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1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
2 <rss version='2.0' xmlns:lj='http://www.livejournal.org/rss/lj/1.0/' xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
3 <channel>
4 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen</title>
5 <description></description>
6 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
7 <atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
8
9 <item>
10 <title>Hvordan vurderer regjeringen H.264-patentutfordringen?</title>
11 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hvordan_vurderer_regjeringen_H_264_patentutfordringen_.html</link>
12 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hvordan_vurderer_regjeringen_H_264_patentutfordringen_.html</guid>
13 <pubDate>Sun, 16 Nov 2014 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
14 <description>&lt;p&gt;For en stund tilbake spurte jeg Fornyingsdepartementet om hvilke
15 juridiske vurderinger rundt patentproblemstillingen som var gjort da
16 H.264 ble tatt inn i &lt;a href=&quot;http://standard.difi.no/&quot;&gt;statens
17 referansekatalog over standarder&lt;/a&gt;. Stig Hornnes i FAD tipset meg
18 om følgende som står i oppsumeringen til høringen om
19 referansekatalogen versjon 2.0, som jeg siden ved hjelp av en
20 innsynsforespørsel fikk tak i
21 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.nuug.no/uttalelser/200901-standardkatalog-v2?action=AttachFile&amp;do=get&amp;target=kongelig-resolusjon.pdf&quot;&gt;PDF-utgaven av&lt;/a&gt;
22 datert 2009-06-03 (saksnummer 200803291, saksbehandler Henrik
23 Linnestad).&lt;/p&gt;
24
25 &lt;p&gt;Der står det følgende om problemstillingen:&lt;/p&gt;
26
27 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
28 &lt;strong&gt;4.4 Patentproblematikk&lt;/strong&gt;
29
30 &lt;p&gt;NUUG og Opera ser det som særlig viktig at forslagene knyttet til
31 lyd og video baserer seg på de royalty-frie standardene Vorbis, Theora
32 og FLAC.&lt;/p&gt;
33
34 &lt;p&gt;Kommentarene relaterer seg til at enkelte standarder er åpne, men
35 inneholder tekniske prosedyrer som det i USA (og noen andre land som
36 Japan) er gitt patentrettigheter til. I vårt tilfelle berører dette
37 spesielt standardene Mp3 og H.264, selv om Politidirektoratet peker på
38 at det muligens kan være tilsvarende problematikk også for Theora og
39 Vorbis. Dette medfører at det i USA kan kreves royalties for bruk av
40 tekniske løsninger knyttet til standardene, et krav som også
41 håndheves. Patenter kan imidlertid bare hevdes i de landene hvor
42 patentet er gitt, så amerikanske patenter gjelder ikke andre steder
43 enn USA.&lt;/p&gt;
44
45 &lt;p&gt;Spesielt for utvikling av fri programvare er patenter
46 problematisk. GPL, en &quot;grunnleggende&quot; lisens for distribusjon av fri
47 programvare, avviser at programvare kan distribueres under denne
48 lisensen hvis det inneholder referanser til patenterte rutiner som
49 utløser krav om royalties. Det er imidlertid uproblematisk å
50 distribuere fri programvareløsninger under GPL som benytter de
51 aktuelle standardene innen eller mellom land som ikke anerkjenner
52 patentene. Derfor finner vi også flere implementeringer av Mp3 og
53 H.264 som er fri programvare, lisensiert under GPL.&lt;/p&gt;
54
55 &lt;p&gt;I Norge og EU er patentlovgivningen langt mer restriktiv enn i USA,
56 men det er også her mulig å få patentert metoder for løsning av et
57 problem som relaterer seg til databehandling. Det er AIF bekjent ikke
58 relevante patenter i EU eller Norge hva gjelder H.264 og Mp3, men
59 muligheten for at det finnes patenter uten at det er gjort krav om
60 royalties eller at det senere vil gis slike patenter kan ikke helt
61 avvises.&lt;/p&gt;
62
63 &lt;p&gt;AIF mener det er et behov for å gi offentlige virksomheter mulighet
64 til å benytte antatt royaltyfrie åpne standarder som et likeverdig
65 alternativ eller i tillegg til de markedsledende åpne standardene.&lt;/p&gt;
66
67 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
68
69 &lt;p&gt;Det ser dermed ikke ut til at de har vurdert patentspørsmålet i
70 sammenheng med opphavsrettsvilkår slik de er formulert for f.eks.
71 Apple Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid og Sorenson-verktøyene,
72 der det kreves brukstillatelse for patenter som ikke er gyldige i
73 Norge for å bruke disse verktøyene til annet en personlig og ikke
74 kommersiell aktivitet når det gjelder H.264-video. Jeg må nok lete
75 videre etter svar på det spørsmålet.&lt;/p&gt;
76 </description>
77 </item>
78
79 <item>
80 <title>A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</title>
81 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html</link>
82 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html</guid>
83 <pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2014 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
84 <description>&lt;p&gt;The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
85 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
86 democracy. But this right is under serious attack these days.&lt;/p&gt;
87
88 &lt;p&gt;A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
89 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
90 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
91 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor. Such SMTP option would be
92 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
93 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
94 to the people peeking on the wire. I
95 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html&quot;&gt;proposed
96 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October&lt;/a&gt; and got a
97 lot of useful feedback and suggestions. It also became obvious to me
98 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
99 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
100 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP&quot;&gt;the
101 Mailpile&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://dee.su/cables&quot;&gt;the Cables&lt;/a&gt; systems
102 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.&lt;/p&gt;
103
104 &lt;p&gt;To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
105 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
106 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion. With such addresses
107 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
108 go to the correct SMTP server. To do this, one need to configure the
109 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
110 emails for this .onion domain. To learn more about Exim configuration
111 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
112 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
113 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian. Getting it to work
114 were fairly easy, and
115 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp&quot;&gt;the
116 source code for the Debian package&lt;/a&gt; is available from github. I
117 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
118 useful approach.&lt;/p&gt;
119
120 &lt;p&gt;If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
121 mail system installed (or run &lt;tt&gt;apt-get purge exim4-config&lt;/tt&gt; to
122 get rid of exim4). Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
123 above, build the deb and install it on the machine. Next, run
124 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service&lt;/tt&gt; and follow
125 the instructions to get the service up and running. Restart tor and
126 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
127 this:&lt;/p&gt;
128
129 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
130 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
131 --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
132 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
133
134 &lt;p&gt;This will test the SMTP delivery using tor. Replace the email
135 address with your own address to test your server. :)&lt;/p&gt;
136
137 &lt;p&gt;The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
138 easier and more automatic. Especially the tor setup need more work.
139 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
140 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
141 architecture independent. It would probably also make the code easier
142 to review. The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
143 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd. It would be better if
144 no daemon and no socket is needed. I suspect it is possible to get
145 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
146 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
147 system.&lt;/p&gt;
148
149 &lt;p&gt;Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
150 &lt;tt&gt;fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion&lt;/tt&gt; mail address, deliverable over
151 SMTorP. :)&lt;/p&gt;
152 </description>
153 </item>
154
155 <item>
156 <title>First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</title>
157 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html</link>
158 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html</guid>
159 <pubDate>Mon, 27 Oct 2014 20:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
160 <description>&lt;p&gt;I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
161 sent out
162 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html&quot;&gt;this
163 announcement&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
164
165 &lt;pre&gt;
166 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
167 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
168
169 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
170 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
171 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
172 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
173 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
174 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
175 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
176
177 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
178 installation instructions are available, including detailed
179 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
180 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
181 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
182 of at least 5 characters!
183
184 [1] &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie&quot;&gt;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;
185
186 Would you like to give your school&#39;s computer a longer life? Are you
187 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
188 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
189 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
190 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
191
192 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
193 mostly in Germany and Norway.
194
195 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
196 ===============================
197
198 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
199 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
200 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
201 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
202 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
203 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
204 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
205 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
206 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
207 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
208 services. The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
209 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
210 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
211 environment.
212
213 [2] &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;http://www.skolelinux.org/&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;
214 [3] &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html&quot;&gt;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;
215
216 Full release notes and manual
217 =============================
218
219 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
220 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
221 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
222 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
223 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
224
225 [4] &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features&quot;&gt;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;
226 [5] &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/&quot;&gt;http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;
227
228 Where to get it
229 ---------------
230
231 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
232
233 * &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;
234 * &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;
235 * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
236
237 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
238
239 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
240 ===============================================================================
241
242
243 Installation changes
244 --------------------
245
246 * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
247
248 Software updates
249 ----------------
250
251 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
252
253 * Linux kernel 3.16.x
254 * Desktop environments KDE &quot;Plasma&quot; 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
255 LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE &quot;Plasma&quot; is installed by default; to
256 choose one of the others see manual.)
257 * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
258 * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
259 * GOsa 2.7.4
260 * LTSP 5.5.4
261 * CUPS print system 1.7.5
262 * new boot framework: systemd
263 * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
264 * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
265 * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
266 * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
267 * golearn 0.9
268 * tuxpaint 0.9.22
269 * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
270 * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
271 installation.
272 * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
273 notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
274
275 [6] &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes&quot;&gt;http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;
276 [7] &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual&quot;&gt;http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;
277
278 Fixed bugs
279 ----------
280
281 * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
282 DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
283 information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
284 * and many others.
285
286 Documentation and translation updates
287 -------------------------------------
288
289 * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
290 Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
291 Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
292
293 Other changes
294 -------------
295
296 * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
297 server takes more time.
298 * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
299 doesn&#39;t work.
300
301 Regressions / known problems
302 ----------------------------
303
304 * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
305 exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
306 and Debian bug #762103).
307 * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
308 #764594). The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
309 * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
310 work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
311 Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
312
313 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
314
315 [8] &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie&quot;&gt;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;
316
317 How to report bugs
318 ------------------
319
320 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;
321
322 About Debian
323 ============
324
325 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
326 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
327 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
328 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
329 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
330 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
331 operating system.
332
333 Contact Information
334 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
335 mail to press@debian.org.
336
337 [9] &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;http://www.debian.org/&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;
338 &lt;/pre&gt;
339 </description>
340 </item>
341
342 <item>
343 <title>I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</title>
344 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html</link>
345 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html</guid>
346 <pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2014 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
347 <description>&lt;p&gt;I spent last weekend at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.makercon.no/&quot;&gt;Makercon
348 Nordic&lt;/a&gt;, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
349 the surrounding countries. I had volunteered on behalf of the
350 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
351 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
352 a row. There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
353 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
354 &lt;a href=&quot;http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/&quot;&gt;dvswitch&lt;/a&gt;, a
355 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
356 live.&lt;/p&gt;
357
358 &lt;p&gt;Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
359 around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
360 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/&quot;&gt;now becoming
361 public&lt;/a&gt; on the MakerConNordic account. The videos have the license
362 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
363 &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/&quot;&gt;Creative
364 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge&lt;/a&gt;. Many great
365 talks available. Check it out! :)&lt;/p&gt;
366 </description>
367 </item>
368
369 <item>
370 <title>listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</title>
371 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html</link>
372 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html</guid>
373 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Oct 2014 20:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
374 <description>&lt;p&gt;If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
375 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
376 operate. First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
377 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
378 and various options for each email address. This take a while for
379 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
380 job as a list moderator. But there is a quick alternative,
381 &lt;a href=&quot;http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin&quot;&gt;the
382 listadmin program&lt;/a&gt;. It allow you to check lists for new messages
383 to moderate in a fraction of a second. Here is a test run on two
384 lists I recently took over:&lt;/p&gt;
385
386 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
387 % time listadmin xiph
388 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
389 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
390
391 real 0m1.709s
392 user 0m0.232s
393 sys 0m0.012s
394 %
395 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
396
397 &lt;p&gt;In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
398 there are no message in the moderation queue. Every morning I
399 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
400 minutes. When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
401 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue. It took me
402 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
403 program.&lt;/p&gt;
404
405 &lt;p&gt;If you install
406 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin&quot;&gt;the listadmin
407 package&lt;/a&gt; from Debian and create a file &lt;tt&gt;~/.listadmin.ini&lt;/tt&gt;
408 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:&lt;/p&gt;
409
410 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
411 username username@example.org
412 spamlevel 23
413 default discard
414 discard_if_reason &quot;Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list.&quot;
415
416 password secret
417 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
418 mailman-list@lists.example.com
419
420 password hidden
421 other-list@otherserver.example.org
422 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
423
424 &lt;p&gt;There are other options to set as well. Check the manual page to
425 learn the details.&lt;/p&gt;
426
427 &lt;p&gt;If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
428 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
429 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
430 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:&lt;/p&gt;
431
432 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
433 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
434 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
435
436 &lt;p&gt;If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
437 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
438 initial screen dump (the xiph argument). Using an argument, only
439 lists matching the argument string will be processed. This make it
440 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
441 email.&lt;/p&gt;
442
443 &lt;p&gt;Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
444 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
445 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
446 time I could spend elsewhere over the years. It truly is nice free
447 software.&lt;/p&gt;
448
449 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
450 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
451 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
452
453 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-10-27: Added missing &#39;username&#39; statement in
454 configuration example. Also, I&#39;ve been told that the
455 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone. Not
456 sure why.&lt;/p&gt;
457 </description>
458 </item>
459
460 <item>
461 <title>Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</title>
462 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html</link>
463 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html</guid>
464 <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
465 <description>&lt;p&gt;When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
466 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
467 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
468 Normally something more is needed. But thanks to
469 &lt;a href=&quot;https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html&quot;&gt;my isenkram
470 package&lt;/a&gt; and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
471 to do this using simple preseeding.&lt;/p&gt;
472
473 &lt;p&gt;The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
474 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
475 the kernel modules for the hardware). (It can also install user space
476 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
477 of this story.)&lt;/p&gt;
478
479 &lt;p&gt;To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
480 values are needed. First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
481 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
482 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system. This is done by
483 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
484 isenkram-cli package. The package name is next passed to debootstrap
485 for installation. With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
486 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
487 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
488 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.&lt;/p&gt;
489
490 &lt;p&gt;Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
491 most firmware unfortunately is non-free. This is done by preseeding
492 the apt-mirror-setup step. This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
493 hardware it is the only option in Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
494
495 &lt;p&gt;The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
496 firmware installed automatically by the installer:&lt;/p&gt;
497
498 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
499 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
500 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
501 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
502
503 &lt;p&gt;The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
504 both firmware and user space packages when using this method. It also
505 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later. Installing both
506 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
507 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
508 and one for user space programs. The firmware task is enabled by
509 default, while the one for user space programs is not. This split is
510 implemented in the package currently in unstable.&lt;/p&gt;
511
512 &lt;p&gt;If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
513 this recipe work for you. :)&lt;/p&gt;
514
515 &lt;p&gt;So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work. First and
516 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
517 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/. So the
518 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find. First there
519 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):&lt;/p&gt;
520
521 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
522 Task: isenkram-packages
523 Section: hardware
524 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
525 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
526 proposed.
527 Test-new-install: show show
528 Relevance: 8
529 Packages: for-current-hardware
530
531 Task: isenkram-firmware
532 Section: hardware
533 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
534 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
535 packages are proposed.
536 Test-new-install: mark show
537 Relevance: 8
538 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
539 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
540
541 &lt;p&gt;The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
542 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
543 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/. The scripts use other scripts to get a
544 list of packages to install. The for-current-hardware-firmware script
545 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
546
547 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
548 #!/bin/sh
549 #
550 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
551 export PATH
552 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
553 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
554
555 &lt;p&gt;With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
556 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)&lt;/p&gt;
557
558 &lt;p&gt;If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
559 installed, run &lt;tt&gt;DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
560 --new-install&lt;/tt&gt; to get the list of packages that tasksel would
561 install.&lt;/p&gt;
562
563 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; will be
564 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
565 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.&lt;/p&gt;
566 </description>
567 </item>
568
569 <item>
570 <title>Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</title>
571 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html</link>
572 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html</guid>
573 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Oct 2014 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
574 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen. Above the
575 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
576 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
577 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:&lt;/p&gt;
578
579 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img width=&quot;70%&quot; src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
580
581 &lt;p&gt;If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
582 about this hidden Linux installation. It is interesting what
583 &lt;a href=&quot;http://revealingerrors.com/&quot;&gt;errors can reveal&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
584 </description>
585 </item>
586
587 <item>
588 <title>New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</title>
589 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html</link>
590 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html</guid>
591 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Oct 2014 08:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
592 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/&quot;&gt;lsdvd project&lt;/a&gt;
593 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
594 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
595 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
596 Dibb.&lt;/p&gt;
597
598 &lt;p&gt;I just wrapped up
599 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/&quot;&gt;a
600 new lsdvd release&lt;/a&gt;, available in git or from
601 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/&quot;&gt;the
602 download page&lt;/a&gt;. This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
603 0.17.&lt;/p&gt;
604
605 &lt;ul&gt;
606
607 &lt;li&gt;Ignore &#39;phantom&#39; audio, subtitle tracks&lt;/li&gt;
608 &lt;li&gt;Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
609 non-existant, to work around additional copy protection&lt;/li&gt;
610 &lt;li&gt;Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles&lt;/li&gt;
611 &lt;li&gt;Fix pallete display of first entry&lt;/li&gt;
612 &lt;li&gt;Fix include orders&lt;/li&gt;
613 &lt;li&gt;Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway&lt;/li&gt;
614 &lt;li&gt;Fix the chapter count&lt;/li&gt;
615 &lt;li&gt;Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
616 the palette size is the same.&lt;/li&gt;
617 &lt;li&gt;Fix array printing.&lt;/li&gt;
618 &lt;li&gt;Correct subsecond calculations.&lt;/li&gt;
619 &lt;li&gt;Add sector information to the output format.&lt;/li&gt;
620 &lt;li&gt;Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
621 with more GCC compiler warnings.&lt;/li&gt;
622
623 &lt;/ul&gt;
624
625 &lt;p&gt;This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
626 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
627 project the last nine years. Please check it out. :)&lt;/p&gt;
628 </description>
629 </item>
630
631 <item>
632 <title>How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</title>
633 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html</link>
634 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html</guid>
635 <pubDate>Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
636 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux
637 project&lt;/a&gt; provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
638 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
639 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
640 boot of both clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
641 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
642 to mention here). We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
643 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
644 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
645 future. The
646 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie&quot;&gt;current
647 status&lt;/a&gt; can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
648 work left. Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
649 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway. Here is a
650 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.&lt;/p&gt;
651
652 &lt;p&gt;First, download the test ISO via
653 &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso&quot;&gt;ftp&lt;/a&gt;,
654 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso&quot;&gt;http&lt;/a&gt;
655 or rsync (use
656 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
657 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
658 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
659 install with some tweaking.&lt;/p&gt;
660
661 &lt;p&gt;When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
662 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run&lt;/p&gt;
663
664 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
665 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
666 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
667
668 &lt;p&gt;and add &#39;exit 0&#39; as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
669 optimization. Return to the installation, select the profile you want
670 and continue. Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
671 due to a known bug in eatmydata.&lt;/p&gt;
672
673 &lt;p&gt;When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
674 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be. All my
675 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
676 your need.&lt;/p&gt;
677
678 &lt;p&gt;If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
679 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
680 education-desktop-XXX metapackage. XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
681 or mate. If you want several desktop options, install more than one
682 metapackage. Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
683 graphical login screen. This workaround should no longer be needed
684 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
685 days.&lt;/p&gt;
686
687 &lt;p&gt;I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
688 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
689 update the debian-cd git repository. The eatmydata, grub and desktop
690 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
691 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again. Well the
692 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled. The proper fix
693 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
694 provided in bug &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/702711&quot;&gt;#702711&lt;/a&gt;.
695 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.&lt;/p&gt;
696
697 &lt;p&gt;I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
698 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
699 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.&lt;/p&gt;
700 </description>
701 </item>
702
703 <item>
704 <title>Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</title>
705 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html</link>
706 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html</guid>
707 <pubDate>Thu, 25 Sep 2014 11:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
708 <description>&lt;p&gt;I use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/&quot;&gt;lsdvd tool&lt;/a&gt;
709 to handle my fairly large DVD collection. It is a nice command line
710 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
711 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format. But lsdvd have not seen
712 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
713 its use with some DVDs. Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
714 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
715 project, without any reply. But I use it regularly and would like to
716 get &lt;a href=&quot;https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd&quot;&gt;an updated version
717 into Debian&lt;/a&gt;. So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
718 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
719 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
720 over. And yesterday, I became project admin.&lt;/p&gt;
721
722 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
723 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
724 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
725 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
726 I&#39;ve added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
727 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too. If you got
728 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
729 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/&quot;&gt;the git source&lt;/a&gt; and join
730 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/&quot;&gt;the project mailing
731 list&lt;/a&gt;. :)&lt;/p&gt;
732 </description>
733 </item>
734
735 </channel>
736 </rss>