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  12   <h1>
  13        <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  14
  15   </h1>
  16
  17  </div>
  18
  19  <p>Entries tagged "debian".</p>
  20
  21
  22
  23
  24 <div class="entry">
  25  <div class="title">
  26  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html">The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</a>
  27  </div>
  28  <div class="date">
  29   2008-11-25 00:10
  30  </div>
  31
  32  <div class="body">
  33
  34 <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
  35 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
  36 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
  37 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
  38 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
  39 notes are available on
  40 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
  41 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
  42 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
  43 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
  44 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
  45 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
  46 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
  47 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
  48 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
  49
  50 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
  51 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
  52
  53  </div>
  54  <div class="tags">
  55
  56
  57
  58   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
  59
  60  </div>
  61 </div>
  62 <div class="padding"></div>
  63
  64 <div class="entry">
  65  <div class="title">
  66  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html">Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</a>
  67  </div>
  68  <div class="date">
  69   2008-12-07 12:00
  70  </div>
  71
  72  <div class="body">
  73
  74 <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
  75 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
  76 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
  77 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
  78 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
  79 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
  80 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
  81 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
  82
  83 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
  84 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
  85 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
  86 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
  87 of these cards.</p>
  88
  89  </div>
  90  <div class="tags">
  91
  92
  93
  94   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp</a>.
  95
  96  </div>
  97 </div>
  98 <div class="padding"></div>
  99
 100 <div class="entry">
 101  <div class="title">
 102  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
 103  </div>
 104  <div class="date">
 105   2009-02-15 11:50
 106  </div>
 107
 108  <div class="body">
 109
 110 <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
 111 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
 112 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
 113 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
 114 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
 115 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
 116 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
 117 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
 118 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
 119 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
 120 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
 121 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
 122
 123  </div>
 124  <div class="tags">
 125
 126
 127
 128   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
 129
 130  </div>
 131 </div>
 132 <div class="padding"></div>
 133
 134 <div class="entry">
 135  <div class="title">
 136  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</a>
 137  </div>
 138  <div class="date">
 139   2009-03-29 20:30
 140  </div>
 141
 142  <div class="body">
 143
 144 <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
 145 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
 146 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
 147 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
 148 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
 149 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
 150
 151 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
 152 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
 153 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
 154 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
 155 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
 156 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
 157 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
 158 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
 159 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
 160 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
 161 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
 162 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
 163 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
 164
 165 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
 166 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
 167 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
 168 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
 169
 170 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
 171 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
 172
 173 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
 174 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
 175 new IETF work group?</p>
 176
 177  </div>
 178  <div class="tags">
 179
 180
 181
 182   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 183
 184  </div>
 185 </div>
 186 <div class="padding"></div>
 187
 188 <div class="entry">
 189  <div class="title">
 190  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
 191  </div>
 192  <div class="date">
 193   2009-03-29 21:00
 194  </div>
 195
 196  <div class="body">
 197
 198 <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
 199 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
 200 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
 201 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
 202 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
 203 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
 204 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
 205 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
 206 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
 207 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
 208 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
 209 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
 210 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
 211 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
 212 now. :)</p>
 213
 214  </div>
 215  <div class="tags">
 216
 217
 218
 219   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 220
 221  </div>
 222 </div>
 223 <div class="padding"></div>
 224
 225 <div class="entry">
 226  <div class="title">
 227  <a href="http://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>
 228  </div>
 229  <div class="date">
 230   2009-03-30 11:50
 231  </div>
 232
 233  <div class="body">
 234
 235 <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
 236 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
 237 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
 238 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
 239 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
 240 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
 241 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
 242 application.</p>
 243
 244 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
 245 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
 246 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
 247 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
 248 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
 249 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
 250 blocked from doing so.</p>
 251
 252 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
 253 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
 254 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
 255 requirements change.</p>
 256
 257 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
 258 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
 259 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
 260
 261  </div>
 262  <div class="tags">
 263
 264
 265
 266   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
 267
 268  </div>
 269 </div>
 270 <div class="padding"></div>
 271
 272 <div class="entry">
 273  <div class="title">
 274  <a href="http://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>
 275  </div>
 276  <div class="date">
 277   2009-04-28 09:30
 278  </div>
 279
 280  <div class="body">
 281
 282 <p>Julien Blache
 283 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
 284 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
 285 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
 286 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
 287 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
 288 properties.</p>
 289
 290  </div>
 291  <div class="tags">
 292
 293
 294
 295   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 296
 297  </div>
 298 </div>
 299 <div class="padding"></div>
 300
 301 <div class="entry">
 302  <div class="title">
 303  <a href="http://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>
 304  </div>
 305  <div class="date">
 306   2009-05-02 15:00
 307  </div>
 308
 309  <div class="body">
 310
 311 <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
 312 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
 313 do not yet know them.</p>
 314
 315 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
 316 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
 317 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
 318 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
 319 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
 320 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
 321 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
 322 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
 323 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
 324 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
 325 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
 326
 327 <p>The second one is
 328 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
 329 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
 330 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
 331 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
 332 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
 333 and the company behind it is running
 334 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
 335 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
 336 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
 337 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
 338 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
 339 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
 340 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
 341 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
 342
 343 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
 344 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
 345 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
 346 surrounded by today.</p>
 347
 348  </div>
 349  <div class="tags">
 350
 351
 352
 353   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 354
 355  </div>
 356 </div>
 357 <div class="padding"></div>
 358
 359 <div class="entry">
 360  <div class="title">
 361  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
 362  </div>
 363  <div class="date">
 364   2009-05-02 15:30
 365  </div>
 366
 367  <div class="body">
 368
 369 <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
 370 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
 371 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
 372 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
 373 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
 374 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
 375 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
 376 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
 377 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
 378 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
 379 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
 380 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
 381 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
 382 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
 383 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
 384 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
 385 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
 386 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
 387 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
 388 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
 389
 390 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
 391 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
 392 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
 393 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
 394 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
 395 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
 396 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
 397 betydelige.</p>
 398
 399  </div>
 400  <div class="tags">
 401
 402
 403
 404   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 405
 406  </div>
 407 </div>
 408 <div class="padding"></div>
 409
 410 <div class="entry">
 411  <div class="title">
 412  <a href="http://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>
 413  </div>
 414  <div class="date">
 415   2009-05-07 22:30
 416  </div>
 417
 418  <div class="body">
 419
 420 <p>Kom over
 421 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
 422 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
 423 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
 424 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
 425 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
 426 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
 427 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
 428
 429  </div>
 430  <div class="tags">
 431
 432
 433
 434   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 435
 436  </div>
 437 </div>
 438 <div class="padding"></div>
 439
 440 <div class="entry">
 441  <div class="title">
 442  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p__stander_om_piratkopiering_m__ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
 443  </div>
 444  <div class="date">
 445   2009-05-17 23:05
 446  </div>
 447
 448  <div class="body">
 449
 450 <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
 451 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
 452 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
 453 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
 454 dager siden kom
 455 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
 456 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
 457 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
 458 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
 459 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
 460
 461 <blockquote>
 462 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
 463 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
 464 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
 465 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
 466 </blockquote>
 467
 468 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
 469 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
 470 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
 471 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
 472 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
 473
 474 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
 475 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
 476 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
 477
 478  </div>
 479  <div class="tags">
 480
 481
 482
 483   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
 484
 485  </div>
 486 </div>
 487 <div class="padding"></div>
 488
 489 <div class="entry">
 490  <div class="title">
 491  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
 492  </div>
 493  <div class="date">
 494   2009-06-24 21:40
 495  </div>
 496
 497  <div class="body">
 498
 499 <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
 500 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
 501 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
 502 funded
 503 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
 504 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
 505 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
 506 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
 507 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
 508 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
 509
 510 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
 511 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
 512 boot:</p>
 513
 514 <ul>
 515
 516 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
 517
 518 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
 519    clock is in UTC.</li>
 520
 521 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
 522    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
 523    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
 524
 525 </ul>
 526
 527 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
 528 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
 529 Villegas</a>.
 530
 531 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
 532 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
 533 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
 534 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
 535 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
 536 using this.</p>
 537
 538 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
 539 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
 540 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
 541 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
 542 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
 543 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
 544 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
 545
 546  </div>
 547  <div class="tags">
 548
 549
 550
 551   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 552
 553  </div>
 554 </div>
 555 <div class="padding"></div>
 556
 557 <div class="entry">
 558  <div class="title">
 559  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
 560  </div>
 561  <div class="date">
 562   2009-07-22 23:00
 563  </div>
 564
 565  <div class="body">
 566
 567 <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
 568 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
 569 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
 570 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
 571 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
 572 the package up to date.</p>
 573
 574 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
 575 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
 576 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
 577 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
 578 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
 579 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
 580 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
 581 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
 582 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
 583 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
 584 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
 585 working on the future release.</p>
 586
 587 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
 588 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
 589
 590  </div>
 591  <div class="tags">
 592
 593
 594
 595   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 596
 597  </div>
 598 </div>
 599 <div class="padding"></div>
 600
 601 <div class="entry">
 602  <div class="title">
 603  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html">Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</a>
 604  </div>
 605  <div class="date">
 606   2009-07-27 23:50
 607  </div>
 608
 609  <div class="body">
 610
 611 <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
 612 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
 613 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
 614 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
 615 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
 616 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
 617 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
 618
 619 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
 620 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
 621 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
 622
 623  </div>
 624  <div class="tags">
 625
 626
 627
 628   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 629
 630  </div>
 631 </div>
 632 <div class="padding"></div>
 633
 634 <div class="entry">
 635  <div class="title">
 636  <a href="http://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>
 637  </div>
 638  <div class="date">
 639   2010-05-06 23:25
 640  </div>
 641
 642  <div class="body">
 643
 644 <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
 645 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
 646 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
 647 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
 648 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
 649 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
 650 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
 651
 652 <blockquote><pre>
 653 CONCURRENCY=makefile
 654 </pre></blockquote>
 655
 656 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
 657 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
 658 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
 659 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
 660 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
 661 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
 662 make this happen.</p>
 663
 664 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
 665 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
 666 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
 667 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
 668 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
 669
 670 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
 671 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
 672 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
 673 fix the remaining issues.</p>
 674
 675 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
 676 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
 677 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
 678 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
 679
 680  </div>
 681  <div class="tags">
 682
 683
 684
 685   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 686
 687  </div>
 688 </div>
 689 <div class="padding"></div>
 690
 691 <div class="entry">
 692  <div class="title">
 693  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
 694  </div>
 695  <div class="date">
 696   2010-05-13 22:20
 697  </div>
 698
 699  <div class="body">
 700
 701 <p>The last few days a new boot system called
 702 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
 703 has been
 704 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
 705
 706 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
 707 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
 708 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
 709 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
 710 based boot system.  Tollef is
 711 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
 712 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
 713 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
 714 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
 715 at the moment do not.</p>
 716
 717 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
 718 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
 719 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
 720 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
 721 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
 722 way forward.</p>
 723
 724 <p>In the mean time, based on the
 725 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
 726 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
 727 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
 728 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
 729 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
 730 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
 731 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
 732 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
 733
 734  </div>
 735  <div class="tags">
 736
 737
 738
 739   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 740
 741  </div>
 742 </div>
 743 <div class="padding"></div>
 744
 745 <div class="entry">
 746  <div class="title">
 747  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</a>
 748  </div>
 749  <div class="date">
 750   2010-05-14 21:10
 751  </div>
 752
 753  <div class="body">
 754
 755 <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
 756 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
 757 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
 758 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
 759 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
 760 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
 761 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
 762 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
 763
 764 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
 765 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
 766 this on the collector host:</p>
 767
 768 <blockquote><pre>
 769 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
 770 </pre></blockquote>
 771
 772 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
 773 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
 774
 775 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
 776 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
 777 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
 778 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
 779 written yet.</p>
 780
 781  </div>
 782  <div class="tags">
 783
 784
 785
 786   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
 787
 788  </div>
 789 </div>
 790 <div class="padding"></div>
 791
 792 <div class="entry">
 793  <div class="title">
 794  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html">Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</a>
 795  </div>
 796  <div class="date">
 797   2010-05-14 22:40
 798  </div>
 799
 800  <div class="body">
 801
 802 <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
 803 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
 804 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
 805 expected, if I am to believe the
 806 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
 807 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
 808 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
 809 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
 810 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
 811 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
 812 version.</p>
 813
 814 More information about
 815 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
 816 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
 817 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
 818 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
 819
 820 <blockquote><pre>
 821 CONCURRENCY=none
 822 </pre></blockquote>
 823
 824 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
 825 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
 826 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
 827 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
 828
 829  </div>
 830  <div class="tags">
 831
 832
 833
 834   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 835
 836  </div>
 837 </div>
 838 <div class="padding"></div>
 839
 840 <div class="entry">
 841  <div class="title">
 842  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
 843  </div>
 844  <div class="date">
 845   2010-05-22 21:30
 846  </div>
 847
 848  <div class="body">
 849
 850 <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
 851 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
 852 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
 853 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
 854
 855 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
 856 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
 857 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
 858 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
 859 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
 860 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
 861 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
 862 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
 863 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
 864 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
 865 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
 866 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
 867 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
 868 going to work.</p>
 869
 870 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
 871 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
 872 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
 873 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
 874 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
 875 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
 876 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
 877 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
 878 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
 879 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
 880 Edu.</p>
 881
 882 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
 883 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
 884 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
 885 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
 886 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
 887 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
 888
 889 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
 890 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
 891
 892  </div>
 893  <div class="tags">
 894
 895
 896
 897   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 898
 899  </div>
 900 </div>
 901 <div class="padding"></div>
 902
 903 <div class="entry">
 904  <div class="title">
 905  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</a>
 906  </div>
 907  <div class="date">
 908   2010-05-27 23:55
 909  </div>
 910
 911  <div class="body">
 912
 913 <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
 914 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
 915 issues are known and should be solved:
 916
 917 <p><ul>
 918
 919 <li>The wicd package seen to
 920 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
 921 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
 922 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
 923 seem to be on the case.</li>
 924
 925 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
 926 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
 927 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
 928 maintainer is on the case.</li>
 929
 930 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
 931 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
 932 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
 933 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
 934 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
 935 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
 936 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
 937 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
 938
 939 </ul></p>
 940
 941 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
 942 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
 943 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
 944 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
 945
 946 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
 947 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
 948 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
 949 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
 950
 951 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
 952
 953  </div>
 954  <div class="tags">
 955
 956
 957
 958   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 959
 960  </div>
 961 </div>
 962 <div class="padding"></div>
 963
 964 <div class="entry">
 965  <div class="title">
 966  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html">KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</a>
 967  </div>
 968  <div class="date">
 969   2010-06-01 17:05
 970  </div>
 971
 972  <div class="body">
 973
 974 <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
 975 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
 976 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
 977 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
 978 wait.</p>
 979
 980 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
 981 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
 982 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
 983 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
 984 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
 985 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
 986
 987 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
 988 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
 989 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
 990 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
 991 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
 992 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
 993 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
 994 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
 995
 996 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
 997
 998  </div>
 999  <div class="tags">
1000
1001
1002
1003   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1004
1005  </div>
1006 </div>
1007 <div class="padding"></div>
1008
1009 <div class="entry">
1010  <div class="title">
1011  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</a>
1012  </div>
1013  <div class="date">
1014   2010-06-03 12:05
1015  </div>
1016
1017  <div class="body">
1018
1019 <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
1020 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
1021 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
1022 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
1023 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
1024
1025 <blockquote><pre>
1026 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
1027   vendor                    count
1028   Dell Computer Corporation     1
1029     PowerEdge 1750              1
1030   IBM                           1
1031     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
1032   Intel                         2
1033   [no-dmi-info]                 3
1034 maintainer:~#
1035 </pre></blockquote>
1036
1037 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
1038 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
1039 information listed with Intel as vendor and mo model, and virtual Xen
1040 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
1041 option to list the individual machines.</p>
1042
1043 <p>A larger list is
1044 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
1045 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
1046 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
1047 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
1048 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
1049 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
1050 collector.</p>
1051
1052  </div>
1053  <div class="tags">
1054
1055
1056
1057   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
1058
1059  </div>
1060 </div>
1061 <div class="padding"></div>
1062
1063 <div class="entry">
1064  <div class="title">
1065  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
1066  </div>
1067  <div class="date">
1068   2010-06-06 14:15
1069  </div>
1070
1071  <div class="body">
1072
1073 <p>Via the
1074 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
1075 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
1076 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
1077 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
1078 following the standards wars of today.</p>
1079
1080  </div>
1081  <div class="tags">
1082
1083
1084
1085   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
1086
1087  </div>
1088 </div>
1089 <div class="padding"></div>
1090
1091 <div class="entry">
1092  <div class="title">
1093  <a href="http://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>
1094  </div>
1095  <div class="date">
1096   2010-06-06 23:55
1097  </div>
1098
1099  <div class="body">
1100
1101 <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
1102 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
1103 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
1104 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
1105 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
1106 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
1107 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
1108
1109 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
1110 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
1111 COLUMNS):</p>
1112
1113 <blockquote><pre>
1114 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
1115 previous=N
1116 PREVLEVEL=
1117 RUNLEVEL=
1118 runlevel=S
1119 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
1120 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
1121 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
1122 </pre></blockquote>
1123
1124 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
1125 script.</p>
1126
1127 <blockquote><pre>
1128 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
1129 previous=N
1130 PREVLEVEL=N
1131 RUNLEVEL=S
1132 runlevel=S
1133 </pre></blockquote>
1134
1135 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
1136 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
1137 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
1138
1139 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
1140 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
1141 choice.</p>
1142
1143  </div>
1144  <div class="tags">
1145
1146
1147
1148   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1149
1150  </div>
1151 </div>
1152 <div class="padding"></div>
1153
1154 <div class="entry">
1155  <div class="title">
1156  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
1157  </div>
1158  <div class="date">
1159   2010-06-11 22:50
1160  </div>
1161
1162  <div class="body">
1163
1164 <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
1165 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
1166 have been discovered and reported in the process
1167 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
1168 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
1169 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
1170 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
1171 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
1172
1173 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
1174 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
1175 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
1176 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
1177 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
1178 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
1179
1180 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
1181 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
1182 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
1183 is created.  The bug report
1184 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
1185 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
1186 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
1187 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
1188 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
1189 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
1190 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
1191 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
1192 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
1193 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
1194 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
1195 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
1196 Debian Squeeze.</p>
1197
1198 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
1199 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
1200 trick:</p>
1201
1202 <blockquote><pre>
1203 #!/bin/sh
1204 set -ex
1205
1206 if [ "$1" ] ; then
1207     desktop=$1
1208 else
1209     desktop=gnome
1210 fi
1211
1212 from=lenny
1213 to=squeeze
1214
1215 exec &lt; /dev/null
1216 unset LANG
1217 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
1218 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
1219 fuser -mv .
1220 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
1221 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
1222 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
1223 #!/bin/sh
1224 exit 101
1225 EOF
1226 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
1227 exit_cleanup() {
1228     umount $tmpdir/proc
1229 }
1230 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
1231 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
1232 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
1233
1234 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
1235
1236 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
1237 # to return the correct answers.
1238 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
1239     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
1240
1241 # Include the desktop and laptop task
1242 for test in desktop laptop ; do
1243     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
1244 #!/bin/sh
1245 exit 2
1246 EOF
1247     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
1248 done
1249
1250 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
1251 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
1252 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
1253 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
1254
1255 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
1256 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
1257 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
1258 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
1259 fuser -mv
1260 </pre></blockquote>
1261
1262 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
1263 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
1264 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
1265 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
1266 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
1267 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
1268
1269 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
1270 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
1271 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
1272 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
1273 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
1274 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
1275 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
1276
1277 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
1278 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
1279 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
1280 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
1281 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
1282 packages.</p>
1283
1284  </div>
1285  <div class="tags">
1286
1287
1288
1289   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1290
1291  </div>
1292 </div>
1293 <div class="padding"></div>
1294
1295 <div class="entry">
1296  <div class="title">
1297  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</a>
1298  </div>
1299  <div class="date">
1300   2010-06-13 09:05
1301  </div>
1302
1303  <div class="body">
1304
1305 <p>My
1306 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
1307 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
1308 finally made the upgrade logs available from
1309 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
1310 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
1311 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
1312 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
1313
1314 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
1315 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
1316 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
1317 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
1318 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
1319 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
1320 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
1321 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
1322
1323 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
1324 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
1325 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
1326 too surprising.</p>
1327
1328 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
1329 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
1330 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
1331 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
1332 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
1333 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
1334 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
1335 continue.</p>
1336
1337 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
1338 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
1339   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
1340   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
1341   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
1342   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
1343   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
1344   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
1345   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
1346   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
1347   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
1348   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
1349   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
1350   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
1351   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
1352   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
1353   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
1354   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
1355   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
1356   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
1357   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
1358   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
1359   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
1360   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
1361   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
1362   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
1363   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
1364   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
1365   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
1366   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
1367
1368 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
1369
1370 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
1371   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
1372   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
1373   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
1374   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
1375   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
1376   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
1377   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
1378   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
1379   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
1380   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
1381   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
1382   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
1383   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
1384   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
1385   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
1386   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
1387   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
1388   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
1389   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
1390   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
1391   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
1392   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
1393   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
1394   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
1395   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
1396   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
1397   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
1398   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
1399   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
1400   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
1401   zip</p>
1402
1403 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
1404
1405 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
1406   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
1407   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
1408   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
1409   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
1410   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
1411   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
1412   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
1413   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
1414   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
1415   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
1416   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
1417   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
1418   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
1419   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
1420   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
1421   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
1422   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
1423   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
1424   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
1425   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
1426   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
1427   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
1428   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
1429   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
1430   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
1431   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
1432   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
1433
1434 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
1435 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
1436   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
1437   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
1438   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
1439   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
1440   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
1441   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
1442   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
1443   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
1444   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
1445   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
1446   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
1447   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
1448   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
1449   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
1450   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
1451   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
1452   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
1453   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
1454   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
1455   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
1456   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
1457   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
1458   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
1459   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
1460   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
1461   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
1462   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
1463   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
1464   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
1465   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
1466   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
1467   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
1468   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
1469   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
1470   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
1471   xulrunner-1.9</p>
1472
1473
1474  </div>
1475  <div class="tags">
1476
1477
1478
1479   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1480
1481  </div>
1482 </div>
1483 <div class="padding"></div>
1484
1485 <div class="entry">
1486  <div class="title">
1487  <a href="http://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>
1488  </div>
1489  <div class="date">
1490   2010-06-16 14:55
1491  </div>
1492
1493  <div class="body">
1494
1495 <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
1496 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
1497 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
1498 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
1499 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
1500 this:
1501
1502 <blockquote><pre>
1503 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
1504 tasksel --new-install
1505 </pre></blockquote>
1506
1507 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
1508 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
1509 any output what so ever.
1510
1511 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
1512 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
1513 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
1514 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
1515 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
1516 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
1517 code like this:
1518
1519 <blockquote><pre>
1520 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
1521 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
1522 $cmd
1523 </pre></blockquote>
1524
1525 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
1526 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
1527 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
1528 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
1529 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
1530 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
1531 installation.</p>
1532
1533 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
1534 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
1535 like this.</p>
1536
1537  </div>
1538  <div class="tags">
1539
1540
1541
1542   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1543
1544  </div>
1545 </div>
1546 <div class="padding"></div>
1547
1548 <div class="entry">
1549  <div class="title">
1550  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</a>
1551  </div>
1552  <div class="date">
1553   2010-06-24 00:35
1554  </div>
1555
1556  <div class="body">
1557
1558 <p>A while back, I
1559 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
1560 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
1561 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
1562 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
1563
1564 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
1565 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
1566 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
1567 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
1568
1569 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
1570 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
1571 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
1572 Debian Edu.</p>
1573
1574 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
1575 the
1576 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
1577 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
1578 available today from IETF.</p>
1579
1580 <pre>
1581 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
1582 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
1583 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
1584  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
1585         NAME 'dhcpHost'
1586         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
1587 -       SUP top
1588 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
1589         MUST cn
1590         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
1591         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
1592 </pre>
1593
1594 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
1595 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
1596 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
1597
1598 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
1599 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
1600
1601  </div>
1602  <div class="tags">
1603
1604
1605
1606   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1607
1608  </div>
1609 </div>
1610 <div class="padding"></div>
1611
1612 <div class="entry">
1613  <div class="title">
1614  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
1615  </div>
1616  <div class="date">
1617   2010-06-28 00:30
1618  </div>
1619
1620  <div class="body">
1621
1622 <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
1623 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
1624 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
1625 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
1626 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
1627 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
1628 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
1629 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
1630 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
1631 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
1632
1633 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
1634 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
1635 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
1636 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
1637 released.</p>
1638
1639 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
1640 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
1641 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
1642 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
1643
1644 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
1645 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
1646
1647 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
1648 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
1649 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
1650 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
1651 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
1652
1653  </div>
1654  <div class="tags">
1655
1656
1657
1658   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1659
1660  </div>
1661 </div>
1662 <div class="padding"></div>
1663
1664 <div class="entry">
1665  <div class="title">
1666  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</a>
1667  </div>
1668  <div class="date">
1669   2010-07-03 23:55
1670  </div>
1671
1672  <div class="body">
1673
1674 <p>Here is a short update on my <a
1675 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
1676 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
1677 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
1678 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
1679 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
1680 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
1681 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
1682
1683 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
1684 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
1685 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
1686 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
1687 publish the difference.</p>
1688
1689 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
1690
1691 <blockquote><p>
1692   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
1693   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
1694   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
1695   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
1696   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
1697   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
1698   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
1699   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
1700 </p></blockquote>
1701
1702 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
1703
1704 <blockquote><p>
1705   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
1706   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
1707   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
1708   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
1709   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
1710   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
1711   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
1712   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
1713   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
1714   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
1715   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
1716   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
1717   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
1718   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
1719   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
1720   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
1721   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
1722   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
1723   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
1724   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
1725 </p></blockquote>
1726
1727 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
1728
1729 <blockquote><p>
1730   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
1731   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
1732   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
1733   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
1734   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
1735   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
1736   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
1737   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
1738   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
1739   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
1740   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
1741   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
1742   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
1743   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
1744   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
1745   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
1746   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
1747   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
1748   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
1749   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
1750   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
1751 </p></blockquote>
1752
1753 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
1754
1755 <blockquote><p>
1756   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
1757   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
1758   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
1759 </p></blockquote>
1760
1761 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
1762 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
1763 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
1764 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
1765 the difference somewhat.
1766
1767  </div>
1768  <div class="tags">
1769
1770
1771
1772   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1773
1774  </div>
1775 </div>
1776 <div class="padding"></div>
1777
1778 <div class="entry">
1779  <div class="title">
1780  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
1781  </div>
1782  <div class="date">
1783   2010-07-09 12:55
1784  </div>
1785
1786  <div class="body">
1787
1788 <p>Since
1789 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
1790 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
1791 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
1792 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
1793 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
1794 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
1795 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
1796 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
1797 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
1798 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
1799 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
1800 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
1801 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
1802
1803  </div>
1804  <div class="tags">
1805
1806
1807
1808   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1809
1810  </div>
1811 </div>
1812 <div class="padding"></div>
1813
1814 <div class="entry">
1815  <div class="title">
1816  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
1817  </div>
1818  <div class="date">
1819   2010-07-11 22:00
1820  </div>
1821
1822  <div class="body">
1823
1824 <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
1825 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
1826 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
1827 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
1828
1829 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
1830 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
1831 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
1832 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
1833 LTSP clients.</p>
1834
1835 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
1836 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
1837 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
1838
1839 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
1840 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
1841 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
1842
1843 <blockquote><pre>
1844 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
1845 #
1846 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
1847 #
1848 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
1849 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
1850 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
1851 #
1852 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
1853 # existence of attribute names.
1854 #
1855 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
1856 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
1857 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
1858 #
1859 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
1860 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
1861 #
1862 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
1863 #     SUP top
1864 #     AUXILIARY
1865 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
1866
1867 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
1868 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
1869     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
1870     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
1871         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
1872         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
1873             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
1874             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
1875             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
1876             # bass value on to clients
1877             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
1878         done
1879     done
1880 fi
1881 </pre></blockquote>
1882
1883 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
1884 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
1885 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
1886 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
1887 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
1888
1889 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
1890 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
1891
1892 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
1893 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
1894 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
1895 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
1896 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
1897 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
1898
1899  </div>
1900  <div class="tags">
1901
1902
1903
1904   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1905
1906  </div>
1907 </div>
1908 <div class="padding"></div>
1909
1910 <div class="entry">
1911  <div class="title">
1912  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
1913  </div>
1914  <div class="date">
1915   2010-07-14 23:45
1916  </div>
1917
1918  <div class="body">
1919
1920 <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
1921 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
1922 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
1923 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
1924 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
1925
1926 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
1927 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
1928
1929 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
1930 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
1931 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
1932 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
1933 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
1934 to a slave DNS server.</p>
1935
1936 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
1937 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
1938 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
1939 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
1940 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
1941 seem to work.</p>
1942
1943 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
1944 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
1945 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
1946 this:</p>
1947
1948 <blockquote><pre>
1949   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1950   cn: hostname
1951   objectClass: dhcphost
1952   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
1953   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
1954   associateddomain: hostname.intern
1955   arecord: 10.11.12.13
1956   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
1957   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
1958   ldapconfigsound: Y
1959 </pre></blockquote>
1960
1961 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
1962 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
1963 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
1964 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
1965
1966 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
1967 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
1968 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
1969 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
1970 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
1971 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
1972 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
1973 might be a good place to put it.</p>
1974
1975 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
1976 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
1977
1978  </div>
1979  <div class="tags">
1980
1981
1982
1983   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1984
1985  </div>
1986 </div>
1987 <div class="padding"></div>
1988
1989 <div class="entry">
1990  <div class="title">
1991  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html">What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</a>
1992  </div>
1993  <div class="date">
1994   2010-07-17 21:00
1995  </div>
1996
1997  <div class="body">
1998
1999 <p>This is a
2000 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
2001 on my
2002 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">previous
2003 work</a> on
2004 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
2005 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
2006
2007 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
2008 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
2009 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
2010 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
2011
2012 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
2013 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
2014 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
2015
2016 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
2017
2018 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
2019 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
2020 the web.
2021
2022 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
2023 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
2024 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
2025 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
2026 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
2027 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
2028
2029 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
2030 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
2031 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
2032 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
2033 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
2034 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
2035 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
2036 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
2037 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
2038 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
2039 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
2040 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
2041 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
2042 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
2043 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
2044 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
2045
2046 <blockquote><pre>
2047 ldapsearch -h ldap \
2048   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
2049   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
2050   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
2051   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
2052   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
2053   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
2054
2055 ldapsearch -h ldap \
2056   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
2057   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
2058   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
2059   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
2060   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
2061 </pre></blockquote>
2062
2063 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
2064 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
2065 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
2066 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2067 also exist.</p>
2068
2069 <blockquote><pre>
2070 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2071 objectclass: top
2072 objectclass: dnsdomain
2073 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2074 dc: tjener
2075 arecord: 10.0.2.2
2076 associateddomain: tjener.intern
2077
2078 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2079 objectclass: top
2080 objectclass: dnsdomain2
2081 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2082 dc: 2
2083 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
2084 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
2085 </pre></blockquote>
2086
2087 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
2088 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
2089 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
2090 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
2091 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
2092 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
2093 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
2094 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
2095 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
2096 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
2097 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
2098 instead.</p>
2099
2100 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
2101 like this:</p>
2102
2103 <blockquote><pre>
2104 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
2105   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
2106   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
2107   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
2108   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
2109   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
2110
2111 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
2112   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
2113 </pre></blockquote>
2114
2115 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
2116 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
2117 reverse lookups.</p>
2118
2119 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
2120 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
2121 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
2122 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
2123
2124 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
2125 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
2126 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
2127
2128 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
2129 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
2130 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
2131 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
2132 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
2133
2134 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
2135 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
2136 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
2137 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
2138 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
2139
2140 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
2141 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
2142 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
2143 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
2144 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
2145 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
2146
2147 <blockquote><pre>
2148 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
2149     SUP top
2150     AUXILIARY
2151     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
2152           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
2153           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
2154           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
2155           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
2156     ))
2157 </pre></blockquote>
2158
2159 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
2160 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
2161 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
2162 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
2163 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
2164 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
2165
2166 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
2167
2168 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
2169 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
2170 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
2171 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
2172 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
2173
2174 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
2175 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
2176 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
2177 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
2178
2179 <blockquote><pre>
2180 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
2181 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
2182 </pre></blockquote>
2183
2184 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
2185 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
2186 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
2187 search result is this entry:</p>
2188
2189 <blockquote><pre>
2190 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2191 cn: dhcp
2192 objectClass: top
2193 objectClass: dhcpServer
2194 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2195 </pre></blockquote>
2196
2197 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
2198 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
2199 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
2200 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
2201 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
2202 The search result is this entry:</p>
2203
2204 <blockquote><pre>
2205 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2206 cn: DHCP Config
2207 objectClass: top
2208 objectClass: dhcpService
2209 objectClass: dhcpOptions
2210 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2211 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
2212 dhcpStatements: authoritative
2213 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
2214 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
2215 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
2216 </pre></blockquote>
2217
2218 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
2219 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
2220 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
2221 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
2222 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
2223 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
2224 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
2225 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
2226 related computer objects.</p>
2227
2228 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
2229 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
2230 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
2231 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
2232 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
2233 like:</p>
2234
2235 <blockquote><pre>
2236 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2237 cn: hostname
2238 objectClass: top
2239 objectClass: dhcpHost
2240 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
2241 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
2242 </pre></blockquote>
2243
2244 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
2245 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
2246 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
2247 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
2248 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
2249 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
2250 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
2251 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
2252 structural object class.
2253
2254 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
2255
2256 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
2257 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
2258 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
2259 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
2260 in the configuration.</p>
2261
2262 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
2263 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
2264 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
2265 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
2266 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
2267 structure.</p>
2268
2269 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
2270 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
2271
2272 <blockquote><pre>
2273 ou=services
2274   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
2275     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
2276     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
2277       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
2278         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
2279     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
2280       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
2281         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
2282     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
2283       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
2284 </pre></blockquote>
2285
2286 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
2287 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
2288 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
2289 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
2290
2291 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
2292 like this:</p>
2293
2294 <blockquote><pre>
2295 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2296 dc: hostname
2297 objectClass: top
2298 objectClass: dhcpHost
2299 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2300 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
2301 associateddomain: hostname.intern
2302 arecord: 10.11.12.13
2303 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
2304 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
2305 </pre></blockquote>
2306
2307 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
2308 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
2309 auxiliary object class.</p>
2310
2311  </div>
2312  <div class="tags">
2313
2314
2315
2316   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2317
2318  </div>
2319 </div>
2320 <div class="padding"></div>
2321
2322 <div class="entry">
2323  <div class="title">
2324  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
2325  </div>
2326  <div class="date">
2327   2010-07-27 23:50
2328  </div>
2329
2330  <div class="body">
2331
2332 <p>I discovered this while doing
2333 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
2334 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
2335 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
2336 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
2337 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
2338
2339 <p>An example is from todays
2340 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
2341 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
2342 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
2343 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
2344 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
2345 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
2346 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
2347
2348 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
2349
2350 <blockquote><pre>
2351 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
2352  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
2353   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
2354 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
2355  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
2356 </pre></blockquote>
2357
2358 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
2359 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
2360 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
2361 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
2362 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
2363 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
2364 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
2365 of dependency loops.</p>
2366
2367 <p>Thanks to
2368 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
2369 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
2370 dependencies
2371 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
2372 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
2373
2374 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
2375 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
2376 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
2377 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
2378 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
2379 it.</p>
2380
2381  </div>
2382  <div class="tags">
2383
2384
2385
2386   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2387
2388  </div>
2389 </div>
2390 <div class="padding"></div>
2391
2392 <div class="entry">
2393  <div class="title">
2394  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html">Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</a>
2395  </div>
2396  <div class="date">
2397   2010-09-04 10:10
2398  </div>
2399
2400  <div class="body">
2401
2402 <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
2403 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
2404 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
2405 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
2406 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
2407 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
2408 installed.</p>
2409
2410 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
2411 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
2412 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
2413 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
2414 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
2415 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
2416 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
2417 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
2418 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
2419
2420 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
2421 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
2422 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
2423 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
2424 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
2425 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
2426 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
2427 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
2428 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
2429 pages they want to visit.</p>
2430
2431 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
2432 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
2433 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
2434 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
2435 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
2436 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
2437 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
2438 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
2439 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
2440 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
2441 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
2442
2443  </div>
2444  <div class="tags">
2445
2446
2447
2448   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2449
2450  </div>
2451 </div>
2452 <div class="padding"></div>
2453
2454 <div class="entry">
2455  <div class="title">
2456  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
2457  </div>
2458  <div class="date">
2459   2010-10-24 22:45
2460  </div>
2461
2462  <div class="body">
2463
2464 <p>Some updates.</p>
2465
2466 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
2467 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
2468 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
2469 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
2470 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
2471 :)</p>
2472
2473 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
2474 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
2475 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
2476 It is called
2477 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
2478 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
2479 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
2480 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
2481 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
2482 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
2483
2484 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
2485 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
2486 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
2487 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
2488 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
2489 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
2490 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
2491 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
2492 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
2493 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
2494
2495  </div>
2496  <div class="tags">
2497
2498
2499
2500   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
2501
2502  </div>
2503 </div>
2504 <div class="padding"></div>
2505
2506 <div class="entry">
2507  <div class="title">
2508  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
2509  </div>
2510  <div class="date">
2511   2010-11-09 16:10
2512  </div>
2513
2514  <div class="body">
2515
2516 <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
2517
2518 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
2519 3D linked in from
2520 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
2521 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
2522
2523  </div>
2524  <div class="tags">
2525
2526
2527
2528   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2529
2530  </div>
2531 </div>
2532 <div class="padding"></div>
2533
2534 <div class="entry">
2535  <div class="title">
2536  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
2537  </div>
2538  <div class="date">
2539   2010-11-20 07:20
2540  </div>
2541
2542  <div class="body">
2543
2544 <p>Answering
2545 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
2546 call from the Gnash project</a> for
2547 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
2548 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
2549 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
2550 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
2551 releases out more often.</p>
2552
2553 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
2554 I have considered setting up a <a
2555 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
2556 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
2557 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
2558 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
2559 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
2560 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
2561 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
2562 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
2563 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
2564 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
2565 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
2566 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
2567
2568  </div>
2569  <div class="tags">
2570
2571
2572
2573   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2574
2575  </div>
2576 </div>
2577 <div class="padding"></div>
2578
2579 <div class="entry">
2580  <div class="title">
2581  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</a>
2582  </div>
2583  <div class="date">
2584   2010-11-20 22:50
2585  </div>
2586
2587  <div class="body">
2588
2589 <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
2590 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
2591 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
2592 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
2593
2594 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
2595 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
2596 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
2597
2598 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
2599
2600 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2601
2602 <blockquote><p>
2603   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
2604   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
2605   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
2606   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
2607   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
2608   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
2609   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
2610   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
2611   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
2612   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
2613   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
2614   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
2615   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
2616   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
2617   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
2618   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
2619   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
2620   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
2621   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
2622   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
2623   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
2624   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
2625   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
2626   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
2627   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
2628   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
2629   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
2630   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
2631   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
2632   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
2633   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
2634   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
2635   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
2636   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
2637   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
2638   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
2639   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
2640   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
2641   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
2642   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
2643   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
2644   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
2645   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
2646   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
2647   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
2648   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
2649   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
2650   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
2651   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
2652   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
2653   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
2654   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
2655   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
2656   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
2657   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
2658   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
2659   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
2660   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
2661   zip
2662 </p></blockquote>
2663
2664 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
2665
2666 <blockquote><p>
2667   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
2668   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
2669   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
2670   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
2671   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
2672   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
2673   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
2674   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
2675   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
2676   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
2677   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
2678   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
2679   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
2680   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
2681   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
2682   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
2683   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
2684   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
2685   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
2686   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
2687   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
2688   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
2689   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
2690   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
2691   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
2692   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
2693   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
2694   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
2695   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
2696 </p></blockquote>
2697
2698 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
2699
2700 <blockquote><p>
2701   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
2702 </p></blockquote>
2703
2704 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
2705
2706 <blockquote><p>
2707 [nothing]
2708 </p></blockquote>
2709
2710 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
2711
2712 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2713
2714 <blockquote><p>
2715   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
2716   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
2717   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
2718   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
2719   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
2720   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
2721   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
2722   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
2723   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
2724   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
2725   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
2726   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
2727   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
2728   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
2729   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
2730   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
2731   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
2732   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
2733   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
2734   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
2735   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
2736   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
2737   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
2738   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
2739   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
2740   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
2741   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
2742   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
2743   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
2744   ttf-sazanami-gothic
2745 </p></blockquote>
2746
2747 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
2748
2749 <blockquote><p>
2750   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
2751   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
2752   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
2753   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
2754   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
2755   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
2756   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
2757   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
2758   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
2759   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
2760   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
2761   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
2762   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
2763   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
2764   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
2765   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
2766   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
2767   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
2768   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
2769   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
2770   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
2771   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
2772   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
2773   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
2774   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
2775   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
2776   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
2777   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
2778   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
2779   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
2780   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
2781   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
2782   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
2783 </p></blockquote>
2784
2785 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
2786
2787 <blockquote><p>
2788   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
2789   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
2790   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
2791   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
2792   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
2793   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
2794   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
2795 </p></blockquote>
2796
2797 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
2798
2799 <blockquote><p>
2800   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
2801 </p></blockquote>
2802
2803  </div>
2804  <div class="tags">
2805
2806
2807
2808   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2809
2810  </div>
2811 </div>
2812 <div class="padding"></div>
2813
2814 <div class="entry">
2815  <div class="title">
2816  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html">Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</a>
2817  </div>
2818  <div class="date">
2819   2010-11-22 11:20
2820  </div>
2821
2822  <div class="body">
2823
2824 <p>Most of the computers in use by the
2825 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
2826 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
2827 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
2828 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
2829 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
2830 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
2831 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
2832 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
2833
2834 <p>I found
2835 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
2836 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
2837 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
2838 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
2839 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
2840 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
2841
2842 <pre>
2843 #!/bin/sh
2844
2845 # Based on
2846 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
2847
2848 set -e
2849 set -x
2850
2851 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
2852     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
2853     exit 1
2854 else
2855     host="$1"
2856 fi
2857
2858 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
2859     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
2860     exit 1
2861 fi
2862
2863 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
2864 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
2865 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
2866 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
2867
2868 img=$host.img
2869 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
2870 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
2871
2872 parted $img mklabel msdos
2873 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
2874 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
2875 parted $img set 1 boot on
2876
2877 modprobe dm-mod
2878 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
2879 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
2880
2881 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
2882 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
2883 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
2884
2885 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
2886 losetup -d /dev/loop0
2887 </pre>
2888
2889 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
2890 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
2891
2892 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
2893 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
2894 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
2895 seem to work just fine.</p>
2896
2897  </div>
2898  <div class="tags">
2899
2900
2901
2902   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2903
2904  </div>
2905 </div>
2906 <div class="padding"></div>
2907
2908 <div class="entry">
2909  <div class="title">
2910  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</a>
2911  </div>
2912  <div class="date">
2913   2010-11-22 14:15
2914  </div>
2915
2916  <div class="body">
2917
2918 <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
2919 upgrade testing of the
2920 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
2921 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
2922 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
2923 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
2924
2925 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
2926
2927 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2928
2929 <blockquote><p>
2930   apache2.2-bin
2931   aptdaemon
2932   baobab
2933   binfmt-support
2934   browser-plugin-gnash
2935   cheese-common
2936   cli-common
2937   cups-pk-helper
2938   dmz-cursor-theme
2939   empathy
2940   empathy-common
2941   freedesktop-sound-theme
2942   freeglut3
2943   gconf-defaults-service
2944   gdm-themes
2945   gedit-plugins
2946   geoclue
2947   geoclue-hostip
2948   geoclue-localnet
2949   geoclue-manual
2950   geoclue-yahoo
2951   gnash
2952   gnash-common
2953   gnome
2954   gnome-backgrounds
2955   gnome-cards-data
2956   gnome-codec-install
2957   gnome-core
2958   gnome-desktop-environment
2959   gnome-disk-utility
2960   gnome-screenshot
2961   gnome-search-tool
2962   gnome-session-canberra
2963   gnome-system-log
2964   gnome-themes-extras
2965   gnome-themes-more
2966   gnome-user-share
2967   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
2968   gstreamer0.10-tools
2969   gtk2-engines
2970   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
2971   gtk2-engines-smooth
2972   hamster-applet
2973   libapache2-mod-dnssd
2974   libapr1
2975   libaprutil1
2976   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
2977   libaprutil1-ldap
2978   libart2.0-cil
2979   libboost-date-time1.42.0
2980   libboost-python1.42.0
2981   libboost-thread1.42.0
2982   libchamplain-0.4-0
2983   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
2984   libcheese-gtk18
2985   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
2986   libcryptui0
2987   libdiscid0
2988   libelf1
2989   libepc-1.0-2
2990   libepc-common
2991   libepc-ui-1.0-2
2992   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
2993   libfreerdp0
2994   libgconf2.0-cil
2995   libgdata-common
2996   libgdata7
2997   libgdu-gtk0
2998   libgee2
2999   libgeoclue0
3000   libgexiv2-0
3001   libgif4
3002   libglade2.0-cil
3003   libglib2.0-cil
3004   libgmime2.4-cil
3005   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
3006   libgnome2.24-cil
3007   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
3008   libgpod-common
3009   libgpod4
3010   libgtk2.0-cil
3011   libgtkglext1
3012   libgtksourceview2.0-common
3013   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
3014   libmono-addins0.2-cil
3015   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
3016   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
3017   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
3018   libmono-posix2.0-cil
3019   libmono-security2.0-cil
3020   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
3021   libmono-system2.0-cil
3022   libmtp8
3023   libmusicbrainz3-6
3024   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
3025   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
3026   libopal3.6.8
3027   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
3028   libpt2.6.7
3029   libpython2.6
3030   librpm1
3031   librpmio1
3032   libsdl1.2debian
3033   libsrtp0
3034   libssh-4
3035   libtelepathy-farsight0
3036   libtelepathy-glib0
3037   libtidy-0.99-0
3038   media-player-info
3039   mesa-utils
3040   mono-2.0-gac
3041   mono-gac
3042   mono-runtime
3043   nautilus-sendto
3044   nautilus-sendto-empathy
3045   p7zip-full
3046   pkg-config
3047   python-aptdaemon
3048   python-aptdaemon-gtk
3049   python-axiom
3050   python-beautifulsoup
3051   python-bugbuddy
3052   python-clientform
3053   python-coherence
3054   python-configobj
3055   python-crypto
3056   python-cupshelpers
3057   python-elementtree
3058   python-epsilon
3059   python-evolution
3060   python-feedparser
3061   python-gdata
3062   python-gdbm
3063   python-gst0.10
3064   python-gtkglext1
3065   python-gtksourceview2
3066   python-httplib2
3067   python-louie
3068   python-mako
3069   python-markupsafe
3070   python-mechanize
3071   python-nevow
3072   python-notify
3073   python-opengl
3074   python-openssl
3075   python-pam
3076   python-pkg-resources
3077   python-pyasn1
3078   python-pysqlite2
3079   python-rdflib
3080   python-serial
3081   python-tagpy
3082   python-twisted-bin
3083   python-twisted-conch
3084   python-twisted-core
3085   python-twisted-web
3086   python-utidylib
3087   python-webkit
3088   python-xdg
3089   python-zope.interface
3090   remmina
3091   remmina-plugin-data
3092   remmina-plugin-rdp
3093   remmina-plugin-vnc
3094   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
3095   rhythmbox-plugins
3096   rpm-common
3097   rpm2cpio
3098   seahorse-plugins
3099   shotwell
3100   software-center
3101   system-config-printer-udev
3102   telepathy-gabble
3103   telepathy-mission-control-5
3104   telepathy-salut
3105   tomboy
3106   totem
3107   totem-coherence
3108   totem-mozilla
3109   totem-plugins
3110   transmission-common
3111   xdg-user-dirs
3112   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
3113   xserver-xephyr
3114 </p></blockquote>
3115
3116 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
3117
3118 <blockquote><p>
3119   cheese
3120   ekiga
3121   eog
3122   epiphany-extensions
3123   evolution-exchange
3124   fast-user-switch-applet
3125   file-roller
3126   gcalctool
3127   gconf-editor
3128   gdm
3129   gedit
3130   gedit-common
3131   gnome-games
3132   gnome-games-data
3133   gnome-nettool
3134   gnome-system-tools
3135   gnome-themes
3136   gnuchess
3137   gucharmap
3138   guile-1.8-libs
3139   libavahi-ui0
3140   libdmx1
3141   libgalago3
3142   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
3143   libgtksourceview2.0-0
3144   liblircclient0
3145   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
3146   libspeexdsp1
3147   libsvga1
3148   rhythmbox
3149   seahorse
3150   sound-juicer
3151   system-config-printer
3152   totem-common
3153   transmission-gtk
3154   vinagre
3155   vino
3156 </p></blockquote>
3157
3158 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3159
3160 <blockquote><p>
3161   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
3162 </p></blockquote>
3163
3164 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3165
3166 <blockquote><p>
3167 [nothing]
3168 </p></blockquote>
3169
3170 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
3171
3172 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
3173
3174 <blockquote><p>
3175   ksmserver
3176 </p></blockquote>
3177
3178 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
3179
3180 <blockquote><p>
3181   kwin
3182   network-manager-kde
3183 </p></blockquote>
3184
3185 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3186
3187 <blockquote><p>
3188   arts
3189   dolphin
3190   freespacenotifier
3191   google-gadgets-gst
3192   google-gadgets-xul
3193   kappfinder
3194   kcalc
3195   kcharselect
3196   kde-core
3197   kde-plasma-desktop
3198   kde-standard
3199   kde-window-manager
3200   kdeartwork
3201   kdeartwork-emoticons
3202   kdeartwork-style
3203   kdeartwork-theme-icon
3204   kdebase
3205   kdebase-apps
3206   kdebase-workspace
3207   kdebase-workspace-bin
3208   kdebase-workspace-data
3209   kdeeject
3210   kdelibs
3211   kdeplasma-addons
3212   kdeutils
3213   kdewallpapers
3214   kdf
3215   kfloppy
3216   kgpg
3217   khelpcenter4
3218   kinfocenter
3219   konq-plugins-l10n
3220   konqueror-nsplugins
3221   kscreensaver
3222   kscreensaver-xsavers
3223   ktimer
3224   kwrite
3225   libgle3
3226   libkde4-ruby1.8
3227   libkonq5
3228   libkonq5-templates
3229   libnetpbm10
3230   libplasma-ruby
3231   libplasma-ruby1.8
3232   libqt4-ruby1.8
3233   marble-data
3234   marble-plugins
3235   netpbm
3236   nuvola-icon-theme
3237   plasma-dataengines-workspace
3238   plasma-desktop
3239   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
3240   plasma-runners-addons
3241   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
3242   plasma-scriptengine-python
3243   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
3244   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
3245   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
3246   plasma-scriptengines
3247   plasma-wallpapers-addons
3248   plasma-widget-folderview
3249   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
3250   ruby
3251   sweeper
3252   update-notifier-kde
3253   xscreensaver-data-extra
3254   xscreensaver-gl
3255   xscreensaver-gl-extra
3256   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
3257 </p></blockquote>
3258
3259 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3260
3261 <blockquote><p>
3262   ark
3263   google-gadgets-common
3264   google-gadgets-qt
3265   htdig
3266   kate
3267   kdebase-bin
3268   kdebase-data
3269   kdepasswd
3270   kfind
3271   klipper
3272   konq-plugins
3273   konqueror
3274   ksysguard
3275   ksysguardd
3276   libarchive1
3277   libcln6
3278   libeet1
3279   libeina-svn-06
3280   libggadget-1.0-0b
3281   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
3282   libgps19
3283   libkdecorations4
3284   libkephal4
3285   libkonq4
3286   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
3287   libkscreensaver5
3288   libksgrd4
3289   libksignalplotter4
3290   libkunitconversion4
3291   libkwineffects1a
3292   libmarblewidget4
3293   libntrack-qt4-1
3294   libntrack0
3295   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
3296   libplasmaclock4a
3297   libplasmagenericshell4
3298   libprocesscore4a
3299   libprocessui4a
3300   libqalculate5
3301   libqedje0a
3302   libqtruby4shared2
3303   libqzion0a
3304   libruby1.8
3305   libscim8c2a
3306   libsmokekdecore4-3
3307   libsmokekdeui4-3
3308   libsmokekfile3
3309   libsmokekhtml3
3310   libsmokekio3
3311   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
3312   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
3313   libsmokekparts3
3314   libsmokektexteditor3
3315   libsmokekutils3
3316   libsmokenepomuk3
3317   libsmokephonon3
3318   libsmokeplasma3
3319   libsmokeqtcore4-3
3320   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
3321   libsmokeqtgui4-3
3322   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
3323   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
3324   libsmokeqtscript4-3
3325   libsmokeqtsql4-3
3326   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
3327   libsmokeqttest4-3
3328   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
3329   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
3330   libsmokeqtxml4-3
3331   libsmokesolid3
3332   libsmokesoprano3
3333   libtaskmanager4a
3334   libtidy-0.99-0
3335   libweather-ion4a
3336   libxklavier16
3337   libxxf86misc1
3338   okteta
3339   oxygencursors
3340   plasma-dataengines-addons
3341   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
3342   plasma-widget-lancelot
3343   plasma-widgets-addons
3344   plasma-widgets-workspace
3345   polkit-kde-1
3346   ruby1.8
3347   systemsettings
3348   update-notifier-common
3349 </p></blockquote>
3350
3351 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
3352 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
3353 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
3354 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
3355
3356  </div>
3357  <div class="tags">
3358
3359
3360
3361   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3362
3363  </div>
3364 </div>
3365 <div class="padding"></div>
3366
3367  <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14"></a></p>
3368
3369
3370
3371
3372 <div id="sidebar">
3373
3374 <h2>Archive</h2>
3375 <ul>
3376
3377 <li>2010
3378 <ul>
3379
3380 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
3381
3382 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
3383
3384 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
3385
3386 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
3387
3388 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
3389
3390 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
3391
3392 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
3393
3394 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
3395
3396 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
3397
3398 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
3399
3400 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (10)</a></li>
3401
3402 </ul></li>
3403
3404 <li>2009
3405 <ul>
3406
3407 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
3408
3409 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
3410
3411 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
3412
3413 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
3414
3415 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
3416
3417 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
3418
3419 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
3420
3421 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
3422
3423 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
3424
3425 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
3426
3427 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
3428
3429 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
3430
3431 </ul></li>
3432
3433 <li>2008
3434 <ul>
3435
3436 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
3437
3438 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
3439
3440 </ul></li>
3441
3442 </ul>
3443
3444
3445
3446 <h2>Tags</h2>
3447 <ul>
3448
3449  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (12)</a></li>
3450
3451  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
3452
3453  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
3454
3455  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (10)</a></li>
3456
3457  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (42)</a></li>
3458
3459  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (50)</a></li>
3460
3461  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (71)</a></li>
3462
3463  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (1)</a></li>
3464
3465  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (11)</a></li>
3466
3467  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (5)</a></li>
3468
3469  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
3470
3471  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (4)</a></li>
3472
3473  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
3474
3475  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (10)</a></li>
3476
3477  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (90)</a></li>
3478
3479  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (113)</a></li>
3480
3481  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (18)</a></li>
3482
3483  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (25)</a></li>
3484
3485  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (10)</a></li>
3486
3487  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (4)</a></li>
3488
3489  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
3490
3491  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (18)</a></li>
3492
3493  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (3)</a></li>
3494
3495  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (16)</a></li>
3496
3497  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (1)</a></li>
3498
3499  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (15)</a></li>
3500
3501  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (1)</a></li>
3502
3503  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (13)</a></li>
3504
3505 </ul>
3506
3507 </div>
3508 </body>
3509 </html>