever happening again I have
5101 started storing everything in <tt>userdata/</tt> in git, to be able to
5102 roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake.  I
5103 had to use it once after introducing the git backup.  When rolling
5104 back to an earlier version, one need to use the 'reset session' option
5105 in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the
5106 problem.  I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the
5107 protocol to detect rollback attacks.  The git repository is rather big
5108 (674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the
5109 content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare
5110 time.</p>
5111
5112 <p>I've also hit the 90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this
5113 make it impossible to send messages using Signal.  I could still
5114 receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send.
5115 I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to
5116 upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no
5117 protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and
5118 thus try to keep the number of support requests down.</p>
5119
5120 <p>Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly,
5121 making the old patch fail to apply cleanly.  Below is an updated
5122 patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal.  The
5123 original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console
5124 and call a function from there.  I got help from a friend with more
5125 JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI
5126 button instead.  This mean that to get started you just need to run
5127 the wrapper and click the 'Register without mobile phone' to get going
5128 now.  I've also modified the timeout code to always set it to 90 days
5129 in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.</p>
5130
5131 <p>So, the updated recipe for Debian Jessie:</p>
5132
5133 <ol>
5134
5135 <li>First, install required packages to get the source code and the
5136 browser you need.  Signal only work with Chrome/Chromium, as far as I
5137 know, so you need to install it.
5138
5139 <pre>
5140 apt install git tor chromium
5141 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
5142 </pre></li>
5143
5144 <li>Modify the source code using command listed in the the patch
5145 block below.</li>
5146
5147 <li>Start Signal using the run-signal-app wrapper (for example using
5148 <tt>`pwd`/run-signal-app</tt>).
5149
5150 <li>Click on the 'Register without mobile phone', will in a phone
5151 number you can receive calls to the next minute, receive the
5152 verification code and enter it into the form field and press
5153 'Register'.  Note, the phone number you use will be user Signal
5154 username, ie the way others can find you on Signal.</li>
5155
5156 <li>You can now use Signal to contact others.  Note, new contacts do
5157 not show up in the contact list until you restart Signal, and there is
5158 no way to assign names to Contacts.  There is also no way to create or
5159 update chat groups.  I suspect this is because the web app do not have
5160 a associated contact database.</li>
5161
5162 </ol>
5163
5164 <p>I am still a bit uneasy about using Signal, because of the way its
5165 main author moxie0 reject federation and accept dependencies to major
5166 corporations like Google (part of the code is fetched from Google) and
5167 Amazon (the central coordination point is owned by Amazon).  See for
5168 example
5169 <a href="https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37">the
5170 LibreSignal issue tracker</a> for a thread documenting the authors
5171 view on these issues.  But the network effect is strong in this case,
5172 and several of the people I want to communicate with already use
5173 Signal.  Perhaps we can all move to <a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a>
5174 once it <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/830265">work on my
5175 laptop</a>?  It already work on Windows and Android, and is included
5176 in <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">Debian</a> and
5177 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ring">Ubuntu</a>, but not
5178 working on Debian Stable.</p>
5179
5180 <p>Anyway, this is the patch I apply to the Signal code to get it
5181 working.  It switch to the production servers, disable to timeout,
5182 make registration easier and add the shell wrapper:</p>
5183
5184 <pre>
5185 cd Signal-Desktop; cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p1
5186 diff --git a/js/background.js b/js/background.js
5187 index 24b4c1d..579345f 100644
5188 --- a/js/background.js
5189 +++ b/js/background.js
5190 @@ -33,9 +33,9 @@
5191          });
5192      });
5193
5194 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
5195 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org';
5196      var SERVER_PORTS = [80, 4433, 8443];
5197 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
5198 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
5199      var messageReceiver;
5200      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
5201          if (messageReceiver) {
5202 diff --git a/js/expire.js b/js/expire.js
5203 index 639aeae..beb91c3 100644
5204 --- a/js/expire.js
5205 +++ b/js/expire.js
5206 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
5207  ;(function() {
5208      'use strict';
5209 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
5210 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = Date.now() + (90 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
5211
5212      window.extension = window.extension || {};
5213
5214 diff --git a/js/views/install_view.js b/js/views/install_view.js
5215 index 7816f4f..1d6233b 100644
5216 --- a/js/views/install_view.js
5217 +++ b/js/views/install_view.js
5218 @@ -38,7 +38,8 @@
5219              return {
5220                  'click .step1': this.selectStep.bind(this, 1),
5221                  'click .step2': this.selectStep.bind(this, 2),
5222 -                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3)
5223 +                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3),
5224 +                'click .callreg': function() { extension.install('standalone') },
5225              };
5226          },
5227          clearQR: function() {
5228 diff --git a/options.html b/options.html
5229 index dc0f28e..8d709f6 100644
5230 --- a/options.html
5231 +++ b/options.html
5232 @@ -14,7 +14,10 @@
5233          &lt;div class='nav'>
5234            &lt;h1>{{ installWelcome }}&lt;/h1>
5235            &lt;p>{{ installTagline }}&lt;/p>
5236 -          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a> &lt;/div>
5237 +          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a>
5238 +           &lt;br> &lt;a class="button callreg">Register without mobile phone&lt;/a>
5239 +
5240 +         &lt;/div>
5241            &lt;span class='dot step1 selected'>&lt;/span>
5242            &lt;span class='dot step2'>&lt;/span>
5243            &lt;span class='dot step3'>&lt;/span>
5244 --- /dev/null   2016-10-07 09:55:13.730181472 +0200
5245 +++ b/run-signal-app   2016-10-10 08:54:09.434172391 +0200
5246 @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
5247 +#!/bin/sh
5248 +set -e
5249 +cd $(dirname $0)
5250 +mkdir -p userdata
5251 +userdata="`pwd`/userdata"
5252 +if [ -d "$userdata" ] && [ ! -d "$userdata/.git" ] ; then
5253 +    (cd $userdata && git init)
5254 +fi
5255 +(cd $userdata && git add . && git commit -m "Current status." || true)
5256 +exec chromium \
5257 +  --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
5258 +  --user-data-dir=$userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
5259 EOF
5260 chmod a+rx run-signal-app
5261 </pre>
5262
5263 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5264 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5265 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5266
5267       </div>
5268       <div class="tags">
5269
5270
5271         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5272
5273
5274       </div>
5275     </div>
5276     <div class="padding"></div>
5277
5278     <div class="entry">
5279       <div class="title">
5280         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html">Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier</a>
5281       </div>
5282       <div class="date">
5283          7th October 2016
5284       </div>
5285       <div class="body">
5286         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
5287 system</a> provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
5288 packages support the hardware in a given machine.  The command line
5289 tool <tt>isenkram-lookup</tt> and the tasksel options provide a
5290 convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
5291 hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
5292 firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
5293 a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
5294 while using the computer.  For example, if you plug in a smart card
5295 reader, the system will ask if you want to install <tt>pcscd</tt> if
5296 that package isn't already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
5297 camera the system will ask if you want to install <tt>cheese</tt> if
5298 cheese is currently missing.  This already work just fine.</p>
5299
5300 <p>But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
5301 package names.  When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
5302 I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
5303 made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
5304 http.  This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
5305 as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.</p>
5306
5307 <p>The hardware is identified using modalias strings.  The modalias
5308 design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
5309 made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
5310 globbing.  It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
5311 identifiers.</p>
5312
5313 <p>The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
5314 information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
5315 isenkram propose obsolete packages too.  But along came AppStream, a
5316 cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
5317 software packages.  When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
5318 people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
5319 modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
5320 mapping hardware to packages.  This idea was accepted and AppStream is
5321 now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
5322 distribution neutral way.  I wrote
5323 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">a
5324 recipe on how to add such meta-information</a> in a blog post last
5325 December.  If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
5326 announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.</p>
5327
5328 <p>In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
5329 RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream.  The effect is
5330 that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
5331 machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
5332 it working.  The intention is that this should allow the local user to
5333 start programming his robot controller right away without having to
5334 guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.</p>
5335
5336 <p>But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
5337 unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
5338 annoying.  The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
5339 the USB device for programming the unit.  This used to work, but no
5340 longer in Jessie and Stretch.  After some investigation and asking
5341 around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
5342 changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices.  The
5343 ConsoleKit mechanism from <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>
5344 no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
5345 plugdev group during login.  Michael Biebl told me that this method
5346 was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead.  This was good
5347 news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
5348 directory like LDAP.  Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
5349 access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
5350 process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
5351 setup.  Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
5352 for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.</p>
5353
5354 <p>The new system uses a udev tag, 'uaccess'.  It can either be
5355 applied directly for a device, or is applied in
5356 /lib/udev/rules.d/70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices.  As the
5357 LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
5358 tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages.  Here
5359 is one example.  For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
5360 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/60-nqc.rules</tt> file now look like this:
5361
5362 <p><pre>
5363 SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="0694", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", \
5364     SYMLINK+="rcx-%k", TAG+="uaccess"
5365 </pre></p>
5366
5367 <p>The key part is the 'TAG+="uaccess"' at the end.  I suspect all
5368 packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
5369 changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
5370 <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>).  Perhaps a lintian check should be created
5371 to detect this?</p>
5372
5373 <p>I've been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
5374 It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
5375 detail like the udev-acl tag used by
5376 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>.  If it is, I guess the
5377 indirect method is the preferred way.  Michael
5378 <a href="https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288">asked for more
5379 documentation from the systemd project</a> and I hope it will make
5380 this clearer.  For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
5381 is already handled by <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>, and add the tag
5382 directly if no such class exist.</p>
5383
5384 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
5385 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
5386 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
5387
5388 <p>To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
5389 please join us on our IRC channel
5390 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> and join
5391 the <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/">Debian
5392 LEGO team</a> in the Alioth project we created yesterday.  A mailing
5393 list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)</p>
5394
5395 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5396 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5397 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5398
5399       </div>
5400       <div class="tags">
5401
5402
5403         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>.
5404
5405
5406       </div>
5407     </div>
5408     <div class="padding"></div>
5409
5410     <div class="entry">
5411       <div class="title">
5412         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_draft_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_now_public.html">First draft Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook now public</a>
5413       </div>
5414       <div class="date">
5415         30th August 2016
5416       </div>
5417       <div class="body">
5418         <p>In April we
5419 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">started
5420 to work</a> on a Norwegian Bokmål edition of the "open access" book on
5421 how to set up and administrate a Debian system.  Today I am happy to
5422 report that the first draft is now publicly available.  You can find
5423 it on <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/">get the Debian
5424 Administrator's Handbook page</a> (under Other languages).  The first
5425 eight chapters have a first draft translation, and we are working on
5426 proofreading the content.  If you want to help out, please start
5427 contributing using
5428 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
5429 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
5430 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
5431 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
5432 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
5433 contributors</a>.  A good way to contribute is to proofread the text
5434 and update weblate if you find errors.</p>
5435
5436 <p>Our goal is still to make the Norwegian book available on paper as well as
5437 electronic form.</p>
5438
5439       </div>
5440       <div class="tags">
5441
5442
5443         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5444
5445
5446       </div>
5447     </div>
5448     <div class="padding"></div>
5449
5450     <div class="entry">
5451       <div class="title">
5452         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">Coz can help you find bottlenecks in multi-threaded software - nice free software</a>
5453       </div>
5454       <div class="date">
5455         11th August 2016
5456       </div>
5457       <div class="body">
5458         <p>This summer, I read a great article
5459 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">coz:
5460 This Is the Profiler You're Looking For</a>" in USENIX ;login: about
5461 how to profile multi-threaded programs.  It presented a system for
5462 profiling software by running experiences in the running program,
5463 testing how run time performance is affected by "speeding up" parts of
5464 the code to various degrees compared to a normal run.  It does this by
5465 slowing down parallel threads while the "faster up" code is running
5466 and measure how this affect processing time.  The processing time is
5467 measured using probes inserted into the code, either using progress
5468 counters (COZ_PROGRESS) or as latency meters (COZ_BEGIN/COZ_END).  It
5469 can also measure unmodified code by measuring complete the program
5470 runtime and running the program several times instead.</p>
5471
5472 <p>The project and presentation was so inspiring that I would like to
5473 get the system into Debian.  I
5474 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=830708">created
5475 a WNPP request for it</a> and contacted upstream to try to make the
5476 system ready for Debian by sending patches.  The build process need to
5477 be changed a bit to avoid running 'git clone' to get dependencies, and
5478 to include the JavaScript web page used to visualize the collected
5479 profiling information included in the source package.
5480 But I expect that should work out fairly soon.</p>
5481
5482 <p>The way the system work is fairly simple.  To run an coz experiment
5483 on a binary with debug symbols available, start the program like this:
5484
5485 <p><blockquote><pre>
5486 coz run --- program-to-run
5487 </pre></blockquote></p>
5488
5489 <p>This will create a text file profile.coz with the instrumentation
5490 information.  To show what part of the code affect the performance
5491 most, use a web browser and either point it to
5492 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/</a>
5493 or use the copy from git (in the gh-pages branch).  Check out this web
5494 site to have a look at several example profiling runs and get an idea what the end result from the profile runs look like.  To make the
5495 profiling more useful you include &lt;coz.h&gt; and insert the
5496 COZ_PROGRESS or COZ_BEGIN and COZ_END at appropriate places in the
5497 code, rebuild and run the profiler.  This allow coz to do more
5498 targeted experiments.</p>
5499
5500 <p>A video published by ACM
5501 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0V-p1odPg">presenting the
5502 Coz profiler</a> is available from Youtube.  There is also a paper
5503 from the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles available
5504 titled
5505 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/curtsinger">Coz:
5506 finding code that counts with causal profiling</a>.</p>
5507
5508 <p><a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz">The source code</a>
5509 for Coz is available from github.  It will only build with clang
5510 because it uses a
5511 <a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55606">C++
5512 feature missing in GCC</a>, but I've submitted
5513 <a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz/pull/67">a patch to solve
5514 it</a> and hope it will be included in the upstream source soon.</p>
5515
5516 <p>Please get in touch if you, like me, would like to see this piece
5517 of software in Debian.  I would very much like some help with the
5518 packaging effort, as I lack the in depth knowledge on how to package
5519 C++ libraries.</p>
5520
5521       </div>
5522       <div class="tags">
5523
5524
5525         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
5526
5527
5528       </div>
5529     </div>
5530     <div class="padding"></div>
5531
5532     <div class="entry">
5533       <div class="title">
5534         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlocking_HTC_Desire_HD_on_Linux_using_unruu_and_fastboot.html">Unlocking HTC Desire HD on Linux using unruu and fastboot</a>
5535       </div>
5536       <div class="date">
5537          7th July 2016
5538       </div>
5539       <div class="body">
5540         <p>Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved
5541 to be a slight challenge.  Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it
5542 again.  It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up
5543 <a href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy">an
5544 hardened Android installation</a> from the Tor project blog on a
5545 device I had access to.  It is a old mobile phone with a broken
5546 microphone The initial idea had been to just
5547 <a href="http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_ace">install
5548 CyanogenMod on it</a>, but did not quite find time to start on it
5549 until a few days ago.</p>
5550
5551 <p>The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot
5552 loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select
5553 'fastboot' before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux
5554 machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running 'fastboot
5555 oem get_identifier_token', (5) request the device unlocking key using
5556 the <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader/">HTC developer web
5557 site</a> and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.</p>
5558
5559 <p>Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029
5560 or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027.  This
5561 apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and
5562 running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft
5563 require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not.  So I had to
5564 come up with a different approach.  I got a lot of help from AndyCap
5565 on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without
5566 him.</p>
5567
5568 <p>First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from
5569 <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/ruu/PD9810000_Ace_Sense30_S_hboot_2.00.0029.exe">the
5570 windows binary for HTC Desire HD</a> downloaded as 'the RUU' from HTC.
5571 For this there is is <a href="https://github.com/kmdm/unruu/">a github
5572 project named unruu</a> using libunshield.  The unshield tool did not
5573 recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip,
5574 containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which
5575 devices it would work for.</p>
5576
5577 <p>Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device.  For this I
5578 followed some instructions
5579 <a href="http://www.htc1guru.com/2013/09/new-ruu-zips-posted/">available
5580 from HTC1Guru.com</a>, and ran these commands as root on a Linux
5581 machine with Debian testing:</p>
5582
5583 <p><pre>
5584 adb reboot-bootloader
5585 fastboot oem rebootRUU
5586 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
5587 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
5588 fastboot reboot
5589 </pre></p>
5590
5591 <p>The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect,
5592 as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing.
5593 The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the
5594 device on while holding volume down and the power button should work
5595 too.</p>
5596
5597 <p>With the new hboot version in place I could start following the
5598 instructions on the HTC developer web site.  I got the device token
5599 like this:</p>
5600
5601 <p><pre>
5602 fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2>&1 | sed 's/(bootloader) //'
5603 </pre>
5604
5605 <p>And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like
5606 this:</p>
5607
5608 <p><pre>
5609 fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
5610 </pre></p>
5611
5612 <p>And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I
5613 could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device.
5614 So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone
5615 before I start.  We will see what happen next.  Perhaps I should
5616 install <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> on it. :)</p>
5617
5618       </div>
5619       <div class="tags">
5620
5621
5622         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
5623
5624
5625       </div>
5626     </div>
5627     <div class="padding"></div>
5628
5629     <div class="entry">
5630       <div class="title">
5631         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">How to use the Signal app if you only have a land line (ie no mobile phone)</a>
5632       </div>
5633       <div class="date">
5634          3rd July 2016
5635       </div>
5636       <div class="body">
5637         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to test
5638 <a href="https://whispersystems.org/">the Signal app</a>, as it is
5639 said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
5640 friends and family are already using it.  As I by choice do not own a
5641 mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected.  And I wanted to
5642 have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
5643 machine.  But yesterday I managed to get it working.  I used the
5644 Github source, compared it to the source in
5645 <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US">the
5646 Signal Chrome app</a> available from the Chrome web store, applied
5647 patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
5648 asked for the hidden "register without a smart phone" form.  Here is
5649 the recipe how I did it.</p>
5650
5651 <p>First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
5652
5653 <pre>
5654 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
5655 </pre>
5656
5657 <p>Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be
5658 able to talk to other Signal users:</p>
5659
5660 <pre>
5661 cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p0
5662 diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js
5663 --- ./js/background.js  2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
5664 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js    2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
5665 @@ -47,8 +47,8 @@
5666          });
5667      });
5668
5669 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
5670 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
5671 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:4433';
5672 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
5673      var messageReceiver;
5674      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
5675          if (messageReceiver) {
5676 diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
5677 --- ./js/expire.js      2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
5678 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
5679 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
5680  ;(function() {
5681      'use strict';
5682 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
5683 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 1474492690000;
5684
5685      window.extension = window.extension || {};
5686
5687 EOF
5688 </pre>
5689
5690 <p>The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
5691 an expiration timestamp.  This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
5692 It is set 90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
5693 The value is seconds since 1970 times 1000, as far as I can tell.</p>
5694
5695 <p>Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
5696 script to launch Signal in Chromium.</p>
5697
5698 <pre>
5699 #!/bin/sh
5700 cd $(dirname $0)
5701 mkdir -p userdata
5702 exec chromium \
5703   --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
5704   --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
5705 </pre>
5706
5707 <p> The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
5708 SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
5709 Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
5710 will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
5711 connections if they use source IP address.</p>
5712
5713 <p>When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
5714 "Standalone Registration" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
5715 repository.  I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
5716 Chromium debugging tool, visited the 'Console' tab and wrote
5717 'extension.install("standalone")' on the console prompt to get the
5718 registration form.  Then I entered by land line phone number and
5719 pressed 'Call'.  5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
5720 repeated the verification code three times.  After entering the number
5721 into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
5722 Signal from my laptop.
5723
5724 <p>As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
5725 whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
5726 but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
5727 setup.  It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
5728 content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
5729 exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
5730 So better than many options, but not great.  And sadly the usage is
5731 connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
5732 to associate it to my home and person.  I would prefer it if only
5733 those I knew could tell who I was on Signal.  There are options
5734 avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
5735 using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.</p>
5736
5737 <p><strong>Update 2017-01-10</strong>: There is an updated blog post
5738 on this topic in
5739 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience
5740 and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile
5741 phone</a>.</p>
5742
5743       </div>
5744       <div class="tags">
5745
5746
5747         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5748
5749
5750       </div>
5751     </div>
5752     <div class="padding"></div>
5753
5754     <div class="entry">
5755       <div class="title">
5756         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?</a>
5757       </div>
5758       <div class="date">
5759          6th June 2016
5760       </div>
5761       <div class="body">
5762         <p>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
5763 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">which
5764 multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
5765 MIME types</a>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
5766 the various players claimed support for.  The range was from 55 to 130
5767 MIME types.  I suspect most media formats are supported by all
5768 players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
5769 their desktop files.  There are probably also some bogus MIME types
5770 listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.</p>
5771
5772 <p>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
5773 the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
5774 and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
5775 favorite media player VLC.  The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
5776 yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
5777 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">Multimedia
5778 player MIME type support status</a> Debian wiki page.</p>
5779
5780 <p>The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?  It is VLC, followed by
5781 totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
5782 kmplayer.  I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
5783 several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
5784 toten and parole.</p>
5785
5786 <p>A sad observation is that only 14 MIME types are listed as
5787 supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
5788 desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
5789 audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
5790 video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
5791 video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo.  Personally I find
5792 it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
5793 players in Debian.  As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
5794 formats.</p>
5795
5796       </div>
5797       <div class="tags">
5798
5799
5800         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5801
5802
5803       </div>
5804     </div>
5805     <div class="padding"></div>
5806
5807     <div class="entry">
5808       <div class="title">
5809         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html">A program should be able to open its own files on Linux</a>
5810       </div>
5811       <div class="date">
5812          5th June 2016
5813       </div>
5814       <div class="body">
5815         <p>Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
5816 decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
5817 talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine.  I
5818 wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
5819 the day before I would give the talk.  The next day I took a plane to
5820 the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
5821 started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
5822 that kpresenter refused to load its own data file.  I cursed a bit and
5823 started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
5824 present when I arrived.  I tested that the saved files could be
5825 loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued.  I continued to polish the
5826 slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
5827 be loaded into kpresenter.  In the end I had to rewrite the slides
5828 three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
5829 shorter.  After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem &ndash;
5830 kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
5831 Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
5832 program to make slides.  The point I'm trying to make is that we
5833 expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
5834 embarrassing to its developers if it can't.</p>
5835
5836 <p>Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
5837 files from the desktop file browser?  It is not a uncommon problem.  A
5838 while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
5839 gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
5840 browser would refuse to open.  No video player claimed to understand
5841 such file.  I tracked down the cause being <tt>file --mime-type</tt>
5842 returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
5843 installed listed as a MIME type they would understand.  I asked for
5844 <a href="http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=382">file to change its
5845 behavour</a> and use the MIME type video/ogg instead.  I also asked
5846 several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
5847 the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files.  After a
5848 while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
5849 output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.</p>
5850
5851 <p>But history repeats itself.  A few days ago I tested the music
5852 system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
5853 browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
5854 (*.rg).  I've reported <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/825993">the
5855 rosegarden problem to BTS</a> and a fix is commited to git and will be
5856 included in the next upload.  To increase the chance of me remembering
5857 how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
5858 from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.</p>
5859
5860 <p>The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
5861 There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file.  The output from
5862 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> mentioned above, and the content of the
5863 shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/).  The file MIME
5864 type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
5865 information is collected from
5866 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/">the
5867 desktop files</a> available in /usr/share/applications/.  If there is
5868 one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
5869 activated when asking to open a given file.  If there are more, one
5870 can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
5871 selecting the wanted one using 'Open with' or similar.  In general
5872 this work well.  But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
5873 type (preferably
5874 <a href="http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">a
5875 MIME type registered with IANA</a>), file and/or the shared MIME
5876 registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
5877 type in its list of supported MIME types.</p>
5878
5879 <p>The <tt>/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml</tt> entry for
5880 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec">the
5881 Shared MIME database</a> look like this:</p>
5882
5883 <p><blockquote><pre>
5884 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
5885 &lt;mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info"&gt;
5886   &lt;mime-type type="audio/x-rosegarden"&gt;
5887     &lt;sub-class-of type="application/x-gzip"/&gt;
5888     &lt;comment&gt;Rosegarden project file&lt;/comment&gt;
5889     &lt;glob pattern="*.rg"/&gt;
5890   &lt;/mime-type&gt;
5891 &lt;/mime-info&gt;
5892 </pre></blockquote></p>
5893
5894 <p>This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
5895 (it is a gzipped XML file).  Note, it is much better to use an
5896 official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
5897 unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.</p>
5898
5899 <p>The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
5900 audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
5901 file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:</p>
5902
5903 <p><blockquote><pre>
5904 % grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
5905 MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
5906 X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
5907 %
5908 </pre></blockquote></p>
5909
5910 <p>The fix was to add "audio/x-rosegarden;" at the end of the
5911 MimeType= line.</p>
5912
5913 <p>If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
5914 selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
5915 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> for the file, ensure the file ending and
5916 MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
5917 that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
5918 support for this MIME type.  If not, please report a bug to have it
5919 fixed. :)</p>
5920
5921       </div>
5922       <div class="tags">
5923
5924
5925         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5926
5927
5928       </div>
5929     </div>
5930     <div class="padding"></div>
5931
5932     <div class="entry">
5933       <div class="title">
5934         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html">Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version 0.23 available in Debian unstable</a>
5935       </div>
5936       <div class="date">
5937         25th May 2016
5938       </div>
5939       <div class="body">
5940         <p><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
5941 system</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
5942 related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
5943 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
5944 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
5945 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
5946 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
5947 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
5948 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
5949 install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
5950 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
5951 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).</p>
5952
5953 <p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
5954 good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
5955 is going away and is generally being replaced by
5956 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit</a>,
5957 so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
5958 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
5959 rewrite finally took place.  I've just uploaded a new version of
5960 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
5961 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
5962 install the <tt>isenkram</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
5963 and see if it is recognised.</p>
5964
5965 <p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
5966 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
5967 program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:</p>
5968
5969 <p><blockquote><pre>
5970 % isenkram-lookup
5971 bluez
5972 cheese
5973 fprintd
5974 fprintd-demo
5975 gkrellm-thinkbat
5976 hdapsd
5977 libpam-fprintd
5978 pidgin-blinklight
5979 thinkfan
5980 tleds
5981 tp-smapi-dkms
5982 tp-smapi-source
5983 tpb
5984 %p
5985 </pre></blockquote></p>
5986
5987 <p>The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
5988 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
5989 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
5990 cross distribution appstream system</a>.
5991 See
5992 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
5993 blog posts about isenkram</a> to learn how to do that.</p>
5994
5995       </div>
5996       <div class="tags">
5997
5998
5999         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
6000
6001
6002       </div>
6003     </div>
6004     <div class="padding"></div>
6005
6006     <div class="entry">
6007       <div class="title">
6008         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html">Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian</a>
6009       </div>
6010       <div class="date">
6011         23rd May 2016
6012       </div>
6013       <div class="body">
6014         <p>Yesterday I updated the
6015 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
6016 package in Debian</a> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
6017 enterprising users.  There were some nice user and visible changes.
6018 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work.  A design flaw in
6019 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
6020 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
6021 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
6022 called from the desktop menu.  I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
6023 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
6024 graph window pop up as expected.</p>
6025
6026 <p>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
6027 graphs (the one showing the last few hours).  New is also the user of
6028 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red.  The percentages
6029 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
6030 capacity.</p>
6031
6032 <p align="center"><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-rate.png"/></p>
6033
6034 <p>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
6035 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
6036 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time.  The red
6037 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers 100 percent:
6038
6039 <p align="center"><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-history.png"/></p>
6040
6041 <p>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to 80
6042 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
6043 shrinking. :(</p>
6044
6045 <p>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
6046 more hardware models.  On some hardware, Linux power supply
6047 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
6048 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/.  Now
6049 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
6050 machine.</p>
6051
6052 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
6053 check out the
6054 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
6055 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
6056 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from <a
6057 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
6058 Patches are very welcome.</p>
6059
6060 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6061 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6062 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6063
6064       </div>
6065       <div class="tags">
6066
6067
6068         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6069
6070
6071       </div>
6072     </div>
6073     <div class="padding"></div>
6074
6075     <div class="entry">
6076       <div class="title">
6077         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html">Debian now with ZFS on Linux included</a>
6078       </div>
6079       <div class="date">
6080         12th May 2016
6081       </div>
6082       <div class="body">
6083         <p>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
6084 <a href="http://zfsonlinux.org/">ZFS for Linux</a> finally entered
6085 Debian.  The package status can be seen on
6086 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux">the package tracker
6087 for zfs-linux</a>.  and
6088 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
6089 team status page</a>. If you want to help out, please join us.
6090 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">The
6091 source code</a> is available via git on Alioth.  It would also be
6092 great if you could help out with
6093 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms">the dkms package</a>, as
6094 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.</p>
6095
6096       </div>
6097       <div class="tags">
6098
6099
6100         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6101
6102
6103       </div>
6104     </div>
6105     <div class="padding"></div>
6106
6107     <div class="entry">
6108       <div class="title">
6109         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">What is the best multimedia player in Debian?</a>
6110       </div>
6111       <div class="date">
6112          8th May 2016
6113       </div>
6114       <div class="body">
6115         <p><strong>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
6116 Debian claim support for most file formats.</strong></p>
6117
6118 <p>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
6119 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
6120 Edu.  I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
6121 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
6122 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
6123 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">The
6124 result</a> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
6125 not been updated for a while.  But browser plugins are less relevant
6126 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
6127 players.</p>
6128
6129 <p>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
6130 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
6131 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why.  The cause is a
6132 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
6133 desktop file</a>.  In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
6134 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
6135 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
6136 two for VLC.  This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
6137 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
6138 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
6139 support most file formats.</p>
6140
6141 <p>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
6142 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">a
6143 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
6144 in the table</a>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
6145 listed first in the table.</p>
6146
6147 </p>The best multimedia player in Debian?  It is totem, followed by
6148 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
6149 kmplayer.  Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
6150 support?</p>
6151
6152       </div>
6153       <div class="tags">
6154
6155
6156         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6157
6158
6159       </div>
6160     </div>
6161     <div class="padding"></div>
6162
6163     <div class="entry">
6164       <div class="title">
6165         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html">The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled</a>
6166       </div>
6167       <div class="date">
6168          4th May 2016
6169       </div>
6170       <div class="body">
6171         A friend of mine made me aware of
6172 <a href="https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/">The Pyra</a>, a
6173 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled.  I
6174 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)</p>
6175
6176 <p>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
6177 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a 5"
6178 LCD touch screen.  The 6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
6179 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
6180 confirming this.  The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
6181 last I heard last night was that 22 more orders were needed before
6182 production started.</p>
6183
6184 <p>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
6185 Debian.  Please let me know if you know of any others.  Is it the
6186 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?</p>
6187
6188       </div>
6189       <div class="tags">
6190
6191
6192         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6193
6194
6195       </div>
6196     </div>
6197     <div class="padding"></div>
6198
6199     <div class="entry">
6200       <div class="title">
6201         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Lets make a Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
6202       </div>
6203       <div class="date">
6204         10th April 2016
6205       </div>
6206       <div class="body">
6207         <p>During this weekends
6208 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml">bug
6209 squashing party and developer gathering</a>, we decided to do our part
6210 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
6211 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
6212 <a href="http://debian-handbook.info/">Debian Administrator's Handbook
6213 project</a> to get started.  If you want to help out, please start
6214 contributing using
6215 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
6216 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
6217 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
6218 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
6219 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
6220 contributors</a>.</p>
6221
6222 <p>The book is already available on paper in English, French and
6223 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
6224 Bokmål too.  In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
6225 Mobi versions available.  And there are incomplete translations
6226 available for many more languages.</p>
6227
6228       </div>
6229       <div class="tags">
6230
6231
6232         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6233
6234
6235       </div>
6236     </div>
6237     <div class="padding"></div>
6238
6239     <div class="entry">
6240       <div class="title">
6241         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_in_two_hundred_Debian_users_using_ZFS_on_Linux_.html">One in two hundred Debian users using ZFS on Linux?</a>
6242       </div>
6243       <div class="date">
6244          7th April 2016
6245       </div>
6246       <div class="body">
6247         <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
6248 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found.  I use
6249 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
6250 But I might be wrong.</p>
6251
6252 <p>According to
6253 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
6254 results for spl-linux</a>, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
6255 0.53% of the population, with the package installed.  As far as I know
6256 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
6257 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
6258 installation on Linux in Debian.  In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
6259 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
6260 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
6261 results for zfsutils</a> show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
6262 the population.  So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.</p>
6263
6264 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
6265 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
6266 in April 2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
6267 cleared, the package is still not in Debian.  The package is again in
6268 the NEW queue.  Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
6269 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
6270 to give up.  The current status can be seen on
6271 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
6272 team status page</a>, and
6273 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
6274 source code</a> is available on Alioth.</p>
6275
6276 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
6277 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
6278 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
6279 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
6280 to help out the team.  This was the background for my blog post about
6281 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
6282 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>, and I
6283 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
6284 copyright file.  It is not very easy to check every one of the around
6285 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
6286 right.  If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
6287 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.</p>
6288
6289       </div>
6290       <div class="tags">
6291
6292
6293         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6294
6295
6296       </div>
6297     </div>
6298     <div class="padding"></div>
6299
6300     <div class="entry">
6301       <div class="title">
6302         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html">Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian</a>
6303       </div>
6304       <div class="date">
6305         23rd March 2016
6306       </div>
6307       <div class="body">
6308         <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
6309 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
6310 later processing and graphing.  The original collector store the
6311 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
6312 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
6313 full level, last full level and current battery level.  This make it
6314 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
6315 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.</p>
6316
6317 <p>The new tools are available in <tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/</tt>
6318 in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable.  Get the new battery level graph
6319 and lifetime prediction by running:
6320
6321 <p><pre>
6322 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
6323 </pre></p>
6324
6325 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.</p>
6326
6327 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
6328 entry yet):</p>
6329
6330 <p><pre>
6331 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
6332 </pre></p>
6333
6334 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
6335 when there are few data points.  The graphs look a bit better with a
6336 few years of data.</p>
6337
6338 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
6339 collector broke in Debian.  The scripts in
6340 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/</tt> were no longer executed.  I
6341 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
6342 know.  The issue is reported as
6343 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #818649</a> against
6344 pm-utils.  I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
6345 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
6346 disconnected.  With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
6347 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.</p>
6348
6349 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
6350 check out the
6351 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
6352 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
6353 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
6354 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
6355 As always, patches are very welcome.</p>
6356
6357       </div>
6358       <div class="tags">
6359
6360
6361         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6362
6363
6364       </div>
6365     </div>
6366     <div class="padding"></div>
6367
6368     <div class="entry">
6369       <div class="title">
6370         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html">Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</a>
6371       </div>
6372       <div class="date">
6373         15th March 2016
6374       </div>
6375       <div class="body">
6376         <p>Back in September, I blogged about
6377 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
6378 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
6379 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
6380 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
6381 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
6382 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
6383 package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
6384 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
6385 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
6386 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.</p>
6387
6388 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
6389 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
6390 battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
6391 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
6392 able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
6393 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
6394 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
6395 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
6396 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
6397 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
6398 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
6399
6400 <p align="center"><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width="70%" align="center"></p>
6401
6402 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
6403 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
6404 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
6405 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
6406 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
6407 bit more before I make a new release.</p>
6408
6409 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
6410 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
6411 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
6412 and graphing.</p>
6413
6414 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
6415 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
6416 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
6417 on
6418 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
6419 I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
6420
6421       </div>
6422       <div class="tags">
6423
6424
6425         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6426
6427
6428       </div>
6429     </div>
6430     <div class="padding"></div>
6431
6432     <div class="entry">
6433       <div class="title">
6434         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>
6435       </div>
6436       <div class="date">
6437         19th February 2016
6438       </div>
6439       <div class="body">
6440         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
6441 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
6442 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
6443 the code in the package in question, preferably in
6444 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
6445 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
6446
6447 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
6448 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
6449 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
6450 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
6451 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
6452 out what was wrong with
6453 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
6454 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
6455 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
6456 semi-automatically.</p>
6457
6458 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
6459 file based on the code in the source package,
6460 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
6461 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
6462 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
6463 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
6464 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
6465 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
6466 option in
6467 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
6468 blog posts from 2014</a>.
6469
6470 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
6471
6472 <p><pre>
6473 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
6474 </pre></p>
6475
6476 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
6477 this might not be the best option.</p>
6478
6479 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
6480 this approach in
6481 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
6482 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
6483 dpkg-copyright' option:
6484
6485 <p><pre>
6486 cme update dpkg-copyright
6487 </pre></p>
6488
6489 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
6490 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
6491
6492 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
6493 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
6494 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
6495 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
6496 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
6497 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
6498 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
6499 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
6500 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
6501 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
6502
6503 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
6504 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
6505 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
6506 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
6507
6508 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
6509 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
6510 planet.debian.org.</p>
6511
6512 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6513 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6514 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6515
6516 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
6517 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
6518
6519 <p><pre>
6520 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
6521   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
6522 </pre></p>
6523
6524 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
6525 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
6526 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
6527 with my packages in the future.</p>
6528
6529 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
6530 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
6531 command line.</p>
6532
6533       </div>
6534       <div class="tags">
6535
6536
6537         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6538
6539
6540       </div>
6541     </div>
6542     <div class="padding"></div>
6543
6544     <div class="entry">
6545       <div class="title">
6546         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html">Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</a>
6547       </div>
6548       <div class="date">
6549          4th February 2016
6550       </div>
6551       <div class="body">
6552         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
6553 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
6554 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
6555 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
6556 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
6557 about. :)</p>
6558
6559 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
6560 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
6561 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
6562 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
6563 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
6564 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
6565
6566 <blockquote><pre>
6567 % apt install appstream
6568 [...]
6569 % apt update
6570 [...]
6571 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
6572   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
6573 firmware-qlogic
6574 %
6575 </pre></blockquote>
6576
6577 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
6578 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
6579 a way appstream can use.</p>
6580
6581 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
6582 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
6583 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
6584 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
6585 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
6586 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
6587
6588 <blockquote><pre>
6589 % apt install appstream
6590 [...]
6591 % apt update
6592 [...]
6593 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
6594   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
6595 bkchem
6596 phototonic
6597 inkscape
6598 shutter
6599 tetzle
6600 geeqie
6601 xia
6602 pinta
6603 gthumb
6604 karbon
6605 comix
6606 mirage
6607 viewnior
6608 postr
6609 ristretto
6610 kolourpaint4
6611 eog
6612 eom
6613 gimagereader
6614 midori
6615 %
6616 </pre></blockquote>
6617
6618 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
6619 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
6620
6621       </div>
6622       <div class="tags">
6623
6624
6625         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6626
6627
6628       </div>
6629     </div>
6630     <div class="padding"></div>
6631
6632     <div class="entry">
6633       <div class="title">
6634         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html">Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software</a>
6635       </div>
6636       <div class="date">
6637         24th January 2016
6638       </div>
6639       <div class="body">
6640         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
6641 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
6642 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
6643 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
6644 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
6645 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
6646 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
6647 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
6648 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
6649 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
6650 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
6651 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
6652 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
6653 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
6654 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
6655 entities.</p>
6656
6657 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
6658
6659 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
6660 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
6661 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
6662 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
6663 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
6664 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
6665 tool to do so is called
6666 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
6667 discovered it when I read
6668 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
6669 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
6670 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
6671 The python program was in Debian, but
6672 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
6673 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
6674 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
6675 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
6676 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
6677 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
6678 are now included
6679 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
6680
6681 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
6682 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
6683 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
6684 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
6685 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
6686 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
6687 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
6688 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
6689 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
6690 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
6691 about yourself with the services.</p>
6692
6693 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
6694 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
6695 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
6696 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
6697 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
6698 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
6699 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
6700 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
6701 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
6702 things.  A similar technique have been
6703 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
6704 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
6705 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
6706 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
6707 public.</p>
6708
6709 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
6710 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
6711 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
6712 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
6713
6714 <p>(I have uploaded
6715 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
6716 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
6717 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
6718
6719       </div>
6720       <div class="tags">
6721
6722
6723         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
6724
6725
6726       </div>
6727     </div>
6728     <div class="padding"></div>
6729
6730     <div class="entry">
6731       <div class="title">
6732         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html">Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</a>
6733       </div>
6734       <div class="date">
6735         15th January 2016
6736       </div>
6737       <div class="body">
6738         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
6739 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
6740 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
6741 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
6742 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
6743 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
6744 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
6745 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
6746 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
6747 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
6748 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
6749 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
6750 was not the first to propose this, as the
6751 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
6752 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
6753 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
6754 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
6755
6756 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
6757 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
6758 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
6759 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
6760 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
6761
6762 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
6763 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
6764 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
6765 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
6766 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
6767 done in /etc/.</p>
6768
6769 <blockquote><pre>
6770 apt install apt-transport-tor
6771 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
6772 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
6773 </pre></blockquote>
6774
6775 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
6776 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
6777 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
6778 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
6779
6780 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
6781 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
6782 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
6783 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
6784 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
6785 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
6786
6787 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
6788 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
6789 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
6790 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
6791 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
6792
6793 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
6794 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
6795 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
6796 system.</p>
6797
6798       </div>
6799       <div class="tags">
6800
6801
6802         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
6803
6804
6805       </div>
6806     </div>
6807     <div class="padding"></div>
6808
6809     <div class="entry">
6810       <div class="title">
6811         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html">OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</a>
6812       </div>
6813       <div class="date">
6814         23rd December 2015
6815       </div>
6816       <div class="body">
6817         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
6818 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
6819 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
6820 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
6821 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
6822 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
6823
6824 <p>A few days I came across
6825 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
6826 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
6827 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
6828 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
6829 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
6830 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
6831 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
6832 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
6833 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
6834 discovered the developer
6835 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
6836 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
6837 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
6838 archive.</p>
6839
6840 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
6841 it into Debian, where it currently
6842 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
6843 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
6844
6845 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
6846 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
6847 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
6848 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
6849 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
6850 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
6851 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
6852 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
6853 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
6854 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
6855 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
6856 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
6857
6858 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
6859 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
6860 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
6861 package show up in unstable.</p>
6862
6863       </div>
6864       <div class="tags">
6865
6866
6867         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
6868
6869
6870       </div>
6871     </div>
6872     <div class="padding"></div>
6873
6874     <div class="entry">
6875       <div class="title">
6876         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</a>
6877       </div>
6878       <div class="date">
6879         20th December 2015
6880       </div>
6881       <div class="body">
6882         <p>Around three years ago, I created
6883 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
6884 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
6885 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
6886 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
6887 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
6888 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
6889 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
6890 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
6891 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
6892 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
6893 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
6894 with.</p>
6895
6896 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
6897 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
6898 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
6899 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
6900 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
6901 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
6902 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
6903 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
6904 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
6905 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
6906 Debian version of appstream.</p>
6907
6908 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
6909 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
6910 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
6911 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
6912 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
6913 how do add the required
6914 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
6915 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
6916 this content:</p>
6917
6918 <blockquote><pre>
6919 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
6920 &lt;component&gt;
6921   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
6922   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
6923   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
6924   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
6925   &lt;description&gt;
6926     &lt;p&gt;
6927       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
6928       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
6929       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
6930       launcher.
6931     &lt;/p&gt;
6932   &lt;/description&gt;
6933   &lt;provides&gt;
6934     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
6935   &lt;/provides&gt;
6936 &lt;/component&gt;
6937 </pre></blockquote>
6938
6939 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
6940 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
6941 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
6942 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
6943 0202.</p>
6944
6945 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
6946 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
6947 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
6948 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
6949 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
6950 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
6951 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
6952 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
6953
6954 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
6955 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
6956 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
6957 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
6958 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
6959
6960 <blockquote><pre>
6961 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
6962 </pre></blockquote>
6963
6964 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
6965 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
6966 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
6967 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
6968 question.</p>
6969
6970 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
6971 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
6972
6973 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
6974 try running this command on the command line:</p>
6975
6976 <blockquote><pre>
6977 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
6978 </pre></blockquote>
6979
6980 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
6981 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
6982 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
6983
6984       </div>
6985       <div class="tags">
6986
6987
6988         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
6989
6990
6991       </div>
6992     </div>
6993     <div class="padding"></div>
6994
6995     <div class="entry">
6996       <div class="title">
6997         <a href="https://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>
6998       </div>
6999       <div class="date">
7000         30th November 2015
7001       </div>
7002       <div class="body">
7003         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
7004 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
7005 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
7006 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
7007 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
7008
7009 <blockquote>
7010
7011 <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>
7012
7013 <blockquote>
7014 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
7015
7016 The first step is to choose a
7017 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
7018 code.<br/>
7019
7020 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
7021 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
7022
7023 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
7024 work<br/>
7025
7026 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
7027 </blockquote>
7028
7029 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
7030 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
7031 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
7032 0x57</a></small></p>
7033
7034 <p>As the Debian Website
7035 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
7036 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
7037 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
7038 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
7039 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
7040 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
7041 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
7042 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
7043 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
7044 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
7045 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
7046 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
7047 Freedom">FaiF</a>
7048 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
7049 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
7050 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
7051 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
7052 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
7053 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
7054 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
7055 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
7056 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
7057 In March the SFC supported a
7058 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
7059 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
7060 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
7061 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
7062 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
7063 conferences
7064 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
7065 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
7066 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
7067 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
7068 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
7069 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
7070 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
7071 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
7072 Software.</p>
7073
7074 <p>If you support Free Software,
7075 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
7076 what the SFC do, agree with their
7077 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
7078 principles</a>, are happy about their
7079 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
7080 work on a project that is an SFC
7081 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
7082 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
7083 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
7084 Allan Webber</a>,
7085 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
7086 Smith</a>,
7087 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
7088 Bacon</a>, myself and
7089 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
7090 becoming a
7091 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
7092 next week your donation will be
7093 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
7094 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
7095 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
7096 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
7097 social media accounts.</p>
7098
7099 </blockquote>
7100
7101 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
7102 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
7103 supporter too?</p>
7104
7105       </div>
7106       <div class="tags">
7107
7108
7109         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
7110
7111
7112       </div>
7113     </div>
7114     <div class="padding"></div>
7115
7116     <div class="entry">
7117       <div class="title">
7118         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
7119       </div>
7120       <div class="date">
7121         17th November 2015
7122       </div>
7123       <div class="body">
7124         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
7125 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
7126 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
7127 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
7128 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
7129 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
7130 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
7131 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
7132 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
7133 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
7134
7135 <pre>
7136 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
7137       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
7138 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
7139 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
7140 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
7141 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
7142 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
7143 </pre>
7144
7145 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
7146 my old key.</p>
7147
7148 <p>If you signed my old key
7149 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
7150 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
7151 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
7152 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
7153
7154       </div>
7155       <div class="tags">
7156
7157
7158         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
7159
7160
7161       </div>
7162     </div>
7163     <div class="padding"></div>
7164
7165     <div class="entry">
7166       <div class="title">
7167         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
7168       </div>
7169       <div class="date">
7170         24th September 2015
7171       </div>
7172       <div class="body">
7173         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
7174 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
7175 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
7176 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
7177 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
7178 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
7179 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
7180
7181 <img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
7182
7183 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
7184 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
7185 by someone else.  I found
7186 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
7187 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
7188 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
7189 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
7190 from him.  Via
7191 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
7192 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
7193 discovered
7194 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
7195 available in Debian.</p>
7196
7197 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
7198 battery stats ever since. Now my
7199 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
7200 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
7201 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
7202 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
7203
7204 <pre>
7205 #!/bin/sh
7206 # Inspired by
7207 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
7208 # See also
7209 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
7210 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
7211
7212 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
7213     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
7214
7215 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
7216     (
7217         printf "timestamp,"
7218         for f in $files; do
7219             printf "%s," $f
7220         done
7221         echo
7222     ) > "$logfile"
7223 fi
7224
7225 log_battery() {
7226     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
7227     # when several log processes run in parallel.
7228     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
7229         for f in $files; do \
7230             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
7231         done)
7232     echo "$msg"
7233 }
7234
7235 cd /sys/class/power_supply
7236
7237 for bat in BAT*; do
7238     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
7239 done
7240 </pre>
7241
7242 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
7243 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
7244 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
7245 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
7246 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
7247 The code for the Debian package
7248 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
7249 available on github</a>.</p>
7250
7251 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
7252
7253 <pre>
7254 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
7255 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
7256 [...]
7257 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
7258 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
7259 </pre>
7260
7261 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
7262 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
7263 battery.</p>
7264
7265 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
7266 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
7267 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
7268 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
7269 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
7270 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
7271 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
7272 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
7273 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
7274 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
7275 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
7276 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
7277 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
7278 Linux too.</p>
7279
7280 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
7281 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
7282 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
7283 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
7284 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
7285 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
7286 load).</p>
7287
7288 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
7289 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
7290 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
7291 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
7292 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
7293 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
7294 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
7295 those.</p>
7296
7297 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
7298 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
7299 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
7300 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
7301 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
7302 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
7303 specific.</p>
7304
7305       </div>
7306       <div class="tags">
7307
7308
7309         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7310
7311
7312       </div>
7313     </div>
7314     <div class="padding"></div>
7315
7316     <div class="entry">
7317       <div class="title">
7318         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
7319       </div>
7320       <div class="date">
7321          5th July 2015
7322       </div>
7323       <div class="body">
7324         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
7325 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
7326 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
7327 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
7328 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
7329 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
7330 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
7331 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
7332 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
7333 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
7334 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
7335
7336 <p>One tip I got was to use the
7337 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
7338 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
7339 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
7340 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
7341 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
7342 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
7343
7344 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
7345 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
7346 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
7347 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
7348 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
7349 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
7350 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
7351 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
7352 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
7353 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
7354 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
7355 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
7356 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
7357 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
7358 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
7359
7360 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
7361 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
7362 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
7363 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
7364
7365 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
7366 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
7367
7368 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
7369 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
7370 different
7371 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
7372 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
7373
7374       </div>
7375       <div class="tags">
7376
7377
7378         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7379
7380
7381       </div>
7382     </div>
7383     <div class="padding"></div>
7384
7385     <div class="entry">
7386       <div class="title">
7387         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
7388       </div>
7389       <div class="date">
7390          3rd July 2015
7391       </div>
7392       <div class="body">
7393         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
7394 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
7395 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
7396 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
7397 flickering.</p>
7398
7399 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
7400 still as
7401 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
7402 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
7403 good help from
7404 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
7405 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
7406 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
7407 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
7408 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
7409 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
7410 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
7411 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
7412 deteriorated since X41.</p>
7413
7414 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
7415 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
7416 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
7417 have suggestions.</p>
7418
7419 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
7420 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
7421 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
7422
7423       </div>
7424       <div class="tags">
7425
7426
7427         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7428
7429
7430       </div>
7431     </div>
7432     <div class="padding"></div>
7433
7434     <div class="entry">
7435       <div class="title">
7436         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
7437       </div>
7438       <div class="date">
7439         22nd November 2014
7440       </div>
7441       <div class="body">
7442         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
7443 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
7444 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
7445 courtesy of
7446 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
7447 Schubert</a> and
7448 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
7449 McVittie</a>.
7450
7451 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
7452 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
7453 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
7454 you upgrade:</p>
7455
7456 <p><blockquote><pre>
7457 Package: systemd-sysv
7458 Pin: release o=Debian
7459 Pin-Priority: -1
7460 </pre></blockquote><p>
7461
7462 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
7463 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
7464 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
7465 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
7466 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
7467
7468 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
7469 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
7470 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
7471 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
7472 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
7473 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
7474
7475 <p><blockquote><pre>
7476 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
7477 </pre></blockquote><p>
7478
7479 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
7480
7481 <p><blockquote><pre>
7482 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
7483 </pre></blockquote><p>
7484
7485 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
7486 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
7487
7488 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
7489 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
7490 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
7491 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
7492 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
7493 Jessie is released.</p>
7494
7495 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
7496 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
7497 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
7498 line.</p>
7499
7500       </div>
7501       <div class="tags">
7502
7503
7504         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7505
7506
7507       </div>
7508     </div>
7509     <div class="padding"></div>
7510
7511     <div class="entry">
7512       <div class="title">
7513         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
7514       </div>
7515       <div class="date">
7516         10th November 2014
7517       </div>
7518       <div class="body">
7519         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
7520 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
7521 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
7522
7523 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
7524 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
7525 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
7526 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
7527 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
7528 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
7529 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
7530 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
7531 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
7532 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
7533 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
7534 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
7535 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
7536 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
7537 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
7538
7539 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
7540 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
7541 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
7542 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
7543 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
7544 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
7545 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
7546 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
7547 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
7548 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
7549 were fairly easy, and
7550 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
7551 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
7552 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
7553 useful approach.</p>
7554
7555 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
7556 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
7557 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
7558 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
7559 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
7560 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
7561 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
7562 this:</p>
7563
7564 <p><blockquote><pre>
7565 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
7566   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
7567 </pre></blockquote></p>
7568
7569 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
7570 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
7571
7572 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
7573 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
7574 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
7575 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
7576 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
7577 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
7578 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
7579 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
7580 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
7581 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
7582 system.</p>
7583
7584 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
7585 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
7586 SMTorP. :)</p>
7587
7588       </div>
7589       <div class="tags">
7590
7591
7592         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
7593
7594
7595       </div>
7596     </div>
7597     <div class="padding"></div>
7598
7599     <div class="entry">
7600       <div class="title">
7601         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
7602       </div>
7603       <div class="date">
7604         22nd October 2014
7605       </div>
7606       <div class="body">
7607         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
7608 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
7609 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
7610 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
7611 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
7612 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
7613 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
7614 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
7615 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
7616 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
7617 lists I recently took over:</p>
7618
7619 <p><blockquote><pre>
7620 % time listadmin xiph
7621 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
7622 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
7623
7624 real    0m1.709s
7625 user    0m0.232s
7626 sys     0m0.012s
7627 %
7628 </pre></blockquote></p>
7629
7630 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
7631 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
7632 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
7633 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
7634 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
7635 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
7636 program.</p>
7637
7638 <p>If you install
7639 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
7640 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
7641 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
7642
7643 <p><blockquote><pre>
7644 username username@example.org
7645 spamlevel 23
7646 default discard
7647 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
7648
7649 password secret
7650 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
7651 mailman-list@lists.example.com
7652
7653 password hidden
7654 other-list@otherserver.example.org
7655 </pre></blockquote></p>
7656
7657 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
7658 learn the details.</p>
7659
7660 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
7661 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
7662 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
7663 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
7664
7665 <p><blockquote><pre>
7666 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
7667 </pre></blockquote></p>
7668
7669 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
7670 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
7671 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
7672 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
7673 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
7674 email.</p>
7675
7676 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
7677 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
7678 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
7679 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
7680 software.</p>
7681
7682 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7683 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
7684 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
7685
7686 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
7687 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
7688 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
7689 sure why.</p>
7690
7691       </div>
7692       <div class="tags">
7693
7694
7695         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
7696
7697
7698       </div>
7699     </div>
7700     <div class="padding"></div>
7701
7702     <div class="entry">
7703       <div class="title">
7704         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
7705       </div>
7706       <div class="date">
7707         17th October 2014
7708       </div>
7709       <div class="body">
7710         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
7711 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
7712 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
7713 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
7714 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
7715 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
7716 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
7717
7718 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
7719 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
7720 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
7721 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
7722 of this story.)</p>
7723
7724 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
7725 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
7726 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
7727 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
7728 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
7729 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
7730 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
7731 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
7732 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
7733 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
7734
7735 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
7736 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
7737 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
7738 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
7739
7740 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
7741 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
7742
7743 <p><blockquote><pre>
7744 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
7745 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
7746 </pre></blockquote></p>
7747
7748 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
7749 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
7750 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
7751 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
7752 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
7753 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
7754 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
7755 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
7756
7757 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
7758 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
7759
7760 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
7761 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
7762 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
7763 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
7764 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
7765
7766 <p><blockquote><pre>
7767 Task: isenkram-packages
7768 Section: hardware
7769 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
7770  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
7771  proposed.
7772 Test-new-install: show show
7773 Relevance: 8
7774 Packages: for-current-hardware
7775
7776 Task: isenkram-firmware
7777 Section: hardware
7778 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
7779  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
7780  packages are proposed.
7781 Test-new-install: mark show
7782 Relevance: 8
7783 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
7784 </pre></blockquote></p>
7785
7786 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
7787 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
7788 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
7789 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
7790 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
7791
7792 <p><blockquote><pre>
7793 #!/bin/sh
7794 #
7795 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
7796 export PATH
7797 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
7798 </pre></blockquote></p>
7799
7800 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
7801 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
7802
7803 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
7804 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
7805 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
7806 install.</p>
7807
7808 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
7809 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
7810 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
7811
7812       </div>
7813       <div class="tags">
7814
7815
7816         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
7817
7818
7819       </div>
7820     </div>
7821     <div class="padding"></div>
7822
7823     <div class="entry">
7824       <div class="title">
7825         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
7826       </div>
7827       <div class="date">
7828          4th October 2014
7829       </div>
7830       <div class="body">
7831         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
7832 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
7833 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
7834 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
7835
7836 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
7837
7838 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
7839 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
7840 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
7841
7842       </div>
7843       <div class="tags">
7844
7845
7846         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7847
7848
7849       </div>
7850     </div>
7851     <div class="padding"></div>
7852
7853     <div class="entry">
7854       <div class="title">
7855         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
7856       </div>
7857       <div class="date">
7858          4th October 2014
7859       </div>
7860       <div class="body">
7861         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
7862 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
7863 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
7864 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
7865 Dibb.</p>
7866
7867 <p>I just wrapped up
7868 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
7869 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
7870 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
7871 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
7872 0.17.</p>
7873
7874 <ul>
7875
7876  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
7877  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
7878    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
7879  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
7880  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
7881  <li>Fix include orders</li>
7882  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
7883  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
7884  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
7885    the palette size is the same.</li>
7886  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
7887  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
7888  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
7889  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
7890    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
7891
7892 </ul>
7893
7894 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
7895 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
7896 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
7897
7898       </div>
7899       <div class="tags">
7900
7901
7902         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
7903
7904
7905       </div>
7906     </div>
7907     <div class="padding"></div>
7908
7909     <div class="entry">
7910       <div class="title">
7911         <a href="https://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>
7912       </div>
7913       <div class="date">
7914         26th September 2014
7915       </div>
7916       <div class="body">
7917         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7918 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
7919 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
7920 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
7921 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
7922 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
7923 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
7924 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
7925 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
7926 future.  The
7927 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
7928 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
7929 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
7930 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
7931 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
7932
7933 <p>First, download the test ISO via
7934 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
7935 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
7936 or rsync (use
7937 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
7938 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
7939 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
7940 install with some tweaking.</p>
7941
7942 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
7943 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
7944
7945 <p><blockquote><pre>
7946 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
7947 </pre></blockquote></p>
7948
7949 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
7950 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
7951 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
7952 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
7953
7954 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
7955 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
7956 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
7957 your need.</p>
7958
7959 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
7960 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
7961 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
7962 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
7963 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
7964 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
7965 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
7966 days.</p>
7967
7968 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
7969 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
7970 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
7971 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
7972 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
7973 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
7974 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
7975 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
7976 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
7977
7978 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
7979 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
7980 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
7981
7982       </div>
7983       <div class="tags">
7984
7985
7986         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7987
7988
7989       </div>
7990     </div>
7991     <div class="padding"></div>
7992
7993     <div class="entry">
7994       <div class="title">
7995         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
7996       </div>
7997       <div class="date">
7998         25th September 2014
7999       </div>
8000       <div class="body">
8001         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
8002 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
8003 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
8004 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
8005 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
8006 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
8007 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
8008 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
8009 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
8010 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
8011 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
8012 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
8013 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
8014
8015 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
8016 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
8017 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
8018 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
8019 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
8020 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
8021 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
8022 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
8023 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
8024 list</a>. :)</p>
8025
8026       </div>
8027       <div class="tags">
8028
8029
8030         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
8031
8032
8033       </div>
8034     </div>
8035     <div class="padding"></div>
8036
8037     <div class="entry">
8038       <div class="title">
8039         <a href="https://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>
8040       </div>
8041       <div class="date">
8042         16th September 2014
8043       </div>
8044       <div class="body">
8045         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
8046 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
8047 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
8048 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
8049 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
8050 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
8051 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
8052 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
8053 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
8054 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
8055 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
8056 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
8057 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
8058 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
8059
8060 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
8061 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
8062 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
8063 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
8064 depend on the small and clever package
8065 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
8066 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
8067 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
8068 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
8069 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
8070 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
8071 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
8072 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
8073 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
8074 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
8075 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
8076
8077 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
8078 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
8079 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
8080 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
8081 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
8082 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
8083 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
8084 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
8085 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
8086 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
8087 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
8088 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
8089 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
8090 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
8091 dialog.</p>
8092
8093 <p><table>
8094
8095 <tr>
8096 <th>Machine/setup</th>
8097 <th>Original tasksel</th>
8098 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
8099 <th>Reduction</th>
8100 </tr>
8101
8102 <tr>
8103 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
8104 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
8105 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
8106 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
8107 </tr>
8108
8109 <tr>
8110 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
8111 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
8112 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
8113 <td>23 min 40%</td>
8114 </tr>
8115
8116 <tr>
8117 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
8118 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
8119 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
8120 <td>11 min 50%</td>
8121 </tr>
8122
8123 <tr>
8124 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
8125 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
8126 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
8127 <td>2 min 33%</td>
8128 </tr>
8129
8130 <tr>
8131 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
8132 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
8133 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
8134 <td>4 min 21%</td>
8135 </tr>
8136
8137 </table></p>
8138
8139 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
8140 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
8141 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
8142 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
8143 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
8144 installed.</p>
8145
8146 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
8147 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
8148 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
8149 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
8150 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
8151 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
8152 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
8153 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
8154 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
8155 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
8156 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
8157 for the entire installation.</p>
8158
8159 <p>I've implemented this in the
8160 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
8161 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
8162 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
8163 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
8164 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
8165
8166 <p><blockquote><pre>
8167 #!/bin/sh
8168 set -e
8169 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
8170 info() {
8171     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
8172 }
8173 error() {
8174     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
8175 }
8176 override_install() {
8177     apt-install eatmydata || true
8178     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
8179         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
8180             file=/usr/bin/$bin
8181             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
8182             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
8183                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
8184                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
8185                     > /target$file.edu
8186                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
8187                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
8188                     --rename --quiet --add $file
8189                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
8190             else
8191                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
8192             fi
8193         done
8194     else
8195         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
8196     fi
8197 }
8198
8199 override_install
8200 </pre></blockquote></p>
8201
8202 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
8203 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
8204
8205 <p><blockquote><pre>
8206 #! /bin/sh -e
8207 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
8208 error() {
8209     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
8210 }
8211 remove_install_override() {
8212     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
8213         file=/usr/bin/$bin
8214         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
8215             rm /target$file
8216             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
8217                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
8218             rm /target$file.edu
8219         else
8220             error "Missing divert for $file."
8221         fi
8222     done
8223     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
8224 }
8225
8226 remove_install_override
8227 </pre></blockquote></p>
8228
8229 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
8230 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
8231 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
8232
8233 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
8234 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
8235 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
8236 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
8237 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
8238 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
8239 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
8240 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
8241 everyone.</p>
8242
8243 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
8244 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
8245 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
8246 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
8247
8248 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
8249 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
8250 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
8251 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
8252 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
8253
8254 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
8255 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
8256 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
8257 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
8258 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
8259
8260       </div>
8261       <div class="tags">
8262
8263
8264         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8265
8266
8267       </div>
8268     </div>
8269     <div class="padding"></div>
8270
8271     <div class="entry">
8272       <div class="title">
8273         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
8274       </div>
8275       <div class="date">
8276         10th September 2014
8277       </div>
8278       <div class="body">
8279         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
8280 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
8281 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
8282 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
8283 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
8284 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
8285 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
8286 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
8287 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
8288 those problems are gone now.</p>
8289
8290 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
8291 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
8292 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
8293 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
8294 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
8295
8296 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
8297 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
8298 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
8299
8300 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
8301 line:</p>
8302
8303 <p><blockquote><pre>
8304 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
8305 </pre></blockquote></p>
8306
8307 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
8308 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
8309 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
8310 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
8311
8312 <p><blockquote><pre>
8313 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
8314 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
8315 %
8316 </pre></blockquote></p>
8317
8318 <p>Now if only
8319 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
8320 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
8321 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
8322 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
8323 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
8324 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
8325 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
8326 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
8327 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
8328
8329       </div>
8330       <div class="tags">
8331
8332
8333         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
8334
8335
8336       </div>
8337     </div>
8338     <div class="padding"></div>
8339
8340     <div class="entry">
8341       <div class="title">
8342         <a href="https://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>
8343       </div>
8344       <div class="date">
8345         17th June 2014
8346       </div>
8347       <div class="body">
8348         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8349 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
8350 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
8351 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
8352 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
8353
8354 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
8355 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
8356 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
8357 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
8358 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
8359 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
8360 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
8361 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
8362 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
8363 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
8364 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
8365 goals.</p>
8366
8367 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
8368 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
8369 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
8370 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
8371 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
8372 chapters together into one large web page (aka
8373 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
8374 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
8375 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
8376 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
8377 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
8378 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
8379 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
8380 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
8381 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
8382 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
8383 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
8384 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
8385 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
8386 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
8387 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
8388 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
8389 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
8390 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
8391
8392 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
8393 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
8394 track the English original.  For this we use the
8395 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
8396 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
8397 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
8398 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
8399 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
8400 files), which the translations update with the native language
8401 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
8402 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
8403 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
8404 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
8405 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
8406 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
8407 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
8408 of the documentation.</p>
8409
8410 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
8411 recommend using
8412 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
8413 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
8414 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
8415 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
8416 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
8417 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
8418 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
8419 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
8420
8421 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
8422 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
8423 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
8424 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
8425 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
8426 translated images by storing translated versions in
8427 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
8428 package maintainers know more.</p>
8429
8430 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
8431 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
8432 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
8433 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
8434 PDF version</a> or the
8435 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
8436 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
8437 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
8438
8439 <p>To learn more, check out
8440 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
8441 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
8442 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
8443 manual on the wiki</a> and
8444 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
8445 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
8446
8447       </div>
8448       <div class="tags">
8449
8450
8451         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8452
8453
8454       </div>
8455     </div>
8456     <div class="padding"></div>
8457
8458     <div class="entry">
8459       <div class="title">
8460         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
8461       </div>
8462       <div class="date">
8463         23rd April 2014
8464       </div>
8465       <div class="body">
8466         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
8467 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
8468 So I implemented one, using
8469 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
8470 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
8471 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
8472 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
8473 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
8474 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
8475
8476 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
8477 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
8478 packages to install.  The first part is in
8479 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
8480 this:</p>
8481
8482 <p><blockquote><pre>
8483 Task: isenkram
8484 Section: hardware
8485 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
8486  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
8487  proposed.
8488 Test-new-install: mark show
8489 Relevance: 8
8490 Packages: for-current-hardware
8491 </pre></blockquote></p>
8492
8493 <p>The second part is in
8494 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
8495 this:</p>
8496
8497 <p><blockquote><pre>
8498 #!/bin/sh
8499 #
8500 (
8501     isenkram-lookup
8502     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
8503 ) | sort -u
8504 </pre></blockquote></p>
8505
8506 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
8507 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
8508 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
8509 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
8510 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
8511 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
8512
8513 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
8514 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
8515 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
8516 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
8517 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
8518 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
8519 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
8520 the python-apt code (bug
8521 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
8522 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
8523 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
8524 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
8525 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
8526 unstable today.</p>
8527
8528 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
8529 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
8530 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
8531 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
8532 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
8533 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
8534 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
8535 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
8536 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
8537
8538 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
8539 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
8540 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
8541 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
8542 package.  See also
8543 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
8544 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
8545 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
8546 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
8547
8548       </div>
8549       <div class="tags">
8550
8551
8552         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
8553
8554
8555       </div>
8556     </div>
8557     <div class="padding"></div>
8558
8559     <div class="entry">
8560       <div class="title">
8561         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
8562       </div>
8563       <div class="date">
8564         15th April 2014
8565       </div>
8566       <div class="body">
8567         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
8568 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
8569 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
8570 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
8571 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
8572 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
8573
8574 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
8575 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
8576 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
8577 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
8578 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
8579 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
8580 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
8581
8582 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
8583 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
8584 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
8585 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
8586 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
8587 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
8588 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
8589 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
8590 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
8591 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
8592 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
8593 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
8594
8595 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
8596 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
8597 become root:</p>
8598
8599 <p><pre>
8600 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
8601   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
8602   u-boot-tools
8603 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
8604   freedom-maker
8605 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
8606 </pre></p>
8607
8608 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
8609 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
8610 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
8611 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
8612 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
8613 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
8614 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
8615 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
8616
8617 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
8618 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
8619 the preseed values:</p>
8620
8621 <p><pre>
8622 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
8623 </pre></p>
8624
8625 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
8626 it still work.</p>
8627
8628 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
8629 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
8630 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
8631 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
8632 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
8633 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
8634 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
8635
8636 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
8637 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
8638 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
8639 irc.debian.org)</a> and
8640 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
8641 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
8642
8643       </div>
8644       <div class="tags">
8645
8646
8647         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
8648
8649
8650       </div>
8651     </div>
8652     <div class="padding"></div>
8653
8654     <div class="entry">
8655       <div class="title">
8656         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
8657       </div>
8658       <div class="date">
8659          9th April 2014
8660       </div>
8661       <div class="body">
8662         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
8663 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
8664 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
8665 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
8666 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
8667 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
8668 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
8669 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
8670 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
8671 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
8672 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
8673 have looked at a system called
8674 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
8675 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
8676
8677 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
8678 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
8679 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
8680 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
8681 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
8682 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
8683 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
8684 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
8685 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
8686 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
8687 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
8688 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
8689 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
8690
8691 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
8692 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
8693 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
8694 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
8695 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
8696 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
8697 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
8698 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
8699 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
8700 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
8701 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
8702 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
8703 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
8704 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
8705 account.</p>
8706
8707 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
8708 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
8709 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
8710 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
8711 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
8712 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
8713 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
8714
8715 <p><blockquote><pre>
8716 [s3c]
8717 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
8718 backend-login: API-login
8719 backend-password: API-password
8720 fs-passphrase: local-password
8721 </pre></blockquote></p>
8722
8723 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
8724 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
8725 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
8726 details and password to create it:</p>
8727
8728 <p><blockquote><pre>
8729 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
8730 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
8731   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
8732 Enter backend login:
8733 Enter backend password:
8734 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
8735 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
8736 Enter encryption password:
8737 Confirm encryption password:
8738 Generating random encryption key...
8739 Creating metadata tables...
8740 Dumping metadata...
8741 ..objects..
8742 ..blocks..
8743 ..inodes..
8744 ..inode_blocks..
8745 ..symlink_targets..
8746 ..names..
8747 ..contents..
8748 ..ext_attributes..
8749 Compressing and uploading metadata...
8750 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
8751 # </pre></blockquote></p>
8752
8753 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
8754
8755 <p><blockquote><pre>
8756 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
8757   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
8758 Using 4 upload threads.
8759 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
8760 Reading metadata...
8761 ..objects..
8762 ..blocks..
8763 ..inodes..
8764 ..inode_blocks..
8765 ..symlink_targets..
8766 ..names..
8767 ..contents..
8768 ..ext_attributes..
8769 Mounting filesystem...
8770 # df -h /s3ql
8771 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
8772 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
8773 #
8774 </pre></blockquote></p>
8775
8776 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
8777 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
8778 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
8779 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
8780 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
8781 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
8782
8783 <p><blockquote><pre>
8784 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
8785 #
8786 </pre></blockquote></p>
8787
8788 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
8789 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
8790 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
8791 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
8792 file system:</p>
8793
8794 <p><blockquote><pre>
8795 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
8796 Using cached metadata.
8797 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
8798 Checking DB integrity...
8799 Creating temporary extra indices...
8800 Checking lost+found...
8801 Checking cached objects...
8802 Checking names (refcounts)...
8803 Checking contents (names)...
8804 Checking contents (inodes)...
8805 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
8806 Checking objects (reference counts)...
8807 Checking objects (backend)...
8808 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
8809 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
8810 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
8811 Checking objects (sizes)...
8812 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
8813 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
8814 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
8815 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
8816 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
8817 Checking inodes (sizes)...
8818 Checking extended attributes (names)...
8819 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
8820 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
8821 Checking directory reachability...
8822 Checking unix conventions...
8823 Checking referential integrity...
8824 Dropping temporary indices...
8825 Backing up old metadata...
8826 Dumping metadata...
8827 ..objects..
8828 ..blocks..
8829 ..inodes..
8830 ..inode_blocks..
8831 ..symlink_targets..
8832 ..names..
8833 ..contents..
8834 ..ext_attributes..
8835 Compressing and uploading metadata...
8836 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
8837 #
8838 </pre></blockquote></p>
8839
8840 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
8841 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
8842 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
8843 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
8844 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
8845 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
8846 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
8847 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
8848 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
8849 working set.</p>
8850
8851 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
8852 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
8853 busy:</p>
8854
8855 <p><blockquote><pre>
8856 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
8857   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
8858 Using 8 upload threads.
8859 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
8860 #
8861 </pre></blockquote></p>
8862
8863 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
8864 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
8865 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
8866 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
8867 s3qlctrl:
8868
8869 <p><blockquote><pre>
8870 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
8871 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
8872 #
8873 </pre></blockquote></p>
8874
8875 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
8876 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
8877 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
8878 a report:</p>
8879
8880 <p><blockquote><pre>
8881 # s3qlstat /s3ql
8882 Directory entries:    9141
8883 Inodes:               9143
8884 Data blocks:          8851
8885 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
8886 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
8887 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
8888 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
8889 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
8890 #
8891 </pre></blockquote></p>
8892
8893 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
8894 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
8895 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
8896 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
8897 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
8898 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
8899 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
8900 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
8901 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
8902 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
8903 best.</p>
8904
8905 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
8906 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
8907 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
8908 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
8909 poster is titled
8910 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
8911 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
8912 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
8913 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
8914 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
8915
8916 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
8917 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
8918 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
8919 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
8920 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
8921 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
8922 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
8923 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
8924
8925 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
8926 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
8927 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
8928 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
8929 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
8930 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
8931 only read from it.</p>
8932
8933 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
8934 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
8935 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8936
8937       </div>
8938       <div class="tags">
8939
8940
8941         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
8942
8943
8944       </div>
8945     </div>
8946     <div class="padding"></div>
8947
8948     <div class="entry">
8949       <div class="title">
8950         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
8951       </div>
8952       <div class="date">
8953         14th March 2014
8954       </div>
8955       <div class="body">
8956         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
8957 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
8958 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
8959 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
8960 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
8961 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
8962 release (0.2).</p>
8963
8964 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
8965 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
8966 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
8967 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
8968 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
8969 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
8970 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
8971 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
8972 and build using
8973 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
8974 with a user with sudo access to become root:
8975
8976 <pre>
8977 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
8978   freedom-maker
8979 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
8980   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
8981   u-boot-tools
8982 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
8983 </pre>
8984
8985 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
8986 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
8987 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
8988 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
8989 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
8990 kpartx call.</p>
8991
8992 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
8993 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
8994 the preseed values:</p>
8995
8996 <pre>
8997 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
8998 </pre>
8999
9000 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
9001 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
9002 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
9003 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
9004 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
9005 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
9006
9007 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
9008 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
9009 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
9010 irc.debian.org)</a> and
9011 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
9012 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
9013
9014       </div>
9015       <div class="tags">
9016
9017
9018         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9019
9020
9021       </div>
9022     </div>
9023     <div class="padding"></div>
9024
9025     <div class="entry">
9026       <div class="title">
9027         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
9028       </div>
9029       <div class="date">
9030         22nd February 2014
9031       </div>
9032       <div class="body">
9033         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
9034 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
9035 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
9036 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
9037 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
9038 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
9039 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
9040 proper home since then.</p>
9041
9042 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
9043 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
9044 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
9045 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
9046 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
9047
9048 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
9049 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
9050 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
9051 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
9052 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
9053 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
9054 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
9055 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
9056 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
9057
9058       </div>
9059       <div class="tags">
9060
9061
9062         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9063
9064
9065       </div>
9066     </div>
9067     <div class="padding"></div>
9068
9069     <div class="entry">
9070       <div class="title">
9071         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
9072       </div>
9073       <div class="date">
9074          3rd February 2014
9075       </div>
9076       <div class="body">
9077         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
9078 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
9079 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
9080 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
9081 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
9082 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
9083 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
9084 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
9085 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
9086
9087 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
9088 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
9089 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
9090 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
9091 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
9092 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
9093
9094 <p><blockquote><pre>
9095 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
9096 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
9097 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
9098 dhclient /dev/eth0
9099 </pre></blockquote></p>
9100
9101 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
9102 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
9103 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
9104
9105 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
9106 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
9107 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
9108 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
9109 side.</p>
9110
9111 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
9112 stuff:</p>
9113
9114 <p><blockquote><pre>
9115 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
9116 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
9117 EOF
9118 apt-get update
9119 apt-get dist-upgrade
9120 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
9121     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
9122 update-alternatives --config runsystem
9123 </pre></blockquote></p>
9124
9125 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
9126 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
9127 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
9128 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
9129 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
9130 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
9131 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
9132 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
9133 ssh instead.
9134
9135 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
9136 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
9137 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
9138 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
9139 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
9140 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
9141
9142 <p><blockquote><pre>
9143 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
9144 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
9145 EOF
9146 </pre></blockquote></p>
9147
9148 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
9149 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
9150 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
9151 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
9152
9153 <p><blockquote><pre>
9154 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
9155 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
9156 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
9157 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
9158 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
9159 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
9160 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
9161 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
9162 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
9163 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
9164 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
9165 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
9166 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
9167 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
9168 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
9169 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
9170 #
9171 </pre></blockquote></p>
9172
9173 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
9174 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
9175 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
9176 command line stuff.<p>
9177
9178       </div>
9179       <div class="tags">
9180
9181
9182         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9183
9184
9185       </div>
9186     </div>
9187     <div class="padding"></div>
9188
9189     <div class="entry">
9190       <div class="title">
9191         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
9192       </div>
9193       <div class="date">
9194         14th January 2014
9195       </div>
9196       <div class="body">
9197         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
9198 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
9199 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
9200 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
9201 the source.  The company behind it provide
9202 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
9203 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
9204 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
9205 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
9206 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
9207 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
9208 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
9209 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
9210 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
9211 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
9212 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
9213 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
9214 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
9215 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
9216 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
9217 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
9218 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
9219 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
9220 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
9221
9222 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
9223
9224 <ul>
9225
9226   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
9227   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
9228   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
9229
9230 </ul>
9231
9232 <p>You can
9233 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
9234 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
9235 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
9236 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
9237 include a test suite check.</p>
9238
9239       </div>
9240       <div class="tags">
9241
9242
9243         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9244
9245
9246       </div>
9247     </div>
9248     <div class="padding"></div>
9249
9250     <div class="entry">
9251       <div class="title">
9252         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
9253       </div>
9254       <div class="date">
9255         24th November 2013
9256       </div>
9257       <div class="body">
9258         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
9259 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
9260 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
9261 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
9262 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
9263 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
9264 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
9265 is working on.  I checked the
9266 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
9267 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
9268 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
9269 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
9270 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
9271 These are the release notes:</p>
9272
9273 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
9274
9275 <ul>
9276
9277   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
9278    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
9279    up.</li>
9280
9281   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
9282
9283   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
9284    Matthias Klose.</li>
9285
9286   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
9287    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
9288
9289   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
9290    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
9291    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
9292
9293 </ul>
9294
9295 <p>You can
9296 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
9297 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
9298 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
9299 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
9300 include a testsuite check.</p>
9301
9302       </div>
9303       <div class="tags">
9304
9305
9306         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9307
9308
9309       </div>
9310     </div>
9311     <div class="padding"></div>
9312
9313     <div class="entry">
9314       <div class="title">
9315         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
9316       </div>
9317       <div class="date">
9318          2nd November 2013
9319       </div>
9320       <div class="body">
9321         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
9322 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
9323 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
9324 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
9325 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
9326
9327 <p><pre>
9328 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
9329 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
9330 # Provides:          rsyslog
9331 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
9332 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
9333 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
9334 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
9335 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
9336 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
9337 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
9338 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
9339 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
9340 ### END INIT INFO
9341 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
9342 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
9343 </pre></p>
9344
9345 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
9346 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
9347 info/comments.</p>
9348
9349 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
9350 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
9351
9352 <p><pre>
9353 #!/bin/sh
9354
9355 # Define LSB log_* functions.
9356 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
9357 # and status_of_proc is working.
9358 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
9359
9360 #
9361 # Function that starts the daemon/service
9362
9363 #
9364 do_start()
9365 {
9366         # Return
9367         #   0 if daemon has been started
9368         #   1 if daemon was already running
9369         #   2 if daemon could not be started
9370         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
9371                 || return 1
9372         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
9373                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
9374                 || return 2
9375         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
9376         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
9377         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
9378 }
9379
9380 #
9381 # Function that stops the daemon/service
9382 #
9383 do_stop()
9384 {
9385         # Return
9386         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
9387         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
9388         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
9389         #   other if a failure occurred
9390         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
9391         RETVAL="$?"
9392         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
9393         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
9394         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
9395         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
9396         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
9397         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
9398         # sleep for some time.
9399         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
9400         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
9401         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
9402         rm -f $PIDFILE
9403         return "$RETVAL"
9404 }
9405
9406 #
9407 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
9408 #
9409 do_reload() {
9410         #
9411         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
9412         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
9413         # then implement that here.
9414         #
9415         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
9416         return 0
9417 }
9418
9419 SCRIPTNAME=$1
9420 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
9421 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
9422 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
9423     script="$1"
9424     shift
9425     . $script
9426 else
9427     exit 0
9428 fi
9429
9430 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
9431 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
9432
9433 # Exit if the package is not installed
9434 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
9435
9436 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
9437 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
9438
9439 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
9440 . /lib/init/vars.sh
9441
9442 case "$1" in
9443   start)
9444         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
9445         do_start
9446         case "$?" in
9447                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
9448                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
9449         esac
9450         ;;
9451   stop)
9452         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
9453         do_stop
9454         case "$?" in
9455                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
9456                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
9457         esac
9458         ;;
9459   status)
9460         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
9461         ;;
9462   #reload|force-reload)
9463         #
9464         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
9465         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
9466         #
9467         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
9468         #do_reload
9469         #log_end_msg $?
9470         #;;
9471   restart|force-reload)
9472         #
9473         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
9474         # 'force-reload' alias
9475         #
9476         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
9477         do_stop
9478         case "$?" in
9479           0|1)
9480                 do_start
9481                 case "$?" in
9482                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
9483                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
9484                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
9485                 esac
9486                 ;;
9487           *)
9488                 # Failed to stop
9489                 log_end_msg 1
9490                 ;;
9491         esac
9492         ;;
9493   *)
9494         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
9495         exit 3
9496         ;;
9497 esac
9498
9499 :
9500 </pre></p>
9501
9502 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
9503 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
9504 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
9505 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
9506
9507 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
9508 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
9509 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
9510 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
9511 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
9512
9513       </div>
9514       <div class="tags">
9515
9516
9517         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9518
9519
9520       </div>
9521     </div>
9522     <div class="padding"></div>
9523
9524     <div class="entry">
9525       <div class="title">
9526         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
9527       </div>
9528       <div class="date">
9529          1st November 2013
9530       </div>
9531       <div class="body">
9532         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
9533 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
9534 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
9535 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
9536 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
9537 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
9538 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
9539 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
9540 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
9541 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
9542 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
9543 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
9544
9545 <p>The source is now available from
9546 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
9547
9548       </div>
9549       <div class="tags">
9550
9551
9552         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9553
9554
9555       </div>
9556     </div>
9557     <div class="padding"></div>
9558
9559     <div class="entry">
9560       <div class="title">
9561         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
9562       </div>
9563       <div class="date">
9564         27th October 2013
9565       </div>
9566       <div class="body">
9567         <p>The
9568 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
9569 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
9570 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
9571 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
9572 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
9573 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
9574 of a plan to simplify the build system for
9575 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
9576 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
9577 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
9578 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
9579 Raspberry Pi.</p>
9580
9581 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
9582 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
9583 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
9584 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
9585 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
9586 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
9587 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
9588 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
9589 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
9590 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
9591 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
9592 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
9593 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
9594 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
9595 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
9596 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
9597 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
9598 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
9599 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
9600 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
9601 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
9602 available from
9603 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
9604 upstream project page</a>.</p>
9605
9606 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
9607 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
9608 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
9609 list:</p>
9610
9611 <p><pre>
9612 #!/bin/sh
9613 set -e # Exit on first error
9614 rootdir="$1"
9615 cd "$rootdir"
9616 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
9617 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
9618 EOF
9619 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
9620 # install a kernel somewhere too.
9621 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
9622     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
9623 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
9624 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
9625 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
9626 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
9627 </pre></p>
9628
9629 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
9630 to build the image:</p>
9631
9632 <pre>
9633 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
9634     --variant minbase \
9635     --arch armel \
9636     --distribution jessie \
9637     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
9638     --image test.img \
9639     --size 600M \
9640     --bootsize 64M \
9641     --boottype vfat \
9642     --log-level debug \
9643     --verbose \
9644     --no-kernel \
9645     --no-extlinux \
9646     --root-password raspberry \
9647     --hostname raspberrypi \
9648     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
9649     --customize `pwd`/customize \
9650     --package netbase \
9651     --package git-core \
9652     --package binutils \
9653     --package ca-certificates \
9654     --package wget \
9655     --package kmod
9656 </pre></p>
9657
9658 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
9659 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
9660 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
9661 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
9662 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
9663 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
9664 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
9665
9666 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
9667 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
9668 build dependency list.</p>
9669
9670 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
9671 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
9672 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
9673 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
9674
9675       </div>
9676       <div class="tags">
9677
9678
9679         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
9680
9681
9682       </div>
9683     </div>
9684     <div class="padding"></div>
9685
9686     <div class="entry">
9687       <div class="title">
9688         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
9689       </div>
9690       <div class="date">
9691         15th October 2013
9692       </div>
9693       <div class="body">
9694         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
9695 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
9696 these. :)</p>
9697
9698 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
9699 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
9700 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
9701 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
9702 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
9703 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
9704 hope you will to. :)</p>
9705
9706 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
9707 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
9708 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
9709 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
9710 donated.  Are you next?</p>
9711
9712 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
9713 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
9714 statement under the heading
9715 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
9716 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
9717 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
9718 too.</p>
9719
9720       </div>
9721       <div class="tags">
9722
9723
9724         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
9725
9726
9727       </div>
9728     </div>
9729     <div class="padding"></div>
9730
9731     <div class="entry">
9732       <div class="title">
9733         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
9734       </div>
9735       <div class="date">
9736         27th September 2013
9737       </div>
9738       <div class="body">
9739         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
9740 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
9741 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
9742 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
9743
9744 <ul>
9745
9746 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
9747 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
9748
9749 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
9750 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
9751
9752 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
9753 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
9754 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
9755 (Youtube)</li>
9756
9757 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
9758 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
9759
9760 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
9761 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
9762
9763 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
9764 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
9765 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
9766
9767 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
9768 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
9769 (Youtube)</li>
9770
9771 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
9772 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
9773
9774 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
9775 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
9776
9777 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
9778 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
9779 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
9780
9781 </ul>
9782
9783 <p>A larger list is available from
9784 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
9785 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
9786
9787 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
9788 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
9789 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
9790 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
9791 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
9792 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
9793 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
9794 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
9795 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
9796 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
9797 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
9798
9799       </div>
9800       <div class="tags">
9801
9802
9803         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9804
9805
9806       </div>
9807     </div>
9808     <div class="padding"></div>
9809
9810     <div class="entry">
9811       <div class="title">
9812         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
9813       </div>
9814       <div class="date">
9815         10th September 2013
9816       </div>
9817       <div class="body">
9818         <p>I was introduced to the
9819 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
9820 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
9821 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
9822 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
9823 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
9824 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
9825 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
9826 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
9827
9828 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
9829 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
9830 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
9831 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
9832 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
9833
9834 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
9835 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
9836 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
9837 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
9838 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
9839 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
9840 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
9841 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
9842 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
9843 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
9844 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
9845 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
9846 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
9847 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
9848 missing in Debian).</p>
9849
9850 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
9851 scripts
9852 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
9853 and a administrative web interface
9854 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
9855 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
9856 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
9857 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
9858 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
9859 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
9860 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
9861 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
9862 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
9863 this is really working yet, see
9864 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
9865 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
9866 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
9867 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
9868 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
9869 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
9870 with lots of half baked features.</p>
9871
9872 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
9873 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
9874 at.</p>
9875
9876 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
9877
9878 <ol>
9879
9880 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
9881 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
9882 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
9883 to the Debian installer:<p>
9884 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
9885
9886 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
9887 install on.</li>
9888
9889 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
9890 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
9891
9892 </ol>
9893
9894 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
9895
9896 <ol>
9897
9898 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
9899 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
9900 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
9901 <pre>
9902 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
9903 </pre></li>
9904 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
9905 <pre>
9906 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
9907    apt-key add -
9908 apt-get update
9909 apt-get install freedombox-setup
9910 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
9911 </pre></li>
9912 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
9913
9914 </ol>
9915
9916 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
9917 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
9918 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
9919 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
9920 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
9921
9922 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
9923 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
9924 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
9925 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
9926
9927 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
9928 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
9929 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
9930 irc.debian.org and the
9931 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
9932 mailing list</a>.</p>
9933
9934 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
9935 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
9936 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
9937 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
9938 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
9939 default password is 'secret'.</p>
9940
9941       </div>
9942       <div class="tags">
9943
9944
9945         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9946
9947
9948       </div>
9949     </div>
9950     <div class="padding"></div>
9951
9952     <div class="entry">
9953       <div class="title">
9954         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
9955       </div>
9956       <div class="date">
9957         18th August 2013
9958       </div>
9959       <div class="body">
9960         <p>Earlier, I reported about
9961 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
9962 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
9963 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
9964 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
9965 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
9966 currently on the disk.</p>
9967
9968 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
9969 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
9970 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
9971 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
9972 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
9973 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
9974 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
9975 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
9976 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
9977 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
9978 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
9979 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
9980 the broken disks.</p>
9981
9982       </div>
9983       <div class="tags">
9984
9985
9986         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9987
9988
9989       </div>
9990     </div>
9991     <div class="padding"></div>
9992
9993     <div class="entry">
9994       <div class="title">
9995         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
9996       </div>
9997       <div class="date">
9998         17th July 2013
9999       </div>
10000       <div class="body">
10001         <p>Today I switched to
10002 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
10003 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
10004 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
10005 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
10006 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
10007 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
10008 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
10009 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
10010 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
10011 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
10012 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
10013 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
10014 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
10015 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
10016 station from now on.</p>
10017
10018 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
10019 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
10020 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
10021 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
10022 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
10023 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
10024 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
10025 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
10026 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
10027 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
10028 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
10029 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
10030
10031 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
10032 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
10033 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
10034 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
10035 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
10036 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
10037 parameters are tuned:</p>
10038
10039 <ul>
10040
10041 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
10042     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
10043
10044 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
10045     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
10046     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
10047
10048 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
10049     systems.</li>
10050
10051 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
10052     /etc/fstab.</li>
10053
10054 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
10055
10056 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
10057     cron.daily).</li>
10058
10059 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
10060     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
10061
10062 </ul>
10063
10064 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
10065 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
10066 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
10067 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
10068 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
10069 from getting the data on the disk (see
10070 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
10071 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
10072 right thing to do.</p>
10073
10074 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
10075 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
10076 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
10077
10078 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
10079 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
10080 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
10081 instead of during my work.</p>
10082
10083 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
10084 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
10085
10086 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
10087 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
10088 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
10089
10090 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
10091 there.</p>
10092
10093 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
10094 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
10095 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
10096 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
10097 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
10098 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
10099 back.</p>
10100
10101       </div>
10102       <div class="tags">
10103
10104
10105         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10106
10107
10108       </div>
10109     </div>
10110     <div class="padding"></div>
10111
10112     <div class="entry">
10113       <div class="title">
10114         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
10115       </div>
10116       <div class="date">
10117         10th July 2013
10118       </div>
10119       <div class="body">
10120         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
10121 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
10122 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
10123 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
10124 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
10125 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
10126 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
10127 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
10128
10129 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
10130 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
10131 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
10132 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
10133 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
10134 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
10135 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
10136 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
10137 lock up when I download a new
10138 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
10139 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
10140 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
10141
10142 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
10143 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
10144 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
10145 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
10146 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
10147 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
10148
10149 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
10150 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
10151 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
10152 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
10153 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
10154 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
10155
10156 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
10157 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
10158 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
10159 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
10160 exist).</p>
10161
10162       </div>
10163       <div class="tags">
10164
10165
10166         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10167
10168
10169       </div>
10170     </div>
10171     <div class="padding"></div>
10172
10173     <div class="entry">
10174       <div class="title">
10175         <a href="https://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>
10176       </div>
10177       <div class="date">
10178          9th July 2013
10179       </div>
10180       <div class="body">
10181         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
10182 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
10183 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
10184 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
10185 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
10186 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
10187 Bitraf</a>.</p>
10188
10189 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
10190 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
10191 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
10192 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
10193 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
10194
10195       </div>
10196       <div class="tags">
10197
10198
10199         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10200
10201
10202       </div>
10203     </div>
10204     <div class="padding"></div>
10205
10206     <div class="entry">
10207       <div class="title">
10208         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
10209       </div>
10210       <div class="date">
10211          5th July 2013
10212       </div>
10213       <div class="body">
10214         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
10215 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
10216 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
10217 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
10218 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
10219 ended up picking a
10220 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
10221 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
10222 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
10223 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
10224 on that below.</p>
10225
10226 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
10227 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
10228 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
10229 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
10230 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
10231 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
10232 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
10233 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
10234 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
10235
10236 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
10237 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
10238 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
10239 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
10240 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
10241 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
10242 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
10243
10244 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
10245 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
10246
10247 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
10248 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
10249 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
10250 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
10251 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
10252 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
10253 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
10254 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
10255 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
10256 kernel developers as
10257 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
10258 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
10259 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
10260 Lenovo forums, both for
10261 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
10262 2012-11-10</a> and for
10263 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
10264 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
10265 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
10266 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
10267 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
10268 There is even a
10269 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
10270 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
10271 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
10272
10273 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
10274 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
10275 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
10276 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
10277 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
10278 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
10279 fixed. :)</p>
10280
10281       </div>
10282       <div class="tags">
10283
10284
10285         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10286
10287
10288       </div>
10289     </div>
10290     <div class="padding"></div>
10291
10292     <div class="entry">
10293       <div class="title">
10294         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
10295       </div>
10296       <div class="date">
10297          4th July 2013
10298       </div>
10299       <div class="body">
10300         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
10301 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
10302 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
10303 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
10304 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
10305 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
10306 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
10307 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
10308 with an expencive door stop.</p>
10309
10310 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
10311 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
10312 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
10313 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
10314 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
10315 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
10316 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
10317
10318 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
10319 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
10320 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
10321 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
10322 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
10323 new laptop now. :)</p>
10324
10325 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
10326
10327       </div>
10328       <div class="tags">
10329
10330
10331         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10332
10333
10334       </div>
10335     </div>
10336     <div class="padding"></div>
10337
10338     <div class="entry">
10339       <div class="title">
10340         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
10341       </div>
10342       <div class="date">
10343         25th June 2013
10344       </div>
10345       <div class="body">
10346         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
10347 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
10348 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
10349 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
10350 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
10351 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
10352 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
10353 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
10354 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
10355 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
10356 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
10357
10358 <p><pre>
10359 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
10360 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
10361 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
10362 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
10363 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
10364 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
10365 firmware-ipw2x00
10366 firmware-ipw2x00
10367 Preconfiguring packages ...
10368 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
10369 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
10370 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
10371 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
10372 #
10373 </pre></p>
10374
10375 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
10376 printed instead:</p>
10377
10378 <p><pre>
10379 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
10380 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
10381 #
10382 </pre></p>
10383
10384 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
10385 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
10386
10387 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
10388 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
10389 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
10390 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
10391 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
10392 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
10393 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
10394 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
10395 machine.</p>
10396
10397 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
10398 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
10399 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
10400 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
10401 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
10402 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
10403
10404       </div>
10405       <div class="tags">
10406
10407
10408         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
10409
10410
10411       </div>
10412     </div>
10413     <div class="padding"></div>
10414
10415     <div class="entry">
10416       <div class="title">
10417         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
10418       </div>
10419       <div class="date">
10420         11th June 2013
10421       </div>
10422       <div class="body">
10423         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
10424 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
10425 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
10426 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
10427 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
10428 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
10429 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
10430 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
10431 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
10432 i915 driver used by the
10433 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
10434 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
10435
10436 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
10437 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
10438 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
10439 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
10440 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
10441
10442 <pre>
10443 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
10444 update-initramfs -u -k all
10445 </pre>
10446
10447 <p>Since March 2012 there is
10448 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
10449 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
10450 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
10451 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
10452 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
10453 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
10454 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
10455 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
10456 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
10457 number.</p>
10458
10459 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
10460 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
10461
10462 <p><pre>
10463 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
10464     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
10465     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
10466  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
10467  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
10468     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
10469  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
10470     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
10471  Latency: 0
10472  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
10473  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
10474  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
10475  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
10476  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
10477  Capabilities: <access denied>
10478  Kernel driver in use: i915
10479 </pre></p>
10480
10481 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
10482
10483 <p><pre>
10484 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
10485        ...
10486         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
10487         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
10488        ...
10489 }
10490 </pre></p>
10491
10492 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
10493 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
10494 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
10495 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
10496 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
10497 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
10498 yet shown up in
10499 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
10500 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
10501 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
10502 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
10503 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
10504 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
10505
10506 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
10507 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
10508 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
10509 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
10510 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
10511 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
10512 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
10513 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
10514 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
10515 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
10516 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
10517 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
10518
10519 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
10520 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
10521 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
10522 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
10523 backlight.</p>
10524
10525       </div>
10526       <div class="tags">
10527
10528
10529         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10530
10531
10532       </div>
10533     </div>
10534     <div class="padding"></div>
10535
10536     <div class="entry">
10537       <div class="title">
10538         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
10539       </div>
10540       <div class="date">
10541         27th May 2013
10542       </div>
10543       <div class="body">
10544         <p>Two days ago, I asked
10545 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
10546 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
10547 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
10548 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
10549 and Windows 8.</p>
10550
10551 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
10552 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
10553 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
10554 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
10555 enough to tell.</p>
10556
10557 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
10558 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
10559 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
10560 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
10561 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
10562 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
10563 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
10564 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
10565 to follow.</p>
10566
10567 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
10568 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
10569 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
10570 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
10571 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
10572 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
10573 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
10574 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
10575
10576 <p>I've updated the
10577 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
10578 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
10579 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
10580 machine.</p>
10581
10582 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
10583 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
10584
10585       </div>
10586       <div class="tags">
10587
10588
10589         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10590
10591
10592       </div>
10593     </div>
10594     <div class="padding"></div>
10595
10596     <div class="entry">
10597       <div class="title">
10598         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
10599       </div>
10600       <div class="date">
10601         25th May 2013
10602       </div>
10603       <div class="body">
10604         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
10605 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
10606 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
10607 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
10608 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
10609 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
10610
10611 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
10612 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
10613 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
10614 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
10615 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
10616 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
10617 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
10618 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
10619 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
10620 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
10621
10622 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
10623 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
10624 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
10625 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
10626 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
10627 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
10628
10629 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
10630 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
10631 on new Laptops?</p>
10632
10633       </div>
10634       <div class="tags">
10635
10636
10637         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10638
10639
10640       </div>
10641     </div>
10642     <div class="padding"></div>
10643
10644     <div class="entry">
10645       <div class="title">
10646         <a href="https://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>
10647       </div>
10648       <div class="date">
10649         17th May 2013
10650       </div>
10651       <div class="body">
10652         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
10653 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
10654 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
10655 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
10656 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
10657 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
10658 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
10659 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
10660 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
10661 donate some money</a>.
10662
10663 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
10664 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
10665 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
10666 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
10667 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
10668
10669 <p>The script,
10670 <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/>
10671 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
10672 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
10673 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
10674
10675 <ol>
10676
10677 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
10678 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
10679 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
10680     our configuration.</li>
10681 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
10682     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
10683     according to the profile specified in the config above,
10684     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
10685 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
10686     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
10687 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
10688
10689 </ol>
10690
10691 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
10692 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
10693 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
10694 the needed packages.</p>
10695
10696 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
10697 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
10698 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
10699 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
10700 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
10701 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
10702
10703 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
10704 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
10705 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
10706
10707 <p><pre>
10708 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
10709 DESKTOP="lxde"
10710 </pre></p>
10711
10712 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
10713 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
10714 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
10715 boot.</p>
10716
10717       </div>
10718       <div class="tags">
10719
10720
10721         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10722
10723
10724       </div>
10725     </div>
10726     <div class="padding"></div>
10727
10728     <div class="entry">
10729       <div class="title">
10730         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
10731       </div>
10732       <div class="date">
10733         11th May 2013
10734       </div>
10735       <div class="body">
10736         <P>In January,
10737 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
10738 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
10739 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
10740 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
10741 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
10742 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
10743 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
10744 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
10745 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
10746 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
10747 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
10748 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
10749
10750 <p><table>
10751 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
10752 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
10753 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
10754 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
10755 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
10756 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
10757 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
10758 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
10759 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
10760 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
10761 </table></p>
10762
10763 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
10764 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
10765 available in experimental.</p>
10766
10767 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
10768 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
10769 for LEGO designers.</p>
10770
10771       </div>
10772       <div class="tags">
10773
10774
10775         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
10776
10777
10778       </div>
10779     </div>
10780     <div class="padding"></div>
10781
10782     <div class="entry">
10783       <div class="title">
10784         <a href="https://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>
10785       </div>
10786       <div class="date">
10787          5th May 2013
10788       </div>
10789       <div class="body">
10790         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
10791 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
10792 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
10793 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
10794 soon.</p>
10795
10796 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
10797 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
10798 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
10799 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
10800 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
10801 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
10802 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
10803 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
10804 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
10805 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
10806 Edu.</a>
10807
10808 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
10809 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
10810 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
10811 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
10812 follow.<p>
10813
10814       </div>
10815       <div class="tags">
10816
10817
10818         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10819
10820
10821       </div>
10822     </div>
10823     <div class="padding"></div>
10824
10825     <div class="entry">
10826       <div class="title">
10827         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
10828       </div>
10829       <div class="date">
10830          3rd April 2013
10831       </div>
10832       <div class="body">
10833         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
10834 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
10835 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
10836 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
10837
10838 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
10839 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
10840 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
10841 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
10842 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
10843 BTS. :)</p>
10844
10845       </div>
10846       <div class="tags">
10847
10848
10849         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
10850
10851
10852       </div>
10853     </div>
10854     <div class="padding"></div>
10855
10856     <div class="entry">
10857       <div class="title">
10858         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
10859       </div>
10860       <div class="date">
10861          2nd February 2013
10862       </div>
10863       <div class="body">
10864         <p>My
10865 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
10866 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
10867 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
10868 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
10869 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
10870 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
10871 version too.</p>
10872
10873 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
10874 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
10875 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
10876 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
10877 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
10878 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
10879 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
10880 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
10881
10882 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
10883 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
10884 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
10885 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
10886 it. :)</p>
10887
10888 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
10889 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
10890 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
10891
10892       </div>
10893       <div class="tags">
10894
10895
10896         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10897
10898
10899       </div>
10900     </div>
10901     <div class="padding"></div>
10902
10903     <div class="entry">
10904       <div class="title">
10905         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
10906       </div>
10907       <div class="date">
10908         22nd January 2013
10909       </div>
10910       <div class="body">
10911         <p>Yesterday, I
10912 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
10913 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
10914 pluggable hardware devices, which I
10915 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
10916 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
10917 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
10918 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
10919 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
10920 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
10921 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
10922 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
10923 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
10924 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
10925
10926 <pre>
10927 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
10928 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
10929 </pre>
10930
10931 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
10932 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
10933 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
10934 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
10935
10936 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
10937 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
10938 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
10939 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
10940 word.</p>
10941
10942 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
10943 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
10944 process.</p>
10945
10946 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
10947 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
10948
10949       </div>
10950       <div class="tags">
10951
10952
10953         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
10954
10955
10956       </div>
10957     </div>
10958     <div class="padding"></div>
10959
10960     <div class="entry">
10961       <div class="title">
10962         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
10963       </div>
10964       <div class="date">
10965         21st January 2013
10966       </div>
10967       <div class="body">
10968         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
10969 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
10970 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
10971 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
10972 it, fetch the
10973 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
10974 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
10975 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
10976 autostart script.</p>
10977
10978 <p>The design is simple:</p>
10979
10980 <ul>
10981
10982 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
10983 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
10984
10985 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
10986 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
10987 initially did.</li>
10988
10989 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
10990 the APT database, a database
10991 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
10992 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
10993
10994 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
10995 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
10996 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
10997 package or packages.</li>
10998
10999 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
11000 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
11001
11002 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
11003 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
11004
11005 </ul>
11006
11007 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
11008 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
11009 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
11010 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
11011
11012 <p><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
11013 <br><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
11014 <br><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
11015 <br><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
11016 <br><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
11017
11018 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
11019 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
11020 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
11021 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
11022 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
11023 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
11024 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
11025 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
11026
11027 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
11028 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
11029 '<tt>svn checkout
11030 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
11031 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
11032 devscripts package.</p>
11033
11034 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
11035 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
11036 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
11037 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
11038 instructions</a> for details.</p>
11039
11040       </div>
11041       <div class="tags">
11042
11043
11044         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
11045
11046
11047       </div>
11048     </div>
11049     <div class="padding"></div>
11050
11051     <div class="entry">
11052       <div class="title">
11053         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
11054       </div>
11055       <div class="date">
11056         19th January 2013
11057       </div>
11058       <div class="body">
11059         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
11060 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
11061 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
11062 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
11063 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
11064 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
11065 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
11066 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
11067 not a durable solution.
11068
11069 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
11070 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
11071
11072 <ul>
11073
11074 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
11075   than A4).</li>
11076 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
11077 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
11078 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
11079 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
11080 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
11081 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
11082 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
11083 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
11084 size).</li>
11085 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
11086   X.org packages.</li>
11087 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
11088   the time).
11089
11090 </ul>
11091
11092 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
11093 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
11094 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
11095 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
11096 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
11097 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
11098 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
11099 still be useful.</p>
11100
11101 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
11102 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
11103 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
11104 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
11105 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
11106 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
11107
11108       </div>
11109       <div class="tags">
11110
11111
11112         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11113
11114
11115       </div>
11116     </div>
11117     <div class="padding"></div>
11118
11119     <div class="entry">
11120       <div class="title">
11121         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</a>
11122       </div>
11123       <div class="date">
11124         18th January 2013
11125       </div>
11126       <div class="body">
11127         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
11128 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
11129 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
11130 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
11131 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
11132 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
11133 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
11134
11135 <pre>
11136 #!/usr/bin/python
11137 import sys
11138 import apt
11139 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
11140     cache = apt.Cache()
11141     cache.open(None)
11142     thepkgs = []
11143     for pkg in cache:
11144         version = pkg.candidate
11145         if version is None:
11146             version = pkg.installed
11147         if version is None:
11148             continue
11149         record = version.record
11150         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
11151             continue
11152         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
11153         for t in mime_types:
11154             t = t.rstrip().strip()
11155             if t == mimetype:
11156                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
11157     return thepkgs
11158 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
11159 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
11160     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
11161 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
11162 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
11163     print "  %s" %pkg
11164 </pre>
11165
11166 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
11167
11168 <pre>
11169 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
11170 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
11171   gecko-mediaplayer
11172 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
11173 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
11174   browser-plugin-gnash
11175 %
11176 </pre>
11177
11178 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
11179 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
11180 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
11181 anyone working on adding it?</p>
11182
11183 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
11184 request for icweasel support for this feature is
11185 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
11186 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
11187 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
11188 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
11189
11190       </div>
11191       <div class="tags">
11192
11193
11194         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11195
11196
11197       </div>
11198     </div>
11199     <div class="padding"></div>
11200
11201     <div class="entry">
11202       <div class="title">
11203         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
11204       </div>
11205       <div class="date">
11206         16th January 2013
11207       </div>
11208       <div class="body">
11209         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
11210 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
11211 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
11212 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
11213 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
11214 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
11215 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
11216 downloaded by the browser.</p>
11217
11218 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
11219 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
11220 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
11221 can be found on the
11222 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
11223 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
11224 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
11225 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
11226 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
11227
11228 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
11229
11230 <pre>
11231   count MIME type
11232   ----- -----------------------
11233      32 text/plain
11234      30 audio/mpeg
11235      29 image/png
11236      28 image/jpeg
11237      27 application/ogg
11238      26 audio/x-mp3
11239      25 image/tiff
11240      25 image/gif
11241      22 image/bmp
11242      22 audio/x-wav
11243      20 audio/x-flac
11244      19 audio/x-mpegurl
11245      18 video/x-ms-asf
11246      18 audio/x-musepack
11247      18 audio/x-mpeg
11248      18 application/x-ogg
11249      17 video/mpeg
11250      17 audio/x-scpls
11251      17 audio/ogg
11252      16 video/x-ms-wmv
11253 </pre>
11254
11255 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
11256
11257 <pre>
11258   count MIME type
11259   ----- -----------------------
11260      33 text/plain
11261      32 image/png
11262      32 image/jpeg
11263      29 audio/mpeg
11264      27 image/gif
11265      26 image/tiff
11266      26 application/ogg
11267      25 audio/x-mp3
11268      22 image/bmp
11269      21 audio/x-wav
11270      19 audio/x-mpegurl
11271      19 audio/x-mpeg
11272      18 video/mpeg
11273      18 audio/x-scpls
11274      18 audio/x-flac
11275      18 application/x-ogg
11276      17 video/x-ms-asf
11277      17 text/html
11278      17 audio/x-musepack
11279      16 image/x-xbitmap
11280 </pre>
11281
11282 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
11283
11284 <pre>
11285   count MIME type
11286   ----- -----------------------
11287      31 text/plain
11288      31 image/png
11289      31 image/jpeg
11290      29 audio/mpeg
11291      28 application/ogg
11292      27 image/gif
11293      26 image/tiff
11294      26 audio/x-mp3
11295      23 audio/x-wav
11296      22 image/bmp
11297      21 audio/x-flac
11298      20 audio/x-mpegurl
11299      19 audio/x-mpeg
11300      18 video/x-ms-asf
11301      18 video/mpeg
11302      18 audio/x-scpls
11303      18 application/x-ogg
11304      17 audio/x-musepack
11305      16 video/x-ms-wmv
11306      16 video/x-msvideo
11307 </pre>
11308
11309 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
11310 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
11311 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
11312 issues.</p>
11313
11314 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
11315 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
11316
11317       </div>
11318       <div class="tags">
11319
11320
11321         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11322
11323
11324       </div>
11325     </div>
11326     <div class="padding"></div>
11327
11328     <div class="entry">
11329       <div class="title">
11330         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
11331       </div>
11332       <div class="date">
11333         15th January 2013
11334       </div>
11335       <div class="body">
11336         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
11337 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
11338 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
11339 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
11340 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
11341 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
11342 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
11343 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
11344 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
11345 packages.</p>
11346
11347 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
11348 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
11349 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
11350 modalias.</p>
11351
11352 <p><blockquote>
11353 Package: package-name
11354 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
11355 </blockquote></p>
11356
11357 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
11358 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
11359
11360 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
11361 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
11362
11363 <p><blockquote>
11364 Package: cheese
11365 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
11366 </blockquote></p>
11367
11368 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
11369 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
11370
11371 <p><blockquote>
11372 Package: pcmciautils
11373 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
11374 </blockquote></p>
11375
11376 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
11377 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
11378
11379 <p><blockquote>
11380 Package: colorhug-client
11381 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
11382 </blockquote></p>
11383
11384 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
11385 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
11386 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
11387
11388 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
11389 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
11390 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
11391 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
11392 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
11393 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
11394 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
11395 Raring.</p>
11396
11397 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
11398 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
11399 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
11400 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
11401 try the
11402 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
11403 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
11404 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
11405 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
11406
11407 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
11408 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
11409
11410 <p><blockquote>
11411 % ./hw-support-lookup
11412 <br>yubikey-personalization
11413 <br>%
11414 </blockquote></p>
11415
11416 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
11417 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
11418
11419 <p><blockquote>
11420 % ./hw-support-lookup
11421 <br>pcmciautils
11422 <br>%
11423 </blockquote></p>
11424
11425 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
11426 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
11427 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
11428
11429 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
11430 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
11431 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
11432 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
11433 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
11434 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
11435 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
11436 see if it work.</p>
11437
11438 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
11439 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
11440 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
11441 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
11442
11443       </div>
11444       <div class="tags">
11445
11446
11447         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
11448
11449
11450       </div>
11451     </div>
11452     <div class="padding"></div>
11453
11454     <div class="entry">
11455       <div class="title">
11456         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
11457       </div>
11458       <div class="date">
11459         14th January 2013
11460       </div>
11461       <div class="body">
11462         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
11463 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
11464 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
11465 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
11466 in
11467 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
11468 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
11469
11470 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
11471
11472 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
11473 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
11474 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
11475 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
11476 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
11477 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
11478
11479 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
11480 this shell script:</p>
11481
11482 <pre>
11483 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
11484 </pre>
11485
11486 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
11487 using modinfo:</p>
11488
11489 <pre>
11490 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
11491 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
11492 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
11493 %
11494 </pre>
11495
11496 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
11497
11498 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
11499 Bridge memory controller:</p>
11500
11501 <p><blockquote>
11502 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
11503 </blockquote></p>
11504
11505 <p>This represent these values:</p>
11506
11507 <pre>
11508  v   00008086  (vendor)
11509  d   00002770  (device)
11510  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
11511  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
11512  bc  06        (bus class)
11513  sc  00        (bus subclass)
11514  i   00        (interface)
11515 </pre>
11516
11517 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
11518 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
11519 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
11520 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
11521
11522 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
11523 means.</p>
11524
11525 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
11526
11527 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
11528 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
11529
11530 <p><blockquote>
11531 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
11532 </blockquote></p>
11533
11534 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
11535
11536 <pre>
11537  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
11538  p    0001  (device product)
11539  d    0206  (bcddevice)
11540  dc     09  (device class)
11541  dsc    00  (device subclass)
11542  dp     00  (device protocol)
11543  ic     09  (interface class)
11544  isc    00  (interface subclass)
11545  ip     00  (interface protocol)
11546 </pre>
11547
11548 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
11549 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
11550 these alias entries show up:</p>
11551
11552 <p><blockquote>
11553 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
11554 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
11555 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
11556 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
11557 </blockquote></p>
11558
11559 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
11560 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
11561 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
11562
11563 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
11564
11565 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
11566 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
11567
11568 <p><blockquote>
11569 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
11570 </blockquote></p>
11571
11572 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
11573
11574 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
11575
11576 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
11577 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
11578 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
11579
11580 <p><blockquote>
11581 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
11582 </blockquote></p>
11583
11584 <p>The values present are</p>
11585
11586 <pre>
11587  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
11588  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
11589  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
11590  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
11591  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
11592  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
11593  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
11594  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
11595  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
11596  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
11597  ct   10             (chassis type)
11598  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
11599 </pre>
11600
11601 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
11602 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
11603
11604 <pre>
11605   3 Desktop
11606   4 Low Profile Desktop
11607   5 Pizza Box
11608   6 Mini Tower
11609   7 Tower
11610   8 Portable
11611   9 Laptop
11612  10 Notebook
11613  11 Hand Held
11614  12 Docking Station
11615  13 All In One
11616  14 Sub Notebook
11617  15 Space-saving
11618  16 Lunch Box
11619  17 Main Server Chassis
11620  18 Expansion Chassis
11621  19 Sub Chassis
11622  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
11623  21 Peripheral Chassis
11624  22 RAID Chassis
11625  23 Rack Mount Chassis
11626  24 Sealed-case PC
11627  25 Multi-system
11628  26 CompactPCI
11629  27 AdvancedTCA
11630  28 Blade
11631  29 Blade Enclosing
11632 </pre>
11633
11634 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
11635 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
11636 claim it is a desktop.</p>
11637
11638 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
11639
11640 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
11641 test machine:</p>
11642
11643 <p><blockquote>
11644 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
11645 </blockquote></p>
11646
11647 <p>The values present are</p>
11648
11649 <pre>
11650   ty  01  (type)
11651   pr  00  (prototype)
11652   id  00  (id)
11653   ex  00  (extra)
11654 </pre>
11655
11656 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
11657 the valid values are.</p>
11658
11659 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
11660
11661 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
11662 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
11663 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
11664 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
11665 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
11666 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
11667 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
11668
11669 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
11670
11671 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
11672 one can use the following shell script:</p>
11673
11674 <pre>
11675   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
11676     echo "$id" ; \
11677     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
11678   done
11679 </pre>
11680
11681 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
11682 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
11683
11684 <pre>
11685   acpi:ACPI0003:
11686     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
11687   acpi:device:
11688   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
11689   acpi:IBM0068:
11690     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
11691     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
11692     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
11693     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
11694   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
11695     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
11696     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
11697     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
11698   [...]
11699 </pre>
11700
11701 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
11702 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
11703 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
11704 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
11705
11706 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
11707 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
11708 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
11709
11710       </div>
11711       <div class="tags">
11712
11713
11714         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
11715
11716
11717       </div>
11718     </div>
11719     <div class="padding"></div>
11720
11721     <div class="entry">
11722       <div class="title">
11723         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
11724       </div>
11725       <div class="date">
11726         10th January 2013
11727       </div>
11728       <div class="body">
11729         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
11730 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
11731 Launcher and updated the Debian package
11732 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
11733 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
11734 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
11735 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
11736 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
11737 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
11738 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
11739 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
11740 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
11741 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
11742 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
11743 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
11744 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
11745 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
11746 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
11747
11748       </div>
11749       <div class="tags">
11750
11751
11752         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
11753
11754
11755       </div>
11756     </div>
11757     <div class="padding"></div>
11758
11759     <div class="entry">
11760       <div class="title">
11761         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
11762       </div>
11763       <div class="date">
11764          9th January 2013
11765       </div>
11766       <div class="body">
11767         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
11768 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
11769 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
11770 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
11771 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
11772 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
11773 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
11774 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
11775 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
11776 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
11777 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
11778
11779 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
11780 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
11781 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
11782 simple:
11783
11784 <ul>
11785
11786 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
11787   starting when a user log in.</li>
11788
11789 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
11790   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
11791
11792 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
11793   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
11794   packages.</li>
11795
11796 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
11797   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
11798
11799 </ul>
11800
11801 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
11802 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
11803 discover database to find packages and
11804 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
11805 packages.</p>
11806
11807 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
11808 draft package is now checked into
11809 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
11810 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
11811 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
11812 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
11813 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
11814 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
11815 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
11816 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
11817 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
11818 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
11819 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
11820 because of the freeze).</p>
11821
11822 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
11823 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
11824 inserted):</p>
11825
11826 <p align="center"><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
11827
11828 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
11829 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
11830 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
11831
11832 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
11833 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
11834 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
11835 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
11836 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
11837 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
11838 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
11839
11840 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
11841 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
11842 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
11843 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
11844 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
11845 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
11846 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
11847 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
11848 not be installed?</p>
11849
11850 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
11851 please send me an email. :)</p>
11852
11853       </div>
11854       <div class="tags">
11855
11856
11857         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
11858
11859
11860       </div>
11861     </div>
11862     <div class="padding"></div>
11863
11864     <div class="entry">
11865       <div class="title">
11866         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
11867       </div>
11868       <div class="date">
11869          2nd January 2013
11870       </div>
11871       <div class="body">
11872         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
11873 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
11874 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
11875 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
11876 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
11877 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
11878 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
11879 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
11880 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
11881 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
11882
11883 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
11884 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
11885 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
11886
11887       </div>
11888       <div class="tags">
11889
11890
11891         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
11892
11893
11894       </div>
11895     </div>
11896     <div class="padding"></div>
11897
11898     <div class="entry">
11899       <div class="title">
11900         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</a>
11901       </div>
11902       <div class="date">
11903         25th December 2012
11904       </div>
11905       <div class="body">
11906         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
11907 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
11908
11909 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
11910 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
11911 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
11912 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
11913 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
11914 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
11915 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
11916 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
11917 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
11918 name.</p>
11919
11920 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
11921 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
11922 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
11923
11924 <blockquote><pre>
11925 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
11926 cd bitcoin
11927 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
11928 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
11929 </pre></blockquote>
11930
11931 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
11932 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
11933 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
11934 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
11935 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
11936 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
11937 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
11938 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
11939 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
11940
11941 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
11942 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
11943 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
11944
11945       </div>
11946       <div class="tags">
11947
11948
11949         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11950
11951
11952       </div>
11953     </div>
11954     <div class="padding"></div>
11955
11956     <div class="entry">
11957       <div class="title">
11958         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
11959       </div>
11960       <div class="date">
11961         21st December 2012
11962       </div>
11963       <div class="body">
11964         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
11965 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
11966 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
11967 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
11968 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
11969 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
11970 is now maintained by a
11971 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
11972 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
11973 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
11974 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
11975 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
11976 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
11977 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
11978 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
11979 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
11980 Corallo in a
11981 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
11982 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
11983 Debian package.</p>
11984
11985 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
11986 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
11987 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
11988 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
11989 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
11990 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
11991 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
11992 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
11993 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
11994 new version to unstable.
11995
11996 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
11997 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
11998 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
11999 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
12000 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
12001 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
12002 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
12003 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
12004 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
12005 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
12006 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
12007 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
12008 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
12009 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
12010 have not tested them.</p>
12011
12012 <p>My
12013 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
12014 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
12015 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
12016 years ago, as can be
12017 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
12018 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
12019 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
12020 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
12021 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
12022 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
12023 the same address as last time,
12024 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
12025
12026       </div>
12027       <div class="tags">
12028
12029
12030         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12031
12032
12033       </div>
12034     </div>
12035     <div class="padding"></div>
12036
12037     <div class="entry">
12038       <div class="title">
12039         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
12040       </div>
12041       <div class="date">
12042          7th September 2012
12043       </div>
12044       <div class="body">
12045         <p>As I
12046 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
12047 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
12048 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
12049 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
12050 repository for the project</a>.</p>
12051
12052 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
12053 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
12054 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
12055 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
12056
12057 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
12058 PostScript formats at
12059 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
12060 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
12061
12062       </div>
12063       <div class="tags">
12064
12065
12066         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
12067
12068
12069       </div>
12070     </div>
12071     <div class="padding"></div>
12072
12073     <div class="entry">
12074       <div class="title">
12075         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
12076       </div>
12077       <div class="date">
12078         16th August 2012
12079       </div>
12080       <div class="body">
12081         <p>I dag fyller
12082 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
12083 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
12084 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
12085
12086       </div>
12087       <div class="tags">
12088
12089
12090         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
12091
12092
12093       </div>
12094     </div>
12095     <div class="padding"></div>
12096
12097     <div class="entry">
12098       <div class="title">
12099         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
12100       </div>
12101       <div class="date">
12102         24th June 2012
12103       </div>
12104       <div class="body">
12105         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
12106 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
12107 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
12108 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
12109 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
12110 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
12111 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
12112 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
12113 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
12114 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
12115 missing in my book.</p>
12116
12117 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
12118 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
12119 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
12120 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
12121 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
12122 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
12123 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
12124
12125       </div>
12126       <div class="tags">
12127
12128
12129         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
12130
12131
12132       </div>
12133     </div>
12134     <div class="padding"></div>
12135
12136     <div class="entry">
12137       <div class="title">
12138         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
12139       </div>
12140       <div class="date">
12141         21st November 2011
12142       </div>
12143       <div class="body">
12144         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
12145 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
12146 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
12147 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
12148 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
12149 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
12150 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
12151 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
12152 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
12153 the tools to do so.</p>
12154
12155 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
12156 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
12157 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
12158 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
12159
12160 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
12161 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
12162 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
12163 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
12164 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
12165 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
12166 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
12167 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
12168
12169 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
12170 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
12171 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
12172
12173 <p><pre>
12174 #!/usr/bin/perl
12175 use strict;
12176 use warnings;
12177 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
12178 BEGIN {
12179     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
12180     my %rhelmodules = (
12181         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
12182         );
12183     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
12184         eval "use $module;";
12185         if ($@) {
12186             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
12187             system("yum install -y $pkg");
12188             eval "use $module;";
12189         }
12190     }
12191 }
12192 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
12193
12194 upgrade_dell();
12195
12196 exit 0;
12197
12198 sub run_firmware_script {
12199     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
12200     unless ($script) {
12201         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
12202         exit 1
12203     }
12204     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
12205
12206     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
12207         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
12208     } else {
12209         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
12210     }
12211 }
12212
12213 sub run_firmware_scripts {
12214     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
12215     # Run firmware packages
12216     for my $dir (@dirs) {
12217         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
12218         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
12219         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
12220             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
12221             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
12222         }
12223         closedir $dh;
12224     }
12225 }
12226
12227 sub download {
12228     my $url = shift;
12229     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
12230     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
12231 }
12232
12233 sub upgrade_dell {
12234     my @dirs;
12235     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
12236     chomp $product;
12237
12238     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
12239
12240         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
12241         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
12242
12243         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
12244             CLEANUP => 1
12245             );
12246         chdir($tmpdir);
12247         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
12248         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
12249         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
12250         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
12251         my $fwopts = "-q";
12252         if (@paths) {
12253             for my $url (@paths) {
12254                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
12255             }
12256             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
12257         } else {
12258             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
12259             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
12260         }
12261         chdir('/');
12262     } else {
12263         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
12264         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
12265     }
12266 }
12267
12268 sub fetch_dell_fw {
12269     my $path = shift;
12270     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
12271     download($url);
12272 }
12273
12274 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
12275 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
12276 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
12277 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
12278     my $filename = shift;
12279
12280     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
12281     chomp $product;
12282     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
12283
12284     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
12285
12286     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
12287     my @paths;
12288     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
12289         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
12290         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
12291         my $oscode;
12292         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
12293             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
12294         } else {
12295             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
12296         }
12297         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
12298         {
12299             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
12300         }
12301     }
12302     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
12303         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
12304
12305         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
12306         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
12307
12308         my $cpath = $component->{path};
12309         for my $path (@paths) {
12310             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
12311                 push(@paths, $cpath);
12312             }
12313         }
12314     }
12315     return @paths;
12316 }
12317 </pre>
12318
12319 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
12320 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
12321 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
12322 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
12323 outdated.</p>
12324
12325       </div>
12326       <div class="tags">
12327
12328
12329         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12330
12331
12332       </div>
12333     </div>
12334     <div class="padding"></div>
12335
12336     <div class="entry">
12337       <div class="title">
12338         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</a>
12339       </div>
12340       <div class="date">
12341          4th August 2011
12342       </div>
12343       <div class="body">
12344         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
12345 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
12346 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
12347 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
12348 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
12349 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
12350 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
12351 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
12352 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
12353
12354 <p><blockquote>
12355 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
12356 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
12357 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
12358 </blockquote></p>
12359
12360 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
12361 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
12362 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
12363 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
12364 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
12365 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
12366 hard to explain.</p>
12367
12368 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
12369 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
12370 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
12371 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
12372 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
12373 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
12374 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
12375 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
12376 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
12377 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
12378 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
12379 mode).</p>
12380
12381 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
12382 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
12383 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
12384 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
12385 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
12386 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
12387 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
12388 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
12389 after visiting single user mode.</p>
12390
12391 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
12392 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
12393 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
12394 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
12395 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
12396 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
12397 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
12398 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
12399
12400 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
12401 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
12402 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
12403
12404       </div>
12405       <div class="tags">
12406
12407
12408         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12409
12410
12411       </div>
12412     </div>
12413     <div class="padding"></div>
12414
12415     <div class="entry">
12416       <div class="title">
12417         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
12418       </div>
12419       <div class="date">
12420         30th July 2011
12421       </div>
12422       <div class="body">
12423         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
12424 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
12425 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
12426 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
12427 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
12428 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
12429 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
12430 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
12431 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
12432 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
12433 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
12434 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
12435 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
12436
12437 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
12438 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
12439 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
12440 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
12441 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
12442 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
12443 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
12444 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
12445 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
12446
12447 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
12448 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
12449 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
12450 is presented.</p>
12451
12452 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
12453 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
12454 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
12455 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
12456 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
12457 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
12458 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
12459 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
12460 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
12461 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
12462 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
12463 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
12464 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
12465 find time to push this forward.</p>
12466
12467       </div>
12468       <div class="tags">
12469
12470
12471         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12472
12473
12474       </div>
12475     </div>
12476     <div class="padding"></div>
12477
12478     <div class="entry">
12479       <div class="title">
12480         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</a>
12481       </div>
12482       <div class="date">
12483         29th July 2011
12484       </div>
12485       <div class="body">
12486         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
12487 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
12488 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
12489 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
12490 issues.</p>
12491
12492 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
12493 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
12494 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
12495
12496 <ol>
12497
12498 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
12499 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
12500 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
12501 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
12502 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
12503 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
12504 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
12505 Debian.</li>
12506
12507 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
12508 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
12509 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
12510 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
12511 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
12512 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
12513 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
12514 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
12515 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
12516 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
12517 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
12518 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
12519 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
12520
12521 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
12522 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
12523 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
12524 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
12525 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
12526 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
12527 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
12528 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
12529 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
12530 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
12531
12532 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
12533 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
12534 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
12535 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
12536 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
12537 latter behaviour.</li>
12538
12539 </ol>
12540
12541 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
12542 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
12543 it do not matter much.</p>
12544
12545 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
12546 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
12547 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
12548
12549       </div>
12550       <div class="tags">
12551
12552
12553         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
12554
12555
12556       </div>
12557     </div>
12558     <div class="padding"></div>
12559
12560     <div class="entry">
12561       <div class="title">
12562         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
12563       </div>
12564       <div class="date">
12565         26th July 2011
12566       </div>
12567       <div class="body">
12568         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
12569 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
12570 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
12571 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
12572 security support for a few years.</p>
12573
12574 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
12575 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
12576 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
12577 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
12578 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
12579 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
12580 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
12581 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
12582 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
12583 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
12584 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
12585 easier in the future.</p>
12586
12587 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
12588 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
12589 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
12590 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
12591 do not have time for.</p>
12592
12593       </div>
12594       <div class="tags">
12595
12596
12597         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>.
12598
12599
12600       </div>
12601     </div>
12602     <div class="padding"></div>
12603
12604     <div class="entry">
12605       <div class="title">
12606         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html">A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</a>
12607       </div>
12608       <div class="date">
12609          3rd April 2011
12610       </div>
12611       <div class="body">
12612         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
12613 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
12614 update in English.</p>
12615
12616 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
12617 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
12618 of the British service
12619 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
12620 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
12621 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
12622 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
12623 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
12624 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
12625 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
12626 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
12627 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
12628 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
12629 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
12630 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
12631 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
12632
12633 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
12634 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
12635 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
12636 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
12637 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
12638 public infrastructure.</p>
12639
12640 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
12641 such service?</p>
12642
12643       </div>
12644       <div class="tags">
12645
12646
12647         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
12648
12649
12650       </div>
12651     </div>
12652     <div class="padding"></div>
12653
12654     <div class="entry">
12655       <div class="title">
12656         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
12657       </div>
12658       <div class="date">
12659         28th January 2011
12660       </div>
12661       <div class="body">
12662         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
12663 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
12664 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
12665 available on the Internet, and check our locally
12666 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
12667 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
12668 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
12669 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
12670 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
12671 out which security holes were present in our free software
12672 collection.</p>
12673
12674 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
12675 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
12676 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
12677 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
12678 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
12679 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
12680 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
12681 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
12682 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
12683 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
12684 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
12685 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
12686 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
12687 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
12688 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
12689 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
12690
12691 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
12692 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
12693 check out, one could look up
12694 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3">cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
12695 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
12696 The most recent one is
12697 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
12698 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
12699 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
12700
12701 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
12702 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
12703 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
12704 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
12705 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
12706 security issues out.</p>
12707
12708 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
12709 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
12710 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
12711 RHEL is providing
12712 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
12713 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
12714 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
12715
12716 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
12717 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
12718 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
12719 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
12720 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
12721 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
12722 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
12723 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
12724 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
12725 established soon.</p>
12726
12727 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
12728 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
12729 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
12730 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
12731 for their packages.</p>
12732
12733       </div>
12734       <div class="tags">
12735
12736
12737         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
12738
12739
12740       </div>
12741     </div>
12742     <div class="padding"></div>
12743
12744     <div class="entry">
12745       <div class="title">
12746         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
12747       </div>
12748       <div class="date">
12749         23rd January 2011
12750       </div>
12751       <div class="body">
12752         <p>In the
12753 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
12754 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
12755 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
12756 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
12757 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
12758 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
12759 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
12760 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
12761 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
12762 one of my machines like this:</p>
12763
12764 <pre>
12765 loaded modules:
12766 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
12767 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
12768 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
12769 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
12770 10de:03ec pata_amd
12771 10de:03f6 sata_nv
12772 1022:1103 k8temp
12773 109e:036e bttv
12774 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
12775 11ab:4364 sky2
12776 </pre>
12777
12778 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
12779 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
12780
12781 <pre>
12782 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
12783     echo loaded pci modules:
12784     (
12785         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
12786         for address in * ; do
12787             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
12788                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
12789                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
12790                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
12791                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
12792                     echo "$id $module"
12793                 fi
12794             fi
12795         done
12796     )
12797     echo
12798 fi
12799 </pre>
12800
12801 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
12802 mappings:</p>
12803
12804 <pre>
12805 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
12806     echo loaded usb modules:
12807     (
12808         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
12809         for address in * ; do
12810             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
12811                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
12812                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
12813                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
12814                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
12815                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
12816                         echo "$id $module"
12817                     fi
12818                 fi
12819             fi
12820         done
12821     )
12822     echo
12823 fi
12824 </pre>
12825
12826 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
12827 well.</p>
12828
12829       </div>
12830       <div class="tags">
12831
12832
12833         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12834
12835
12836       </div>
12837     </div>
12838     <div class="padding"></div>
12839
12840     <div class="entry">
12841       <div class="title">
12842         <a href="https://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>
12843       </div>
12844       <div class="date">
12845         22nd December 2010
12846       </div>
12847       <div class="body">
12848         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
12849 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
12850 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
12851 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
12852 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
12853 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
12854 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
12855 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
12856 university.</p>
12857
12858 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
12859 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
12860 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
12861 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
12862 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
12863 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
12864 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
12865 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
12866
12867 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
12868 I perform on a new model.</p>
12869
12870 <ul>
12871
12872 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
12873 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
12874 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
12875
12876 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
12877 installation, X.org is working.</li>
12878
12879 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
12880 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
12881 reported by the program.</li>
12882
12883 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
12884 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
12885 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
12886 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
12887 normally test this by playing
12888 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
12889 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
12890
12891 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
12892 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
12893
12894 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
12895 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
12896
12897 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
12898 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
12899
12900 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
12901 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
12902 few.</li>
12903
12904 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
12905 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
12906 notice this.</li>
12907
12908 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
12909 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
12910 resume.</li>
12911
12912 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
12913 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
12914 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
12915 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
12916 not.</li>
12917
12918 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
12919 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
12920 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
12921 existence.</li>
12922
12923 </ul>
12924
12925 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
12926 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
12927 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
12928 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
12929 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
12930 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
12931 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
12932 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
12933
12934       </div>
12935       <div class="tags">
12936
12937
12938         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12939
12940
12941       </div>
12942     </div>
12943     <div class="padding"></div>
12944
12945     <div class="entry">
12946       <div class="title">
12947         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
12948       </div>
12949       <div class="date">
12950         11th December 2010
12951       </div>
12952       <div class="body">
12953         <p>As I continue to explore
12954 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
12955 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
12956 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
12957
12958 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
12959 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
12960 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
12961 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
12962 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
12963 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
12964 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
12965 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
12966 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
12967 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
12968 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
12969 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
12970 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
12971 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
12972 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
12973 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
12974 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
12975 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
12976 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
12977 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
12978
12979 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
12980 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
12981 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
12982 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
12983 If the Skolelinux foundation
12984 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
12985 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
12986 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
12987 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
12988 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
12989 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
12990 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
12991 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
12992
12993 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
12994 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
12995 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
12996 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
12997 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
12998 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
12999 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
13000 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
13001 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
13002 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
13003 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
13004 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
13005 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
13006 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
13007 currencies.</p>
13008
13009 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
13010 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
13011 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
13012 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
13013 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
13014 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
13015 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
13016 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
13017 BitCoins.  Check out
13018 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
13019 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
13020 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
13021 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
13022 yet.</p>
13023
13024 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
13025 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
13026 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
13027 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
13028 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
13029
13030       </div>
13031       <div class="tags">
13032
13033
13034         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
13035
13036
13037       </div>
13038     </div>
13039     <div class="padding"></div>
13040
13041     <div class="entry">
13042       <div class="title">
13043         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</a>
13044       </div>
13045       <div class="date">
13046         10th December 2010
13047       </div>
13048       <div class="body">
13049         <p>With this weeks lawless
13050 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
13051 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
13052 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
13053 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
13054 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
13055 A blog post from
13056 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
13057 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
13058 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
13059 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
13060 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
13061 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
13062 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
13063
13064 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
13065 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
13066 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
13067 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
13068 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
13069 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
13070 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
13071 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
13072 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
13073 Debian</a> soon.</p>
13074
13075 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
13076 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
13077 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
13078 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
13079 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
13080 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
13081 you can even get
13082 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
13083 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
13084 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
13085 on the current exchange rates.</p>
13086
13087 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
13088 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
13089 donations to the address
13090 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
13091
13092       </div>
13093       <div class="tags">
13094
13095
13096         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
13097
13098
13099       </div>
13100     </div>
13101     <div class="padding"></div>
13102
13103     <div class="entry">
13104       <div class="title">
13105         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
13106       </div>
13107       <div class="date">
13108         27th November 2010
13109       </div>
13110       <div class="body">
13111         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
13112 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
13113 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
13114 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
13115 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
13116 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
13117 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
13118 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
13119
13120 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
13121 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
13122 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
13123 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
13124 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
13125 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
13126 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
13127 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
13128 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
13129 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
13130 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
13131
13132 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
13133 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
13134 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
13135 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
13136 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
13137 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
13138 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
13139 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
13140 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
13141 what is going on.</p>
13142
13143       </div>
13144       <div class="tags">
13145
13146
13147         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
13148
13149
13150       </div>
13151     </div>
13152     <div class="padding"></div>
13153
13154     <div class="entry">
13155       <div class="title">
13156         <a href="https://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>
13157       </div>
13158       <div class="date">
13159         22nd November 2010
13160       </div>
13161       <div class="body">
13162         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
13163 upgrade testing of the
13164 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
13165 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
13166 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
13167 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
13168
13169 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
13170
13171 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13172
13173 <blockquote><p>
13174   apache2.2-bin
13175   aptdaemon
13176   baobab
13177   binfmt-support
13178   browser-plugin-gnash
13179   cheese-common
13180   cli-common
13181   cups-pk-helper
13182   dmz-cursor-theme
13183   empathy
13184   empathy-common
13185   freedesktop-sound-theme
13186   freeglut3
13187   gconf-defaults-service
13188   gdm-themes
13189   gedit-plugins
13190   geoclue
13191   geoclue-hostip
13192   geoclue-localnet
13193   geoclue-manual
13194   geoclue-yahoo
13195   gnash
13196   gnash-common
13197   gnome
13198   gnome-backgrounds
13199   gnome-cards-data
13200   gnome-codec-install
13201   gnome-core
13202   gnome-desktop-environment
13203   gnome-disk-utility
13204   gnome-screenshot
13205   gnome-search-tool
13206   gnome-session-canberra
13207   gnome-system-log
13208   gnome-themes-extras
13209   gnome-themes-more
13210   gnome-user-share
13211   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
13212   gstreamer0.10-tools
13213   gtk2-engines
13214   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
13215   gtk2-engines-smooth
13216   hamster-applet
13217   libapache2-mod-dnssd
13218   libapr1
13219   libaprutil1
13220   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
13221   libaprutil1-ldap
13222   libart2.0-cil
13223   libboost-date-time1.42.0
13224   libboost-python1.42.0
13225   libboost-thread1.42.0
13226   libchamplain-0.4-0
13227   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
13228   libcheese-gtk18
13229   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
13230   libcryptui0
13231   libdiscid0
13232   libelf1
13233   libepc-1.0-2
13234   libepc-common
13235   libepc-ui-1.0-2
13236   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
13237   libfreerdp0
13238   libgconf2.0-cil
13239   libgdata-common
13240   libgdata7
13241   libgdu-gtk0
13242   libgee2
13243   libgeoclue0
13244   libgexiv2-0
13245   libgif4
13246   libglade2.0-cil
13247   libglib2.0-cil
13248   libgmime2.4-cil
13249   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
13250   libgnome2.24-cil
13251   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
13252   libgpod-common
13253   libgpod4
13254   libgtk2.0-cil
13255   libgtkglext1
13256   libgtksourceview2.0-common
13257   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
13258   libmono-addins0.2-cil
13259   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
13260   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
13261   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
13262   libmono-posix2.0-cil
13263   libmono-security2.0-cil
13264   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
13265   libmono-system2.0-cil
13266   libmtp8
13267   libmusicbrainz3-6
13268   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
13269   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
13270   libopal3.6.8
13271   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
13272   libpt2.6.7
13273   libpython2.6
13274   librpm1
13275   librpmio1
13276   libsdl1.2debian
13277   libsrtp0
13278   libssh-4
13279   libtelepathy-farsight0
13280   libtelepathy-glib0
13281   libtidy-0.99-0
13282   media-player-info
13283   mesa-utils
13284   mono-2.0-gac
13285   mono-gac
13286   mono-runtime
13287   nautilus-sendto
13288   nautilus-sendto-empathy
13289   p7zip-full
13290   pkg-config
13291   python-aptdaemon
13292   python-aptdaemon-gtk
13293   python-axiom
13294   python-beautifulsoup
13295   python-bugbuddy
13296   python-clientform
13297   python-coherence
13298   python-configobj
13299   python-crypto
13300   python-cupshelpers
13301   python-elementtree
13302   python-epsilon
13303   python-evolution
13304   python-feedparser
13305   python-gdata
13306   python-gdbm
13307   python-gst0.10
13308   python-gtkglext1
13309   python-gtksourceview2
13310   python-httplib2
13311   python-louie
13312   python-mako
13313   python-markupsafe
13314   python-mechanize
13315   python-nevow
13316   python-notify
13317   python-opengl
13318   python-openssl
13319   python-pam
13320   python-pkg-resources
13321   python-pyasn1
13322   python-pysqlite2
13323   python-rdflib
13324   python-serial
13325   python-tagpy
13326   python-twisted-bin
13327   python-twisted-conch
13328   python-twisted-core
13329   python-twisted-web
13330   python-utidylib
13331   python-webkit
13332   python-xdg
13333   python-zope.interface
13334   remmina
13335   remmina-plugin-data
13336   remmina-plugin-rdp
13337   remmina-plugin-vnc
13338   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
13339   rhythmbox-plugins
13340   rpm-common
13341   rpm2cpio
13342   seahorse-plugins
13343   shotwell
13344   software-center
13345   system-config-printer-udev
13346   telepathy-gabble
13347   telepathy-mission-control-5
13348   telepathy-salut
13349   tomboy
13350   totem
13351   totem-coherence
13352   totem-mozilla
13353   totem-plugins
13354   transmission-common
13355   xdg-user-dirs
13356   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
13357   xserver-xephyr
13358 </p></blockquote>
13359
13360 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
13361
13362 <blockquote><p>
13363   cheese
13364   ekiga
13365   eog
13366   epiphany-extensions
13367   evolution-exchange
13368   fast-user-switch-applet
13369   file-roller
13370   gcalctool
13371   gconf-editor
13372   gdm
13373   gedit
13374   gedit-common
13375   gnome-games
13376   gnome-games-data
13377   gnome-nettool
13378   gnome-system-tools
13379   gnome-themes
13380   gnuchess
13381   gucharmap
13382   guile-1.8-libs
13383   libavahi-ui0
13384   libdmx1
13385   libgalago3
13386   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
13387   libgtksourceview2.0-0
13388   liblircclient0
13389   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
13390   libspeexdsp1
13391   libsvga1
13392   rhythmbox
13393   seahorse
13394   sound-juicer
13395   system-config-printer
13396   totem-common
13397   transmission-gtk
13398   vinagre
13399   vino
13400 </p></blockquote>
13401
13402 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
13403
13404 <blockquote><p>
13405   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
13406 </p></blockquote>
13407
13408 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
13409
13410 <blockquote><p>
13411 [nothing]
13412 </p></blockquote>
13413
13414 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
13415
13416 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13417
13418 <blockquote><p>
13419   ksmserver
13420 </p></blockquote>
13421
13422 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
13423
13424 <blockquote><p>
13425   kwin
13426   network-manager-kde
13427 </p></blockquote>
13428
13429 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
13430
13431 <blockquote><p>
13432   arts
13433   dolphin
13434   freespacenotifier
13435   google-gadgets-gst
13436   google-gadgets-xul
13437   kappfinder
13438   kcalc
13439   kcharselect
13440   kde-core
13441   kde-plasma-desktop
13442   kde-standard
13443   kde-window-manager
13444   kdeartwork
13445   kdeartwork-emoticons
13446   kdeartwork-style
13447   kdeartwork-theme-icon
13448   kdebase
13449   kdebase-apps
13450   kdebase-workspace
13451   kdebase-workspace-bin
13452   kdebase-workspace-data
13453   kdeeject
13454   kdelibs
13455   kdeplasma-addons
13456   kdeutils
13457   kdewallpapers
13458   kdf
13459   kfloppy
13460   kgpg
13461   khelpcenter4
13462   kinfocenter
13463   konq-plugins-l10n
13464   konqueror-nsplugins
13465   kscreensaver
13466   kscreensaver-xsavers
13467   ktimer
13468   kwrite
13469   libgle3
13470   libkde4-ruby1.8
13471   libkonq5
13472   libkonq5-templates
13473   libnetpbm10
13474   libplasma-ruby
13475   libplasma-ruby1.8
13476   libqt4-ruby1.8
13477   marble-data
13478   marble-plugins
13479   netpbm
13480   nuvola-icon-theme
13481   plasma-dataengines-workspace
13482   plasma-desktop
13483   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
13484   plasma-runners-addons
13485   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
13486   plasma-scriptengine-python
13487   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
13488   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
13489   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
13490   plasma-scriptengines
13491   plasma-wallpapers-addons
13492   plasma-widget-folderview
13493   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
13494   ruby
13495   sweeper
13496   update-notifier-kde
13497   xscreensaver-data-extra
13498   xscreensaver-gl
13499   xscreensaver-gl-extra
13500   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
13501 </p></blockquote>
13502
13503 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
13504
13505 <blockquote><p>
13506   ark
13507   google-gadgets-common
13508   google-gadgets-qt
13509   htdig
13510   kate
13511   kdebase-bin
13512   kdebase-data
13513   kdepasswd
13514   kfind
13515   klipper
13516   konq-plugins
13517   konqueror
13518   ksysguard
13519   ksysguardd
13520   libarchive1
13521   libcln6
13522   libeet1
13523   libeina-svn-06
13524   libggadget-1.0-0b
13525   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
13526   libgps19
13527   libkdecorations4
13528   libkephal4
13529   libkonq4
13530   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
13531   libkscreensaver5
13532   libksgrd4
13533   libksignalplotter4
13534   libkunitconversion4
13535   libkwineffects1a
13536   libmarblewidget4
13537   libntrack-qt4-1
13538   libntrack0
13539   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
13540   libplasmaclock4a
13541   libplasmagenericshell4
13542   libprocesscore4a
13543   libprocessui4a
13544   libqalculate5
13545   libqedje0a
13546   libqtruby4shared2
13547   libqzion0a
13548   libruby1.8
13549   libscim8c2a
13550   libsmokekdecore4-3
13551   libsmokekdeui4-3
13552   libsmokekfile3
13553   libsmokekhtml3
13554   libsmokekio3
13555   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
13556   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
13557   libsmokekparts3
13558   libsmokektexteditor3
13559   libsmokekutils3
13560   libsmokenepomuk3
13561   libsmokephonon3
13562   libsmokeplasma3
13563   libsmokeqtcore4-3
13564   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
13565   libsmokeqtgui4-3
13566   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
13567   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
13568   libsmokeqtscript4-3
13569   libsmokeqtsql4-3
13570   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
13571   libsmokeqttest4-3
13572   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
13573   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
13574   libsmokeqtxml4-3
13575   libsmokesolid3
13576   libsmokesoprano3
13577   libtaskmanager4a
13578   libtidy-0.99-0
13579   libweather-ion4a
13580   libxklavier16
13581   libxxf86misc1
13582   okteta
13583   oxygencursors
13584   plasma-dataengines-addons
13585   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
13586   plasma-widget-lancelot
13587   plasma-widgets-addons
13588   plasma-widgets-workspace
13589   polkit-kde-1
13590   ruby1.8
13591   systemsettings
13592   update-notifier-common
13593 </p></blockquote>
13594
13595 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
13596 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
13597 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
13598 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
13599
13600       </div>
13601       <div class="tags">
13602
13603
13604         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13605
13606
13607       </div>
13608     </div>
13609     <div class="padding"></div>
13610
13611     <div class="entry">
13612       <div class="title">
13613         <a href="https://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>
13614       </div>
13615       <div class="date">
13616         22nd November 2010
13617       </div>
13618       <div class="body">
13619         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
13620 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
13621 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
13622 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
13623 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
13624 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
13625 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
13626 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
13627 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
13628
13629 <p>I found
13630 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
13631 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
13632 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
13633 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
13634 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
13635 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
13636
13637 <pre>
13638 #!/bin/sh
13639
13640 # Based on
13641 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
13642
13643 set -e
13644 set -x
13645
13646 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
13647     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
13648     exit 1
13649 else
13650     host="$1"
13651 fi
13652
13653 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
13654     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
13655     exit 1
13656 fi
13657
13658 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
13659 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
13660 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
13661 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
13662
13663 img=$host.img
13664 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
13665 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
13666
13667 parted $img mklabel msdos
13668 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
13669 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
13670 parted $img set 1 boot on
13671
13672 modprobe dm-mod
13673 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
13674 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
13675
13676 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
13677 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
13678 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
13679
13680 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
13681 losetup -d /dev/loop0
13682 </pre>
13683
13684 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
13685 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
13686
13687 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
13688 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
13689 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
13690 seem to work just fine.</p>
13691
13692       </div>
13693       <div class="tags">
13694
13695
13696         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13697
13698
13699       </div>
13700     </div>
13701     <div class="padding"></div>
13702
13703     <div class="entry">
13704       <div class="title">
13705         <a href="https://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>
13706       </div>
13707       <div class="date">
13708         20th November 2010
13709       </div>
13710       <div class="body">
13711         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
13712 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
13713 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
13714 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
13715
13716 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
13717 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
13718 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
13719
13720 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
13721
13722 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13723
13724 <blockquote><p>
13725   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
13726   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
13727   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
13728   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
13729   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
13730   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
13731   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
13732   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
13733   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
13734   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
13735   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
13736   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
13737   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
13738   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
13739   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
13740   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
13741   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
13742   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
13743   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
13744   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
13745   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
13746   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
13747   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
13748   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
13749   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
13750   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
13751   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
13752   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
13753   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
13754   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
13755   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
13756   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
13757   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
13758   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
13759   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
13760   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
13761   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
13762   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
13763   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
13764   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
13765   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
13766   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
13767   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
13768   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
13769   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
13770   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
13771   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
13772   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
13773   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
13774   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
13775   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
13776   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
13777   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
13778   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
13779   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
13780   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
13781   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
13782   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
13783   zip
13784 </p></blockquote>
13785
13786 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
13787
13788 <blockquote><p>
13789   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
13790   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
13791   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
13792   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
13793   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
13794   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
13795   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
13796   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
13797   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
13798   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
13799   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
13800   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
13801   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
13802   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
13803   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
13804   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
13805   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
13806   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
13807   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
13808   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
13809   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
13810   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
13811   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
13812   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
13813   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
13814   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
13815   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
13816   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
13817   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
13818 </p></blockquote>
13819
13820 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
13821
13822 <blockquote><p>
13823   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
13824 </p></blockquote>
13825
13826 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
13827
13828 <blockquote><p>
13829 [nothing]
13830 </p></blockquote>
13831
13832 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
13833
13834 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13835
13836 <blockquote><p>
13837   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
13838   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
13839   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
13840   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
13841   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
13842   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
13843   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
13844   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
13845   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
13846   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
13847   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
13848   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
13849   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
13850   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
13851   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
13852   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
13853   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
13854   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
13855   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
13856   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
13857   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
13858   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
13859   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
13860   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
13861   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
13862   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
13863   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
13864   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
13865   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
13866   ttf-sazanami-gothic
13867 </p></blockquote>
13868
13869 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
13870
13871 <blockquote><p>
13872   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
13873   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
13874   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
13875   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
13876   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
13877   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
13878   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
13879   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
13880   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
13881   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
13882   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
13883   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
13884   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
13885   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
13886   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
13887   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
13888   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
13889   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
13890   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
13891   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
13892   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
13893   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
13894   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
13895   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
13896   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
13897   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
13898   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
13899   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
13900   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
13901   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
13902   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
13903   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
13904   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
13905 </p></blockquote>
13906
13907 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
13908
13909 <blockquote><p>
13910   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
13911   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
13912   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
13913   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
13914   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
13915   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
13916   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
13917 </p></blockquote>
13918
13919 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
13920
13921 <blockquote><p>
13922   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
13923 </p></blockquote>
13924
13925       </div>
13926       <div class="tags">
13927
13928
13929         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13930
13931
13932       </div>
13933     </div>
13934     <div class="padding"></div>
13935
13936     <div class="entry">
13937       <div class="title">
13938         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
13939       </div>
13940       <div class="date">
13941         20th November 2010
13942       </div>
13943       <div class="body">
13944         <p>Answering
13945 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
13946 call from the Gnash project</a> for
13947 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
13948 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
13949 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
13950 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
13951 releases out more often.</p>
13952
13953 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
13954 I have considered setting up a <a
13955 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
13956 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
13957 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
13958 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
13959 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
13960 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
13961 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
13962 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
13963 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
13964 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
13965 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
13966 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
13967
13968       </div>
13969       <div class="tags">
13970
13971
13972         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13973
13974
13975       </div>
13976     </div>
13977     <div class="padding"></div>
13978
13979     <div class="entry">
13980       <div class="title">
13981         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
13982       </div>
13983       <div class="date">
13984          9th November 2010
13985       </div>
13986       <div class="body">
13987         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
13988
13989 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
13990 3D linked in from
13991 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
13992 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
13993
13994       </div>
13995       <div class="tags">
13996
13997
13998         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13999
14000
14001       </div>
14002     </div>
14003     <div class="padding"></div>
14004
14005     <div class="entry">
14006       <div class="title">
14007         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
14008       </div>
14009       <div class="date">
14010         24th October 2010
14011       </div>
14012       <div class="body">
14013         <p>Some updates.</p>
14014
14015 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
14016 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
14017 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
14018 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
14019 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
14020 :)</p>
14021
14022 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
14023 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
14024 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
14025 It is called
14026 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
14027 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
14028 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
14029 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
14030 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
14031 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
14032
14033 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
14034 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
14035 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
14036 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
14037 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
14038 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
14039 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
14040 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
14041 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
14042 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
14043
14044       </div>
14045       <div class="tags">
14046
14047
14048         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
14049
14050
14051       </div>
14052     </div>
14053     <div class="padding"></div>
14054
14055     <div class="entry">
14056       <div class="title">
14057         <a href="https://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>
14058       </div>
14059       <div class="date">
14060          4th September 2010
14061       </div>
14062       <div class="body">
14063         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
14064 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
14065 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
14066 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
14067 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
14068 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
14069 installed.</p>
14070
14071 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
14072 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
14073 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
14074 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
14075 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
14076 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
14077 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
14078 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
14079 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
14080
14081 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
14082 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
14083 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
14084 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
14085 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
14086 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
14087 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
14088 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
14089 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
14090 pages they want to visit.</p>
14091
14092 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
14093 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
14094 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
14095 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
14096 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
14097 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
14098 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
14099 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
14100 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
14101 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
14102 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
14103
14104       </div>
14105       <div class="tags">
14106
14107
14108         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14109
14110
14111       </div>
14112     </div>
14113     <div class="padding"></div>
14114
14115     <div class="entry">
14116       <div class="title">
14117         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
14118       </div>
14119       <div class="date">
14120         27th July 2010
14121       </div>
14122       <div class="body">
14123         <p>I discovered this while doing
14124 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
14125 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
14126 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
14127 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
14128 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
14129
14130 <p>An example is from todays
14131 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
14132 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
14133 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
14134 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
14135 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
14136 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
14137 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
14138
14139 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
14140
14141 <blockquote><pre>
14142 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
14143  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
14144   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
14145 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
14146  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
14147 </pre></blockquote>
14148
14149 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
14150 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
14151 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
14152 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
14153 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
14154 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
14155 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
14156 of dependency loops.</p>
14157
14158 <p>Thanks to
14159 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
14160 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
14161 dependencies
14162 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
14163 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
14164
14165 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
14166 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
14167 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
14168 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
14169 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
14170 it.</p>
14171
14172       </div>
14173       <div class="tags">
14174
14175
14176         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14177
14178
14179       </div>
14180     </div>
14181     <div class="padding"></div>
14182
14183     <div class="entry">
14184       <div class="title">
14185         <a href="https://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>
14186       </div>
14187       <div class="date">
14188         17th July 2010
14189       </div>
14190       <div class="body">
14191         <p>This is a
14192 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
14193 on my
14194 <a href="https://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
14195 work</a> on
14196 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
14197 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
14198
14199 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
14200 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
14201 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
14202 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
14203
14204 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
14205 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
14206 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
14207
14208 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
14209
14210 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
14211 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
14212 the web.
14213
14214 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
14215 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
14216 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
14217 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
14218 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
14219 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
14220
14221 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
14222 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
14223 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
14224 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
14225 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
14226 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
14227 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
14228 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
14229 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
14230 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
14231 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
14232 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
14233 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
14234 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
14235 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
14236 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
14237
14238 <blockquote><pre>
14239 ldapsearch -h ldap \
14240   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
14241   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
14242   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
14243   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
14244   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
14245   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
14246
14247 ldapsearch -h ldap \
14248   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
14249   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
14250   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
14251   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
14252   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
14253 </pre></blockquote>
14254
14255 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
14256 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
14257 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
14258 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14259 also exist.</p>
14260
14261 <blockquote><pre>
14262 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14263 objectclass: top
14264 objectclass: dnsdomain
14265 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
14266 dc: tjener
14267 arecord: 10.0.2.2
14268 associateddomain: tjener.intern
14269
14270 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14271 objectclass: top
14272 objectclass: dnsdomain2
14273 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
14274 dc: 2
14275 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
14276 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
14277 </pre></blockquote>
14278
14279 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
14280 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
14281 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
14282 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
14283 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
14284 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
14285 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
14286 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
14287 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
14288 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
14289 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
14290 instead.</p>
14291
14292 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
14293 like this:</p>
14294
14295 <blockquote><pre>
14296 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
14297   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
14298   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
14299   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
14300   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
14301   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
14302
14303 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
14304   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
14305 </pre></blockquote>
14306
14307 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
14308 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
14309 reverse lookups.</p>
14310
14311 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
14312 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
14313 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
14314 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
14315
14316 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
14317 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
14318 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
14319
14320 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
14321 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
14322 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
14323 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
14324 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
14325
14326 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
14327 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
14328 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
14329 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
14330 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
14331
14332 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
14333 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
14334 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
14335 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
14336 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
14337 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
14338
14339 <blockquote><pre>
14340 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
14341     SUP top
14342     AUXILIARY
14343     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
14344           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
14345           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
14346           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
14347           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
14348     ))
14349 </pre></blockquote>
14350
14351 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
14352 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
14353 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
14354 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
14355 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
14356 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
14357
14358 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
14359
14360 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
14361 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
14362 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
14363 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
14364 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
14365
14366 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
14367 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
14368 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
14369 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
14370
14371 <blockquote><pre>
14372 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
14373 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
14374 </pre></blockquote>
14375
14376 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
14377 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
14378 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
14379 search result is this entry:</p>
14380
14381 <blockquote><pre>
14382 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14383 cn: dhcp
14384 objectClass: top
14385 objectClass: dhcpServer
14386 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14387 </pre></blockquote>
14388
14389 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
14390 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
14391 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
14392 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
14393 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
14394 The search result is this entry:</p>
14395
14396 <blockquote><pre>
14397 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14398 cn: DHCP Config
14399 objectClass: top
14400 objectClass: dhcpService
14401 objectClass: dhcpOptions
14402 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14403 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
14404 dhcpStatements: authoritative
14405 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
14406 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
14407 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
14408 </pre></blockquote>
14409
14410 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
14411 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
14412 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
14413 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
14414 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
14415 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
14416 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
14417 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
14418 related computer objects.</p>
14419
14420 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
14421 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
14422 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
14423 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
14424 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
14425 like:</p>
14426
14427 <blockquote><pre>
14428 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14429 cn: hostname
14430 objectClass: top
14431 objectClass: dhcpHost
14432 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
14433 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
14434 </pre></blockquote>
14435
14436 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
14437 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
14438 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
14439 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
14440 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
14441 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
14442 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
14443 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
14444 structural object class.
14445
14446 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
14447
14448 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
14449 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
14450 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
14451 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
14452 in the configuration.</p>
14453
14454 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
14455 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
14456 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
14457 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
14458 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
14459 structure.</p>
14460
14461 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
14462 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
14463
14464 <blockquote><pre>
14465 ou=services
14466   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
14467     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
14468     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
14469       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
14470         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
14471     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
14472       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
14473         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
14474     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
14475       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
14476 </pre></blockquote>
14477
14478 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
14479 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
14480 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
14481 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
14482
14483 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
14484 like this:</p>
14485
14486 <blockquote><pre>
14487 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14488 dc: hostname
14489 objectClass: top
14490 objectClass: dhcpHost
14491 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
14492 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
14493 associateddomain: hostname.intern
14494 arecord: 10.11.12.13
14495 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
14496 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
14497 </pre></blockquote>
14498
14499 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
14500 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
14501 auxiliary object class.</p>
14502
14503       </div>
14504       <div class="tags">
14505
14506
14507         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14508
14509
14510       </div>
14511     </div>
14512     <div class="padding"></div>
14513
14514     <div class="entry">
14515       <div class="title">
14516         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
14517       </div>
14518       <div class="date">
14519         14th July 2010
14520       </div>
14521       <div class="body">
14522         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
14523 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
14524 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
14525 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
14526 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
14527
14528 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
14529 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
14530
14531 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
14532 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
14533 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
14534 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
14535 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
14536 to a slave DNS server.</p>
14537
14538 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
14539 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
14540 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
14541 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
14542 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
14543 seem to work.</p>
14544
14545 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
14546 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
14547 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
14548 this:</p>
14549
14550 <blockquote><pre>
14551   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14552   cn: hostname
14553   objectClass: dhcphost
14554   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
14555   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
14556   associateddomain: hostname.intern
14557   arecord: 10.11.12.13
14558   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
14559   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
14560   ldapconfigsound: Y
14561 </pre></blockquote>
14562
14563 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
14564 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
14565 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
14566 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
14567
14568 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
14569 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
14570 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
14571 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
14572 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
14573 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
14574 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
14575 might be a good place to put it.</p>
14576
14577 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
14578 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
14579
14580       </div>
14581       <div class="tags">
14582
14583
14584         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14585
14586
14587       </div>
14588     </div>
14589     <div class="padding"></div>
14590
14591     <div class="entry">
14592       <div class="title">
14593         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
14594       </div>
14595       <div class="date">
14596         11th July 2010
14597       </div>
14598       <div class="body">
14599         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
14600 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
14601 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
14602 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
14603
14604 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
14605 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
14606 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
14607 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
14608 LTSP clients.</p>
14609
14610 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
14611 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
14612 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
14613
14614 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
14615 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
14616 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
14617
14618 <blockquote><pre>
14619 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
14620 #
14621 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
14622 #
14623 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
14624 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
14625 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
14626 #
14627 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
14628 # existence of attribute names.
14629 #
14630 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
14631 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
14632 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
14633 #
14634 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
14635 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
14636 #
14637 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
14638 #     SUP top
14639 #     AUXILIARY
14640 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
14641
14642 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
14643 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
14644     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
14645     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
14646         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
14647         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
14648             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
14649             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
14650             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
14651             # bass value on to clients
14652             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
14653         done
14654     done
14655 fi
14656 </pre></blockquote>
14657
14658 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
14659 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
14660 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
14661 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
14662 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
14663
14664 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
14665 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
14666
14667 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
14668 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
14669 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
14670 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
14671 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
14672 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
14673
14674       </div>
14675       <div class="tags">
14676
14677
14678         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14679
14680
14681       </div>
14682     </div>
14683     <div class="padding"></div>
14684
14685     <div class="entry">
14686       <div class="title">
14687         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
14688       </div>
14689       <div class="date">
14690          9th July 2010
14691       </div>
14692       <div class="body">
14693         <p>Since
14694 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
14695 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
14696 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
14697 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
14698 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
14699 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
14700 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
14701 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
14702 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
14703 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
14704 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
14705 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
14706 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
14707
14708       </div>
14709       <div class="tags">
14710
14711
14712         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14713
14714
14715       </div>
14716     </div>
14717     <div class="padding"></div>
14718
14719     <div class="entry">
14720       <div class="title">
14721         <a href="https://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>
14722       </div>
14723       <div class="date">
14724          3rd July 2010
14725       </div>
14726       <div class="body">
14727         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
14728 href="https://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
14729 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
14730 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
14731 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
14732 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
14733 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
14734 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
14735
14736 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
14737 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
14738 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
14739 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
14740 publish the difference.</p>
14741
14742 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14743
14744 <blockquote><p>
14745   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
14746   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
14747   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
14748   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
14749   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
14750   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
14751   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
14752   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
14753 </p></blockquote>
14754
14755 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
14756
14757 <blockquote><p>
14758   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
14759   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
14760   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
14761   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
14762   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
14763   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
14764   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
14765   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
14766   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
14767   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
14768   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
14769   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
14770   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
14771   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
14772   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
14773   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
14774   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
14775   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
14776   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
14777   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
14778 </p></blockquote>
14779
14780 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14781
14782 <blockquote><p>
14783   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
14784   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
14785   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
14786   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
14787   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
14788   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
14789   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
14790   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
14791   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
14792   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
14793   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
14794   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
14795   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
14796   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
14797   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
14798   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
14799   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
14800   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
14801   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
14802   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
14803   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
14804 </p></blockquote>
14805
14806 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14807
14808 <blockquote><p>
14809   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
14810   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
14811   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
14812 </p></blockquote>
14813
14814 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
14815 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
14816 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
14817 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
14818 the difference somewhat.
14819
14820       </div>
14821       <div class="tags">
14822
14823
14824         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14825
14826
14827       </div>
14828     </div>
14829     <div class="padding"></div>
14830
14831     <div class="entry">
14832       <div class="title">
14833         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
14834       </div>
14835       <div class="date">
14836         28th June 2010
14837       </div>
14838       <div class="body">
14839         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
14840 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
14841 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
14842 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
14843 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
14844 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
14845 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
14846 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
14847 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
14848 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
14849
14850 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
14851 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
14852 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
14853 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
14854 released.</p>
14855
14856 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
14857 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
14858 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
14859 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
14860
14861 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
14862 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
14863
14864 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
14865 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
14866 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
14867 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
14868 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
14869
14870       </div>
14871       <div class="tags">
14872
14873
14874         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14875
14876
14877       </div>
14878     </div>
14879     <div class="padding"></div>
14880
14881     <div class="entry">
14882       <div class="title">
14883         <a href="https://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>
14884       </div>
14885       <div class="date">
14886         24th June 2010
14887       </div>
14888       <div class="body">
14889         <p>A while back, I
14890 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
14891 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
14892 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
14893 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
14894
14895 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
14896 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
14897 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
14898 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
14899
14900 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
14901 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
14902 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
14903 Debian Edu.</p>
14904
14905 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
14906 the
14907 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
14908 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
14909 available today from IETF.</p>
14910
14911 <pre>
14912 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
14913 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
14914 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
14915  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
14916         NAME 'dhcpHost'
14917         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
14918 -       SUP top
14919 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
14920         MUST cn
14921         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
14922         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
14923 </pre>
14924
14925 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
14926 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
14927 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
14928
14929 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
14930 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
14931
14932       </div>
14933       <div class="tags">
14934
14935
14936         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14937
14938
14939       </div>
14940     </div>
14941     <div class="padding"></div>
14942
14943     <div class="entry">
14944       <div class="title">
14945         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html">Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</a>
14946       </div>
14947       <div class="date">
14948         16th June 2010
14949       </div>
14950       <div class="body">
14951         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
14952 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
14953 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
14954 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
14955 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
14956 this:
14957
14958 <blockquote><pre>
14959 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
14960 tasksel --new-install
14961 </pre></blockquote>
14962
14963 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
14964 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
14965 any output what so ever.
14966
14967 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
14968 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
14969 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
14970 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
14971 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
14972 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
14973 code like this:
14974
14975 <blockquote><pre>
14976 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
14977 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
14978 $cmd
14979 </pre></blockquote>
14980
14981 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
14982 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
14983 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
14984 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
14985 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
14986 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
14987 installation.</p>
14988
14989 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
14990 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
14991 like this.</p>
14992
14993       </div>
14994       <div class="tags">
14995
14996
14997         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14998
14999
15000       </div>
15001     </div>
15002     <div class="padding"></div>
15003
15004     <div class="entry">
15005       <div class="title">
15006         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</a>
15007       </div>
15008       <div class="date">
15009         13th June 2010
15010       </div>
15011       <div class="body">
15012         <p>My
15013 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
15014 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
15015 finally made the upgrade logs available from
15016 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
15017 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
15018 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
15019 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
15020
15021 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
15022 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
15023 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
15024 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
15025 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
15026 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
15027 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
15028 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
15029
15030 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
15031 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
15032 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
15033 too surprising.</p>
15034
15035 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
15036 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
15037 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
15038 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
15039 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
15040 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
15041 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
15042 continue.</p>
15043
15044 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
15045 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
15046   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
15047   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
15048   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
15049   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
15050   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
15051   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
15052   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
15053   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
15054   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
15055   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
15056   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
15057   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
15058   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
15059   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15060   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
15061   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
15062   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
15063   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
15064   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
15065   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
15066   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
15067   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
15068   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
15069   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
15070   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
15071   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
15072   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
15073   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
15074
15075 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
15076
15077 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
15078   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
15079   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
15080   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
15081   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
15082   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
15083   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
15084   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
15085   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
15086   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
15087   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
15088   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
15089   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
15090   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
15091   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
15092   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
15093   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
15094   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
15095   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
15096   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
15097   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
15098   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
15099   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
15100   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
15101   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
15102   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
15103   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
15104   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
15105   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
15106   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15107   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
15108   zip</p>
15109
15110 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
15111
15112 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
15113   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
15114   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
15115   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
15116   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
15117   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
15118   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
15119   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
15120   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
15121   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
15122   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
15123   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
15124   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
15125   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
15126   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15127   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
15128   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
15129   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
15130   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
15131   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
15132   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
15133   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
15134   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
15135   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
15136   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
15137   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
15138   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
15139   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
15140
15141 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
15142 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
15143   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
15144   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
15145   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
15146   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
15147   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
15148   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
15149   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
15150   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
15151   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
15152   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
15153   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
15154   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
15155   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
15156   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
15157   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
15158   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
15159   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
15160   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
15161   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
15162   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
15163   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
15164   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
15165   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
15166   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
15167   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
15168   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
15169   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
15170   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
15171   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
15172   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
15173   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
15174   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
15175   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
15176   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15177   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
15178   xulrunner-1.9</p>
15179
15180
15181       </div>
15182       <div class="tags">
15183
15184
15185         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15186
15187
15188       </div>
15189     </div>
15190     <div class="padding"></div>
15191
15192     <div class="entry">
15193       <div class="title">
15194         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
15195       </div>
15196       <div class="date">
15197         11th June 2010
15198       </div>
15199       <div class="body">
15200         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
15201 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
15202 have been discovered and reported in the process
15203 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
15204 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
15205 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
15206 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
15207 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
15208
15209 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
15210 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
15211 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
15212 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
15213 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
15214 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
15215
15216 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
15217 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
15218 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
15219 is created.  The bug report
15220 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
15221 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
15222 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
15223 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
15224 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
15225 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
15226 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
15227 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
15228 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
15229 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
15230 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
15231 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
15232 Debian Squeeze.</p>
15233
15234 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
15235 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
15236 trick:</p>
15237
15238 <blockquote><pre>
15239 #!/bin/sh
15240 set -ex
15241
15242 if [ "$1" ] ; then
15243     desktop=$1
15244 else
15245     desktop=gnome
15246 fi
15247
15248 from=lenny
15249 to=squeeze
15250
15251 exec &lt; /dev/null
15252 unset LANG
15253 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
15254 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
15255 fuser -mv .
15256 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
15257 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
15258 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
15259 #!/bin/sh
15260 exit 101
15261 EOF
15262 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
15263 exit_cleanup() {
15264     umount $tmpdir/proc
15265 }
15266 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
15267 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
15268 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
15269
15270 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
15271
15272 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
15273 # to return the correct answers.
15274 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
15275     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
15276
15277 # Include the desktop and laptop task
15278 for test in desktop laptop ; do
15279     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
15280 #!/bin/sh
15281 exit 2
15282 EOF
15283     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
15284 done
15285
15286 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
15287 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
15288 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
15289 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
15290
15291 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
15292 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
15293 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
15294 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
15295 fuser -mv
15296 </pre></blockquote>
15297
15298 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
15299 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
15300 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
15301 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
15302 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
15303 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
15304
15305 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
15306 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
15307 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
15308 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
15309 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
15310 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
15311 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
15312
15313 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
15314 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
15315 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
15316 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
15317 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
15318 packages.</p>
15319
15320       </div>
15321       <div class="tags">
15322
15323
15324         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15325
15326
15327       </div>
15328     </div>
15329     <div class="padding"></div>
15330
15331     <div class="entry">
15332       <div class="title">
15333         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html">Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</a>
15334       </div>
15335       <div class="date">
15336          6th June 2010
15337       </div>
15338       <div class="body">
15339         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
15340 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
15341 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
15342 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
15343 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
15344 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
15345 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
15346
15347 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
15348 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
15349 COLUMNS):</p>
15350
15351 <blockquote><pre>
15352 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
15353 previous=N
15354 PREVLEVEL=
15355 RUNLEVEL=
15356 runlevel=S
15357 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
15358 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
15359 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
15360 </pre></blockquote>
15361
15362 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
15363 script.</p>
15364
15365 <blockquote><pre>
15366 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
15367 previous=N
15368 PREVLEVEL=N
15369 RUNLEVEL=S
15370 runlevel=S
15371 </pre></blockquote>
15372
15373 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
15374 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
15375 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
15376
15377 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
15378 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
15379 choice.</p>
15380
15381       </div>
15382       <div class="tags">
15383
15384
15385         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15386
15387
15388       </div>
15389     </div>
15390     <div class="padding"></div>
15391
15392     <div class="entry">
15393       <div class="title">
15394         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
15395       </div>
15396       <div class="date">
15397          6th June 2010
15398       </div>
15399       <div class="body">
15400         <p>Via the
15401 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
15402 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
15403 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
15404 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
15405 following the standards wars of today.</p>
15406
15407       </div>
15408       <div class="tags">
15409
15410
15411         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
15412
15413
15414       </div>
15415     </div>
15416     <div class="padding"></div>
15417
15418     <div class="entry">
15419       <div class="title">
15420         <a href="https://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>
15421       </div>
15422       <div class="date">
15423          3rd June 2010
15424       </div>
15425       <div class="body">
15426         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
15427 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
15428 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
15429 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
15430 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
15431
15432 <blockquote><pre>
15433 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
15434   vendor                    count
15435   Dell Computer Corporation     1
15436     PowerEdge 1750              1
15437   IBM                           1
15438     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
15439   Intel                         2
15440   [no-dmi-info]                 3
15441 maintainer:~#
15442 </pre></blockquote>
15443
15444 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
15445 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
15446 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
15447 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
15448 option to list the individual machines.</p>
15449
15450 <p>A larger list is
15451 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
15452 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
15453 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
15454 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
15455 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
15456 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
15457 collector.</p>
15458
15459       </div>
15460       <div class="tags">
15461
15462
15463         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
15464
15465
15466       </div>
15467     </div>
15468     <div class="padding"></div>
15469
15470     <div class="entry">
15471       <div class="title">
15472         <a href="https://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>
15473       </div>
15474       <div class="date">
15475          1st June 2010
15476       </div>
15477       <div class="body">
15478         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
15479 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
15480 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
15481 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
15482 wait.</p>
15483
15484 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
15485 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
15486 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
15487 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
15488 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
15489 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
15490
15491 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
15492 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
15493 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
15494 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
15495 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
15496 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
15497 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
15498 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
15499
15500 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
15501
15502       </div>
15503       <div class="tags">
15504
15505
15506         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15507
15508
15509       </div>
15510     </div>
15511     <div class="padding"></div>
15512
15513     <div class="entry">
15514       <div class="title">
15515         <a href="https://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>
15516       </div>
15517       <div class="date">
15518         27th May 2010
15519       </div>
15520       <div class="body">
15521         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
15522 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
15523 issues are known and should be solved:
15524
15525 <p><ul>
15526
15527 <li>The wicd package seen to
15528 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
15529 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
15530 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
15531 seem to be on the case.</li>
15532
15533 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
15534 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
15535 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
15536 maintainer is on the case.</li>
15537
15538 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
15539 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
15540 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
15541 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
15542 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
15543 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
15544 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
15545 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
15546
15547 </ul></p>
15548
15549 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
15550 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
15551 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
15552 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
15553
15554 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
15555 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
15556 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
15557 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
15558
15559 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
15560
15561       </div>
15562       <div class="tags">
15563
15564
15565         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15566
15567
15568       </div>
15569     </div>
15570     <div class="padding"></div>
15571
15572     <div class="entry">
15573       <div class="title">
15574         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
15575       </div>
15576       <div class="date">
15577         22nd May 2010
15578       </div>
15579       <div class="body">
15580         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
15581 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
15582 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
15583 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
15584
15585 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
15586 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
15587 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
15588 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
15589 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
15590 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
15591 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
15592 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
15593 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
15594 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
15595 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
15596 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
15597 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
15598 going to work.</p>
15599
15600 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
15601 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
15602 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
15603 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
15604 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
15605 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
15606 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
15607 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
15608 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
15609 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
15610 Edu.</p>
15611
15612 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
15613 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
15614 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
15615 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
15616 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
15617 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
15618
15619 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
15620 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
15621
15622       </div>
15623       <div class="tags">
15624
15625
15626         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15627
15628
15629       </div>
15630     </div>
15631     <div class="padding"></div>
15632
15633     <div class="entry">
15634       <div class="title">
15635         <a href="https://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>
15636       </div>
15637       <div class="date">
15638         14th May 2010
15639       </div>
15640       <div class="body">
15641         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
15642 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
15643 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
15644 expected, if I am to believe the
15645 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
15646 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
15647 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
15648 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
15649 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
15650 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
15651 version.</p>
15652
15653 More information about
15654 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
15655 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
15656 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
15657 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
15658
15659 <blockquote><pre>
15660 CONCURRENCY=none
15661 </pre></blockquote>
15662
15663 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
15664 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
15665 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
15666 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
15667
15668       </div>
15669       <div class="tags">
15670
15671
15672         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15673
15674
15675       </div>
15676     </div>
15677     <div class="padding"></div>
15678
15679     <div class="entry">
15680       <div class="title">
15681         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</a>
15682       </div>
15683       <div class="date">
15684         14th May 2010
15685       </div>
15686       <div class="body">
15687         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
15688 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
15689 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
15690 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
15691 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
15692 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
15693 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
15694 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
15695
15696 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
15697 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
15698 this on the collector host:</p>
15699
15700 <blockquote><pre>
15701 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
15702 </pre></blockquote>
15703
15704 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
15705 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
15706
15707 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
15708 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
15709 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
15710 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
15711 written yet.</p>
15712
15713       </div>
15714       <div class="tags">
15715
15716
15717         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
15718
15719
15720       </div>
15721     </div>
15722     <div class="padding"></div>
15723
15724     <div class="entry">
15725       <div class="title">
15726         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
15727       </div>
15728       <div class="date">
15729         13th May 2010
15730       </div>
15731       <div class="body">
15732         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
15733 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
15734 has been
15735 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
15736
15737 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
15738 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
15739 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
15740 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
15741 based boot system.  Tollef is
15742 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
15743 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
15744 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
15745 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
15746 at the moment do not.</p>
15747
15748 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
15749 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
15750 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
15751 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
15752 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
15753 way forward.</p>
15754
15755 <p>In the mean time, based on the
15756 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
15757 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
15758 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
15759 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
15760 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
15761 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
15762 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
15763 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
15764
15765       </div>
15766       <div class="tags">
15767
15768
15769         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15770
15771
15772       </div>
15773     </div>
15774     <div class="padding"></div>
15775
15776     <div class="entry">
15777       <div class="title">
15778         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</a>
15779       </div>
15780       <div class="date">
15781          6th May 2010
15782       </div>
15783       <div class="body">
15784         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
15785 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
15786 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
15787 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
15788 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
15789 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
15790 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
15791
15792 <blockquote><pre>
15793 CONCURRENCY=makefile
15794 </pre></blockquote>
15795
15796 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
15797 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
15798 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
15799 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
15800 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
15801 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
15802 make this happen.</p>
15803
15804 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
15805 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
15806 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
15807 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
15808 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
15809
15810 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
15811 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
15812 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
15813 fix the remaining issues.</p>
15814
15815 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
15816 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
15817 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
15818 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
15819
15820       </div>
15821       <div class="tags">
15822
15823
15824         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15825
15826
15827       </div>
15828     </div>
15829     <div class="padding"></div>
15830
15831     <div class="entry">
15832       <div class="title">
15833         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html">Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</a>
15834       </div>
15835       <div class="date">
15836         27th July 2009
15837       </div>
15838       <div class="body">
15839         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
15840 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
15841 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
15842 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
15843 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
15844 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
15845 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
15846
15847 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
15848 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
15849 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
15850
15851       </div>
15852       <div class="tags">
15853
15854
15855         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15856
15857
15858       </div>
15859     </div>
15860     <div class="padding"></div>
15861
15862     <div class="entry">
15863       <div class="title">
15864         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
15865       </div>
15866       <div class="date">
15867         22nd July 2009
15868       </div>
15869       <div class="body">
15870         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
15871 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
15872 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
15873 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
15874 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
15875 the package up to date.</p>
15876
15877 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
15878 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
15879 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
15880 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
15881 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
15882 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
15883 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
15884 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
15885 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
15886 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
15887 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
15888 working on the future release.</p>
15889
15890 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
15891 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
15892
15893       </div>
15894       <div class="tags">
15895
15896
15897         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15898
15899
15900       </div>
15901     </div>
15902     <div class="padding"></div>
15903
15904     <div class="entry">
15905       <div class="title">
15906         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
15907       </div>
15908       <div class="date">
15909         24th June 2009
15910       </div>
15911       <div class="body">
15912         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
15913 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
15914 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
15915 funded
15916 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
15917 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
15918 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
15919 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
15920 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
15921 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
15922
15923 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
15924 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
15925 boot:</p>
15926
15927 <ul>
15928
15929 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
15930
15931 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
15932    clock is in UTC.</li>
15933
15934 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
15935    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
15936    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
15937
15938 </ul>
15939
15940 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
15941 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
15942 Villegas</a>.
15943
15944 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
15945 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
15946 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
15947 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
15948 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
15949 using this.</p>
15950
15951 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
15952 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
15953 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
15954 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
15955 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
15956 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
15957 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
15958
15959       </div>
15960       <div class="tags">
15961
15962
15963         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15964
15965
15966       </div>
15967     </div>
15968     <div class="padding"></div>
15969
15970     <div class="entry">
15971       <div class="title">
15972         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
15973       </div>
15974       <div class="date">
15975         17th May 2009
15976       </div>
15977       <div class="body">
15978         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
15979 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
15980 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
15981 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
15982 dager siden kom
15983 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
15984 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
15985 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
15986 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
15987 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
15988
15989 <blockquote>
15990 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
15991 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
15992 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
15993 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
15994 </blockquote>
15995
15996 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
15997 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
15998 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
15999 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
16000 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
16001
16002 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
16003 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
16004 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
16005
16006       </div>
16007       <div class="tags">
16008
16009
16010         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
16011
16012
16013       </div>
16014     </div>
16015     <div class="padding"></div>
16016
16017     <div class="entry">
16018       <div class="title">
16019         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
16020       </div>
16021       <div class="date">
16022          7th May 2009
16023       </div>
16024       <div class="body">
16025         <p>Kom over
16026 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
16027 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
16028 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
16029 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
16030 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
16031 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
16032 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
16033
16034       </div>
16035       <div class="tags">
16036
16037
16038         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16039
16040
16041       </div>
16042     </div>
16043     <div class="padding"></div>
16044
16045     <div class="entry">
16046       <div class="title">
16047         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
16048       </div>
16049       <div class="date">
16050          2nd May 2009
16051       </div>
16052       <div class="body">
16053         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
16054 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
16055 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
16056 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
16057 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
16058 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
16059 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
16060 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
16061 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
16062 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
16063 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
16064 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
16065 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
16066 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
16067 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
16068 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
16069 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
16070 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
16071 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
16072 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
16073
16074 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
16075 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
16076 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
16077 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
16078 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
16079 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
16080 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
16081 betydelige.</p>
16082
16083       </div>
16084       <div class="tags">
16085
16086
16087         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
16088
16089
16090       </div>
16091     </div>
16092     <div class="padding"></div>
16093
16094     <div class="entry">
16095       <div class="title">
16096         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html">Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</a>
16097       </div>
16098       <div class="date">
16099          2nd May 2009
16100       </div>
16101       <div class="body">
16102         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
16103 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
16104 do not yet know them.</p>
16105
16106 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
16107 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
16108 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
16109 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
16110 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
16111 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
16112 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
16113 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
16114 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
16115 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
16116 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
16117
16118 <p>The second one is
16119 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
16120 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
16121 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
16122 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
16123 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
16124 and the company behind it is running
16125 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
16126 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
16127 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
16128 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
16129 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
16130 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
16131 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
16132 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
16133
16134 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
16135 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
16136 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
16137 surrounded by today.</p>
16138
16139       </div>
16140       <div class="tags">
16141
16142
16143         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16144
16145
16146       </div>
16147     </div>
16148     <div class="padding"></div>
16149
16150     <div class="entry">
16151       <div class="title">
16152         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html">No patch is not better than a useless patch</a>
16153       </div>
16154       <div class="date">
16155         28th April 2009
16156       </div>
16157       <div class="body">
16158         <p>Julien Blache
16159 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
16160 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
16161 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
16162 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
16163 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
16164 properties.</p>
16165
16166       </div>
16167       <div class="tags">
16168
16169
16170         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16171
16172
16173       </div>
16174     </div>
16175     <div class="padding"></div>
16176
16177     <div class="entry">
16178       <div class="title">
16179         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html">Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</a>
16180       </div>
16181       <div class="date">
16182         30th March 2009
16183       </div>
16184       <div class="body">
16185         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
16186 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
16187 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
16188 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
16189 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
16190 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
16191 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
16192 application.</p>
16193
16194 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
16195 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
16196 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
16197 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
16198 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
16199 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
16200 blocked from doing so.</p>
16201
16202 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
16203 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
16204 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
16205 requirements change.</p>
16206
16207 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
16208 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
16209 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
16210
16211       </div>
16212       <div class="tags">
16213
16214
16215         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
16216
16217
16218       </div>
16219     </div>
16220     <div class="padding"></div>
16221
16222     <div class="entry">
16223       <div class="title">
16224         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
16225       </div>
16226       <div class="date">
16227         29th March 2009
16228       </div>
16229       <div class="body">
16230         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
16231 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
16232 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
16233 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
16234 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
16235 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
16236 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
16237 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
16238 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
16239 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
16240 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
16241 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
16242 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
16243 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
16244 now. :)</p>
16245
16246       </div>
16247       <div class="tags">
16248
16249
16250         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16251
16252
16253       </div>
16254     </div>
16255     <div class="padding"></div>
16256
16257     <div class="entry">
16258       <div class="title">
16259         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</a>
16260       </div>
16261       <div class="date">
16262         29th March 2009
16263       </div>
16264       <div class="body">
16265         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
16266 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
16267 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
16268 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
16269 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
16270 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
16271
16272 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
16273 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
16274 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
16275 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
16276 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
16277 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
16278 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
16279 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
16280 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
16281 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
16282 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
16283 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
16284 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
16285
16286 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
16287 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
16288 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
16289 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
16290
16291 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
16292 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
16293
16294 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
16295 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
16296 new IETF work group?</p>
16297
16298       </div>
16299       <div class="tags">
16300
16301
16302         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16303
16304
16305       </div>
16306     </div>
16307     <div class="padding"></div>
16308
16309     <div class="entry">
16310       <div class="title">
16311         <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
16312       </div>
16313       <div class="date">
16314         15th February 2009
16315       </div>
16316       <div class="body">
16317         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
16318 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
16319 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
16320 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
16321 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
16322 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
16323 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
16324 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
16325 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
16326 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
16327 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
16328 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
16329
16330       </div>
16331       <div class="tags">
16332
16333
16334         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
16335
16336
16337       </div>
16338     </div>
16339     <div class="padding"></div>
16340
16341     <div class="entry">
16342       <div class="title">
16343         <a href="https://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>
16344       </div>
16345       <div class="date">
16346          7th December 2008
16347       </div>
16348       <div class="body">
16349         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
16350 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
16351 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
16352 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
16353 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
16354 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
16355 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
16356 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
16357
16358 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
16359 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
16360 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
16361 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
16362 of these cards.</p>
16363
16364       </div>
16365       <div class="tags">
16366
16367
16368         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp</a>.
16369
16370
16371       </div>
16372     </div>
16373     <div class="padding"></div>
16374
16375     <div class="entry">
16376       <div class="title">
16377         <a href="https://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>
16378       </div>
16379       <div class="date">
16380         25th November 2008
16381       </div>
16382       <div class="body">
16383         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
16384 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
16385 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
16386 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
16387 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
16388 notes are available on
16389 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
16390 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
16391 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
16392 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
16393 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
16394 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
16395 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
16396 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
16397 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
16398
16399 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
16400 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
16401
16402       </div>
16403       <div class="tags">
16404
16405
16406         Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
16407
16408
16409       </div>
16410     </div>
16411     <div class="padding"></div>
16412
16413     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
16414     <div id="sidebar">
16415
16416
16417
16418 <h2>Archive</h2>
16419 <ul>
16420
16421 <li>2024
16422 <ul>
16423
16424 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2024/01/">January (1)</a></li>
16425
16426 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2024/02/">February (1)</a></li>
16427
16428 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2024/03/">March (2)</a></li>
16429
16430 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2024/04/">April (2)</a></li>
16431
16432 </ul></li>
16433
16434 <li>2023
16435 <ul>
16436
16437 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2023/01/">January (3)</a></li>
16438
16439 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2023/02/">February (1)</a></li>
16440
16441 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2023/04/">April (2)</a></li>
16442
16443 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2023/05/">May (3)</a></li>
16444
16445 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2023/06/">June (1)</a></li>
16446
16447 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2023/08/">August (1)</a></li>
16448
16449 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2023/09/">September (1)</a></li>
16450
16451 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2023/10/">October (1)</a></li>
16452
16453 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2023/11/">November (4)</a></li>
16454
16455 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2023/12/">December (1)</a></li>
16456
16457 </ul></li>
16458
16459 <li>2022
16460 <ul>
16461
16462 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2022/02/">February (1)</a></li>
16463
16464 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2022/03/">March (3)</a></li>
16465
16466 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2022/04/">April (2)</a></li>
16467
16468 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2022/06/">June (2)</a></li>
16469
16470 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2022/07/">July (1)</a></li>
16471
16472 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2022/09/">September (1)</a></li>
16473
16474 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2022/10/">October (1)</a></li>
16475
16476 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2022/12/">December (1)</a></li>
16477
16478 </ul></li>
16479
16480 <li>2021
16481 <ul>
16482
16483 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/01/">January (2)</a></li>
16484
16485 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/02/">February (1)</a></li>
16486
16487 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/05/">May (1)</a></li>
16488
16489 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/06/">June (1)</a></li>
16490
16491 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/07/">July (3)</a></li>
16492
16493 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/08/">August (1)</a></li>
16494
16495 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/09/">September (1)</a></li>
16496
16497 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/10/">October (1)</a></li>
16498
16499 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2021/12/">December (1)</a></li>
16500
16501 </ul></li>
16502
16503 <li>2020
16504 <ul>
16505
16506 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/02/">February (2)</a></li>
16507
16508 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/03/">March (2)</a></li>
16509
16510 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/04/">April (2)</a></li>
16511
16512 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/05/">May (3)</a></li>
16513
16514 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/06/">June (2)</a></li>
16515
16516 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/07/">July (1)</a></li>
16517
16518 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/09/">September (1)</a></li>
16519
16520 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/10/">October (1)</a></li>
16521
16522 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2020/11/">November (1)</a></li>
16523
16524 </ul></li>
16525
16526 <li>2019
16527 <ul>
16528
16529 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/01/">January (4)</a></li>
16530
16531 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/02/">February (3)</a></li>
16532
16533 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/03/">March (3)</a></li>
16534
16535 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/05/">May (2)</a></li>
16536
16537 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/06/">June (5)</a></li>
16538
16539 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/07/">July (2)</a></li>
16540
16541 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/08/">August (1)</a></li>
16542
16543 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/09/">September (1)</a></li>
16544
16545 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/11/">November (1)</a></li>
16546
16547 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2019/12/">December (4)</a></li>
16548
16549 </ul></li>
16550
16551 <li>2018
16552 <ul>
16553
16554 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/01/">January (1)</a></li>
16555
16556 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/02/">February (5)</a></li>
16557
16558 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/03/">March (5)</a></li>
16559
16560 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/04/">April (3)</a></li>
16561
16562 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/06/">June (2)</a></li>
16563
16564 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/07/">July (5)</a></li>
16565
16566 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/08/">August (3)</a></li>
16567
16568 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/09/">September (3)</a></li>
16569
16570 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/10/">October (5)</a></li>
16571
16572 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/11/">November (2)</a></li>
16573
16574 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/12/">December (4)</a></li>
16575
16576 </ul></li>
16577
16578 <li>2017
16579 <ul>
16580
16581 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/01/">January (4)</a></li>
16582
16583 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/02/">February (3)</a></li>
16584
16585 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/03/">March (5)</a></li>
16586
16587 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/04/">April (2)</a></li>
16588
16589 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/06/">June (5)</a></li>
16590
16591 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/07/">July (1)</a></li>
16592
16593 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/08/">August (1)</a></li>
16594
16595 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/09/">September (3)</a></li>
16596
16597 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/10/">October (5)</a></li>
16598
16599 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/11/">November (3)</a></li>
16600
16601 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/12/">December (4)</a></li>
16602
16603 </ul></li>
16604
16605 <li>2016
16606 <ul>
16607
16608 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
16609
16610 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
16611
16612 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (3)</a></li>
16613
16614 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (8)</a></li>
16615
16616 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (8)</a></li>
16617
16618 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/06/">June (2)</a></li>
16619
16620 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/07/">July (2)</a></li>
16621
16622 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/08/">August (5)</a></li>
16623
16624 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/09/">September (2)</a></li>
16625
16626 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/10/">October (3)</a></li>
16627
16628 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/11/">November (8)</a></li>
16629
16630 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/12/">December (5)</a></li>
16631
16632 </ul></li>
16633
16634 <li>2015
16635 <ul>
16636
16637 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
16638
16639 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
16640
16641 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
16642
16643 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
16644
16645 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
16646
16647 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
16648
16649 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
16650
16651 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
16652
16653 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
16654
16655 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
16656
16657 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
16658
16659 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
16660
16661 </ul></li>
16662
16663 <li>2014
16664 <ul>
16665
16666 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
16667
16668 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
16669
16670 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
16671
16672 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
16673
16674 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
16675
16676 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
16677
16678 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
16679
16680 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
16681
16682 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
16683
16684 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
16685
16686 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
16687
16688 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
16689
16690 </ul></li>
16691
16692 <li>2013
16693 <ul>
16694
16695 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
16696
16697 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
16698
16699 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
16700
16701 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
16702
16703 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
16704
16705 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
16706
16707 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
16708
16709 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
16710
16711 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
16712
16713 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
16714
16715 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
16716
16717 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
16718
16719 </ul></li>
16720
16721 <li>2012
16722 <ul>
16723
16724 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
16725
16726 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
16727
16728 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
16729
16730 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
16731
16732 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
16733
16734 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
16735
16736 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
16737
16738 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
16739
16740 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
16741
16742 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
16743
16744 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
16745
16746 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
16747
16748 </ul></li>
16749
16750 <li>2011
16751 <ul>
16752
16753 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
16754
16755 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
16756
16757 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
16758
16759 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
16760
16761 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
16762
16763 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
16764
16765 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
16766
16767 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
16768
16769 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
16770
16771 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
16772
16773 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
16774
16775 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
16776
16777 </ul></li>
16778
16779 <li>2010
16780 <ul>
16781
16782 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
16783
16784 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
16785
16786 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
16787
16788 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
16789
16790 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
16791
16792 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
16793
16794 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
16795
16796 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
16797
16798 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
16799
16800 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
16801
16802 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
16803
16804 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
16805
16806 </ul></li>
16807
16808 <li>2009
16809 <ul>
16810
16811 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
16812
16813 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
16814
16815 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
16816
16817 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
16818
16819 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
16820
16821 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
16822
16823 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
16824
16825 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
16826
16827 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
16828
16829 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
16830
16831 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
16832
16833 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
16834
16835 </ul></li>
16836
16837 <li>2008
16838 <ul>
16839
16840 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
16841
16842 <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
16843
16844 </ul></li>
16845
16846 </ul>
16847
16848
16849
16850 <h2>Tags</h2>
16851 <ul>
16852
16853  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (19)</a></li>
16854
16855  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
16856
16857  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
16858
16859  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
16860
16861  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/betalkontant">betalkontant (9)</a></li>
16862
16863  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (13)</a></li>
16864
16865  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (17)</a></li>
16866
16867  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
16868
16869  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (3)</a></li>
16870
16871  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (198)</a></li>
16872
16873  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (159)</a></li>
16874
16875  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook (9)</a></li>
16876
16877  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (11)</a></li>
16878
16879  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (18)</a></li>
16880
16881  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (32)</a></li>
16882
16883  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
16884
16885  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (460)</a></li>
16886
16887  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
16888
16889  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (14)</a></li>
16890
16891  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (34)</a></li>
16892
16893  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
16894
16895  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (20)</a></li>
16896
16897  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
16898
16899  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (43)</a></li>
16900
16901  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (18)</a></li>
16902
16903  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (23)</a></li>
16904
16905  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi (6)</a></li>
16906
16907  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
16908
16909  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego (5)</a></li>
16910
16911  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
16912
16913  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc (5)</a></li>
16914
16915  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
16916
16917  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
16918
16919  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/madewithcc">madewithcc (3)</a></li>
16920
16921  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
16922
16923  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (46)</a></li>
16924
16925  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (15)</a></li>
16926
16927  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/noark5">noark5 (25)</a></li>
16928
16929  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (324)</a></li>
16930
16931  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (199)</a></li>
16932
16933  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (41)</a></li>
16934
16935  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
16936
16937  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opensnitch">opensnitch (4)</a></li>
16938
16939  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (76)</a></li>
16940
16941  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (114)</a></li>
16942
16943  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (4)</a></li>
16944
16945  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
16946
16947  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
16948
16949  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
16950
16951  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (17)</a></li>
16952
16953  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
16954
16955  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (7)</a></li>
16956
16957  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
16958
16959  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (60)</a></li>
16960
16961  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
16962
16963  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (5)</a></li>
16964
16965  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (76)</a></li>
16966
16967  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (7)</a></li>
16968
16969  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (14)</a></li>
16970
16971  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (65)</a></li>
16972
16973  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (5)</a></li>
16974
16975  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
16976
16977  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (9)</a></li>
16978
16979  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/verkidetfri">verkidetfri (22)</a></li>
16980
16981  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (80)</a></li>
16982
16983  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
16984
16985  <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (42)</a></li>
16986
16987 </ul>
16988
16989
16990     </div>
16991     <p style="text-align: right">
16992  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
16993 </p>
16994
16995   </body>
16996 </html>