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5 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen
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14 <a href=
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</a>
23 <div class=
"title"><a href=
"Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu
</a></div>
24 <div class=
"date">2010-
04-
28 20:
40</div>
26 <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
27 Debian Edu. The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
28 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
31 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
32 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
33 example called Roaming Workstations. Here are my thought on this.
34 The setup would consist of the following:
</p>
38 <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
39 the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
40 the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
41 server. This allow the user to work also when offline. The
42 central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
43 request, for example mounted via CIFS. It could be mounted
44 automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
45 and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
46 hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
47 request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
48 can be used to access it when needed. Perhaps it is enough to use
49 the fish protocol in KDE?
</li>
51 <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
52 authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
53 to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
54 to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server. This can be done using
55 <a href=
"http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds
</a>
56 or the Fedora developed
57 <a href=
"https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
58 Security Services Daemon
</a> packages.
</li>
60 <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
61 using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
62 directory, using unison.
</li>
64 <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
65 their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
66 the box with CUPS. For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
67 system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
70 <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
71 sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.
</li>
73 <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
74 cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
75 local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.
</li>
79 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
80 the moment. If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
81 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze. Some of the pieces need
82 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
83 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#
566718</a>) and nslcd (or
84 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
85 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
86 when disconnected from the net. If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
87 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.
</p>
89 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
90 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
96 Tags:
<a href=
"tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
100 <div class=
"padding"></div>
103 <div class=
"title"><a href=
"Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"
</a></div>
104 <div class=
"date">2010-
04-
19 17:
10</div>
106 <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
107 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
108 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
109 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
110 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
111 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
112 restrictions on the web, for example from
113 <a href=
"http://craphound.com/content/">his own site
</a>. I read the
115 <a href=
"http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks
</a> using
116 <a href=
"http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader
</a> and my N810. I
117 strongly recommend this book.
</p>
123 Tags:
<a href=
"tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"tags/fildeling">fildeling
</a>,
<a href=
"tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>,
<a href=
"tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"tags/web">web
</a>.
127 <div class=
"padding"></div>
130 <div class=
"title"><a href=
"Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?
</a></div>
131 <div class=
"date">2010-
04-
14 17:
20</div>
133 <p><a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
134 NUUG presentation
</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
135 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux. Setting up a
136 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
137 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
138 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
139 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
140 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
141 users and cryptographic keys instead.
</p>
143 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration. Is there a
144 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
145 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups? With it, the
146 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
147 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.
</p>
149 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
150 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together. Anyone know?
</p>
152 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
153 Nagios. I have no idea how much work that will be to implement. We
154 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
155 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
156 to work properly.
</p>
158 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
159 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
160 configuration and integration. A natural starting point would be
161 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
162 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
165 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
166 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
167 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home. The video show show
168 up in a few days.
</p>
174 Tags:
<a href=
"tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
178 <div class=
"padding"></div>
181 <div class=
"title"><a href=
"P___vegne_av_vanvitting_mange__Aftenposten_.html">På vegne av vanvitting mange, Aftenposten!
</a></div>
182 <div class=
"date">2010-
03-
06 21:
15</div>
184 <p><a href=
"http://fotball.aftenposten.no/incoming/article163000.ece">Aftenposten
185 melder
</a> på forsiden av webavisen sin at de tror Erling Fossen
186 provoserer nordlendinger med sine uttalelser på
187 fotballtinget. Jeg er utflyttet nordlending, og må innrømme at jeg
188 ikke kjennet så mye som et snev av provokasjon fra denne litt morsomme
189 uttalelsen til Hr. Fossen. Lurer på om Aftenposten har noen kilder
190 utenom redaksjonen for sin påstand om at nordledinger er provosert av
191 Hr. Fossen. Må innrømme at jeg tviler på det.
</p>
193 <p>Det hele bringer tankene tilbake til Sture Hansen i Hallo i Uken.
</p>
199 Tags:
<a href=
"tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
203 <div class=
"padding"></div>
206 <div class=
"title"><a href=
"After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After
6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented
</a></div>
207 <div class=
"date">2010-
03-
06 18:
15</div>
209 <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
210 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
211 when the user log out. A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
212 package in
2004 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#
230422</a>),
213 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
214 Today, this finally paid off.
</p>
216 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
217 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
218 been updated to use this framework. Next on my agenda is to make sure
219 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.
</p>
221 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
222 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
223 after a user. With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
224 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
225 framework. My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
226 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.
<p>
232 Tags:
<a href=
"tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
236 <div class=
"padding"></div>
239 <div class=
"title"><a href=
"Digitale_b__ker_uten_digitale_restriksjonsmekanismer__DRM__b__r_f___mva_fritak.html">Digitale bøker uten digitale restriksjonsmekanismer (DRM) bør få mva-fritak
</a></div>
240 <div class=
"date">2010-
03-
03 19:
00</div>
242 <p>Den norske bokbransjen har
243 <a href=
"http://www.digi.no/823912/nei-til-moms-paa-e-boker">bedt om at
244 digitale bøker må få mva-fritak
</a> slik papirbøker har det, og
245 <a href=
"http://www.digi.no/836875/moms-paa-alt-digitalt-innhold">finansdepartementet
246 har sagt nei
</a>. Det er et interessant spørsmål om digitale bøker
247 bør ha mva-fritak eller ikke, og svaret er ikke så enkelt som et ja
249 <a href=
"http://www.digi.no/836925/norske-e-boker-truet-av-moms">Enkelte
250 medlemmer
</a> av bokbransjen truer med å droppe den planlagte
251 lanseringen av norske digitale bøker med digitale restriksjonsmekanismer
252 (DRM) som de har snakket om å gjennomføre nå i vår, og det må de
253 gjerne gjøre for min del.
</p>
255 <p>Papirbøker har mva-fritak pga. at de fremmer kultur- og
256 kunnskapsspredning. Digitale bøker uten digitale
257 restriksjonsmekanismer (DRM) fremmer kultur- og kunnskapsspredning,
258 mens digitale bøker med DRM hindrer kultur og kunnskapsspredning.
259 Digitale bøker uten DRM bør få mva-fritak da det er salg av bøker på
260 lik linje med salg av papirbøker, mens digitale bøker med DRM ikke bør
261 få det da det er utleie av bøker og ikke salg.
</p>
263 <p>Jeg foretrekker å kjøpe bøker, og velger dermed å la være å bruke
264 DRM-belastede digitale bøker. Vet ikke helt hva jeg ville være villig
265 til å betale for å leie en bok, men tror ikke det er mange kronene.
266 Heldigvis er det mye bøker tilgjengelig uten slike restriksjoner, og
267 de som vil ha tak i engelske bøker kan laste ned bøker som er
268 tilgjengelig uten bruksbegresninger fra
<a href=
"http://www.archive.org/">The
269 Internet Archive
</a>. Der er det pr. i dag
1 889 313 bøker
270 tilgjengelig. De er tilgjengelig i flere formater. Besøk
271 <a href=
"http://www.archive.org/details/texts">oversikten over tekster
272 der
</a> for å se hva de har.
278 Tags:
<a href=
"tags/norsk">norsk
</a>,
<a href=
"tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>.
282 <div class=
"padding"></div>
285 <div class=
"title"><a href=
"Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues
</a></div>
286 <div class=
"date">2010-
02-
11 17:
15</div>
288 <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
289 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> was finally
290 shipped. This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
291 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up. Work on the first
292 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
293 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
294 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.
</p>
296 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?
</p>
298 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
299 next major release, based on Squeeze. We will try to get as many of
300 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
301 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.
</p>
307 Tags:
<a href=
"tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
311 <div class=
"padding"></div>
314 <div class=
"title"><a href=
"Danmark_g__r_for_ODF_.html">Danmark går for ODF?
</a></div>
315 <div class=
"date">2010-
01-
29 12:
00</div>
317 <p>Ble nettopp gjort oppmerksom på en
318 <a href=
"http://www.version2.dk/artikel/13690-breaking-odf-vinder-dokumentformat-krigen ">nyhet fra Version2
</a>
319 fra Danmark, der det hevdes at Folketinget har vedtatt at ODF skal
320 brukes som dokumentutvekslingsformat i Staten.
</p>
322 <p>Hyggelig lesning, spesielt hvis det viser seg at de av vedtatt
323 kravlisten for hva som skal aksepteres som referert i kommentarfeltet
325 <a href=
"http://www.version2.dk/artikel/13693-er-ooxml-doemt-ude-her-er-kravene-til-en-offentlig-dokumentstandard">en
326 annen artikkel
</a> i samme nett-avis. Liker spesielt godt denne:
</p>
328 <p><blockquote> Det skal demonstreres, at standarden i sin helhed kan
329 implementeres af alle direkte i sin helhed på flere
330 platforme.
</blockquote></p>
332 <p>Noe slikt burde være et krav også i Norge.
</p>
338 Tags:
<a href=
"tags/norsk">norsk
</a>,
<a href=
"tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"tags/standard">standard
</a>.
342 <div class=
"padding"></div>
345 <div class=
"title"><a href=
"Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration
</a></div>
346 <div class=
"date">2010-
01-
27 15:
15</div>
348 <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
349 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
350 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
351 Nagios. The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
352 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
355 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
356 configured as a Munin and Nagios server. In addition, it is
357 configured to be a server for the
358 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
359 system
</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu. The SiteSummary
360 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
361 work. In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
362 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
363 computer submitting information to this collector. This allow for
364 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
365 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
366 packages got etc. This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
367 and Nagios configuration.
</p>
369 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
370 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
371 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
372 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.
</p>
374 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
375 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
376 services detected). In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
377 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
378 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
379 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
382 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
383 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
384 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
385 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.
</p>
387 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
388 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP. The system
389 administrator need to run "
<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
390 nagiosadmin
</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
391 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages. After that,
392 everything is taken care of.</p>
398 Tags: <a href="tags/debian edu
">debian edu</a>, <a href="tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="tags/nuug
">nuug</a>.
402 <div class="padding
"></div>
405 <div class="title
"><a href="Sikkerhet__teater__og_hvordan_gj__re_verden_sikrere.html
">Sikkerhet, teater, og hvordan gjøre verden sikrere</a></div>
406 <div class="date
">2009-12-30 16:35</div>
408 <p>Via Slashdot fant jeg en
409 <a href="http://www.cnn.com/
2009/OPINION/
12/
29/schneier.air.travel.security.theater/index.html
">nydelig
410 kommentar fra Bruce Schneier</a> som ble publisert hos CNN i går. Den
411 forklarer forbilledlig hvorfor sikkerhetsteater og innføring av
412 totalitære politistatmetoder ikke er løsningen for å gjøre verden
413 sikrere. Anbefales på det varmeste.</p>
415 <p>Oppdatering: Kom over
416 <a href="http://gizmodo.com/
5435675/president-obama-its-time-to-fire-the-tsa
">nok
417 en kommentar</a> om den manglende effekten av dagens sikkerhetsteater
424 Tags: <a href="tags/norsk
">norsk</a>, <a href="tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="tags/personvern
">personvern</a>, <a href="tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>.
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